Conversion Practices (Prohibition) Bill

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 1st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I will come to exactly that in a moment, but the hon. Member makes valid points that we should address.

Some were worried when I was drawn in the private Member’s Bill ballot that I would produce, as one Whip put it, a “batshit crazy” Bill. Others were worried that I would produce a Bill that would not stop this practice and would have too many loopholes. But after months of meetings, quiet conversations, going on BBC “Politics Live”, offering a meeting to anyone who wanted one and meeting colleagues across this House, all with different views, I hope that the words of the same Whip, saying “Blimey, he’s actually produced something quite sensible” will ring in the ears of everyone in this debate.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on this incredibly important Bill. A number of constituents have written passionately to me about it. According to the UK Government’s own research, 7% of LGBT people have been offered or have undergone conversion therapy. That indicates that in the last five years thousands of people have been at risk of harm. Does he agree that the scale of it must be recognised, and that it must stop?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I quite agree. I understand from previous conversations that the Government do not outright oppose the Bill—we will see how the Minister responds today, as that might have slightly changed. It is quite right that they do not oppose it, because they have put forward this proposal numerous times. They are reserving judgment on some of the technicalities. I have given the Government two opportunities to propose amendments in the public consultations that I have run. They proposed no amendments. In fact, the Government agreed to do pre-legislative scrutiny of their own Bill but, six months later, that has not happened.

Hormone Pregnancy Tests

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on securing this debate, and thank her for her outstanding work in leading this campaign in Parliament. I also pay tribute to all the families of children who were born with birth defects after their pregnant mothers took Primodos for the courage that they have shown. In particular, I pay tribute to Marie Lyon—who, I am pleased to see, is here with us today—for her tireless work.

Those affected should not have to fight for justice. I join colleagues in the debate in calling on the Government to acknowledge the fact that the recommendations in the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety review relating to Primodos-affected families have not been implemented, and to explain why; to implement those recommendations and to set up a redress fund for families affected by Primodos; and to withdraw the 2017 expert working group report on hormone pregnancy tests, which has been disputed by academics and is inconsistent with other more independent studies.

In their fight for justice, the families have suffered setback after setback. The latest came a few months ago when claims for damages against Bayer Pharma, Schering Health Care Ltd, Aventis Pharma Ltd and the Government were struck out in the High Court, partly owing to lack of funding for legal representation. That was a bitterly disappointing blow.

The Government have a moral duty to set up the redress fund for those affected. As far back as the late 1950s, concerns were raised that hormone pregnancy tests, the most commonly used of which was Primodos, could cause abnormalities in a developing baby. Further studies in the UK and elsewhere from the late 1960s to the early 1970s suggested a link between the use of hormone pregnancy tests and a wide range of serious birth defects.

It took until 1975 for the Committee on Safety of Medicines to recommend that hormone pregnancy tests should no longer be used. The committee said that there was “little justification” for them, as alternatives were available. It then sent an alert letter to all doctors in the UK, advising them of a possible association between hormone pregnancy tests and an increased incidence of congenital abnormalities. The letter recommended that doctors “should not normally prescribe” those products as pregnancy tests.

However, it has been reported that Primodos sometimes continued to be used as a pregnancy test within the NHS until it was withdrawn from the market by the manufacturer, Schering Chemicals Ltd, in 1978. By that stage, the damage had been done. Legal proceedings by the affected families began, but were discontinued in the early 1980s. It was not until early 2014, and the discovery of documents from the 1960s that reportedly showed that studies suggested that hormone pregnancy tests caused miscarriages and congenital abnormalities, that a new campaign called for an independent public inquiry into them.

Criticisms of the 2017 independent expert working group report on hormone pregnancy tests included the fact that it did not examine regulatory issues and that a number of documents had not been included in the review. Additionally, the methodology and findings in the report have been disputed by academics and are inconsistent with other academic reviews, as today’s motion highlights. One of those reviews was by a group of researchers at the University of Oxford, led by Professor Carl Heneghan. The researchers concluded:

“The evidence of an association”—

by which they mean between hormone pregnancy tests and birth defects— “has previously been deemed weak, and previous litigation and reviews have been inconclusive. However, we believe that this systematic review shows an association of oral HPTs with congenital malformations.”

Despite that, the Government say that they currently have no plans to reassess the findings of the expert working group review. I hope that, today, we hear a different response from the Minister.

In 2018, the independent medicines and medical devices safety review was announced by the Government, led by Baroness Cumberlege. Despite the Cumberlege review’s finding that Primodos caused avoidable harm, and the clear recommendation for redress for those affected, the Government have refused to even acknowledge it. That is a grave injustice and an insult to those who have suffered. Let us remind ourselves of some of the adverse impacts that affected individuals and families have attributed to hormone pregnancy test use: congenital heart defects, dysmorphic facial features such as cleft palate and lip, digestive system and bowel issues, intellectual disability, limb defects and, tragically, death.

[Sir Mike Penning]

Could I add to that those who were told to have an abortion, and those who had a miscarriage or a stillbirth? Their families have been damaged almost as much, and the guilt is still with them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Greenwood]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point and I agree. The Minister must recognise the clear moral case to support those affected. Back in 2017, the then Health Secretary apologised

“on behalf of the NHS and the whole healthcare system...to those who’ve suffered and their families, for their frustration, for the time it’s taken to get their voices heard.”

However, in the years since, the Government have failed to provide the recognition and redress that those affected by Primodos deserve. The Government must fully implement the recommendations in the independent medicines and medical devices safety review and set up a redress fund for those affected by Primodos as a matter of urgency. Those affected by Primodos have suffered enough, and they deserve justice.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 21st June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Today, we consider a number of Lords amendments that will go some way towards making the Bill slightly less draconian than it currently is, but will not make it a Bill that we can ultimately support. I start by paying tribute to Members in the other place who have done their best to ameliorate the Bill with the sensible amendments that we are considering, and which we will be supporting. What those Members understand is that the Bill is the act of a weak Government who have lost the authority and the will to govern for everyone; a Government who prefer legislation to negotiation, diversion to resolution, and confrontation to consultation. How Ministers have the gall to come to the Dispatch Box and talk about the importance of minimum service levels when we have seen the decimation of our public services under this Government—with a record 7.4 million patients left on waiting lists, record teacher vacancies, and ever-increasing response times to calls to the police—is beyond me.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making excellent points. I have heard from doctors in Wirral West who firmly believe that the Bill represents an intrusion on legitimate trade union activities, undermines workers’ rights to representation, and would leave unions unable to effectively represent their members. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Justin Madders]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I do agree with those doctors. I will go on to explain why the Bill is an attack on basic freedoms and liberties that I thought this country held dear.

Turning first to Lords amendment 2B, as we know, the Bill presents the Secretary of State with huge, unchecked powers, throwing scrutiny and democracy out of the window. We think it is entirely reasonable that if a Secretary of State wants the power to set, impose and police minimum service levels, they should be accountable for the impact of those powers and able to demonstrate what their impact will be. Requiring them to conduct a proper impact assessment on the use of those powers and hold a consultation on any specific proposals they have could be helpful to a Secretary of State, because they cannot possibly know how every nook and cranny of any particular sector operates and what is needed to deliver a minimum service level—assuming they can define what one is.

If the Government think that it is such a wonderful idea to introduce minimum service levels in the sectors covered by the Bill, they should not fear scrutiny of their proposals, consultation with those directly affected, or challenges to their assumptions. My fear is that the Government fear all of those things. When the Regulatory Policy Committee described the Bill as “not fit for purpose”, one would have hoped that any sensible and rational Government would put a little bit of effort into talking to people to make sure that their own Bill had even a remote chance of working, but I suspect that—like so many things that we hear from this Government—they do not look beyond the easy headline and do not think through the consequences of their actions.

I will turn briefly to Lords amendment 5B, which attempts to deal with what is essentially a full-blown attack on the independence of trade unions and their members. I know that the Government have been raising the bar ever higher on the number of members required to vote in favour of industrial action. However, even they must see that putting a requirement on a trade union to take action to stop some of its members from participating in industrial action once they have voted in favour of it—as proposed new section 234E of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 would do—undermines the very essence of what a trade union stands for.

We have never had an adequate explanation of what reasonable steps a union is expected to take in those circumstances. The Minister previously told us that it would be a matter for the courts to determine, but that represents an abject failure by the Government to do their job. Are they really saying to trade unions that they can face damages of up to £1 million if they fail to comply with the Bill, but that they will have to wait for a court to decide what they need to do to avoid that liability? That is ludicrous, dangerous, and a potentially disastrous situation for any trade union to be in. This amendment removes Government interference in lawfully and democratically made decisions by an independent non-governmental organisation, and removes the completely disproportionate risk that trade unions face if they fail to adhere to the undemocratic, unspecified and unconscionable requirements of this provision.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

That is really a question for the Minister, and one that I think the Government have failed to answer adequately. I think the point my hon. Friend makes is a good one. When Conservative Members traduce the union barons, they actually traduce every single member of the trade union who has voted in support of industrial action, and I am afraid that that is no way for any Government to operate.

I would ask Conservative Members, not that there are many here, to consider what the Bill actually means. Representatives of trade unions will be required to encourage, cajole, advise, pressurise or even demand that their members cross a picket line. They will be asking trade unions to actively go against the very thing they were set up to do. I would say that it is a bit like asking a Conservative MP to vote in support of higher taxes, but I guess that, with the highest tax burden in over half a century, we may have to drop that particular analogy.

[Margaret Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. I am a proud trade unionist, but I am also a former schoolteacher. I am concerned not only about the administrative burden that this requirement for employers to serve work notices on staff will create, but about the risk of damaging relationships within the workplace. He is talking about people being required to cross picket lines, and that would most definitely be a case in point. I am very concerned, because schools and hospitals in particular operate through staff collaborating with each other, and risking those relationships is a very dangerous thing to do.

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why so many employer organisations are also against this Bill, because they understand what it will do for industrial relations: it will make them worse, not better. I would ask Conservative Members to think carefully about what they are asking trade unionists to do, which is to go against deeply held, genuine and sincere beliefs—

Legislative Definition of Sex

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard]

I will carry on if I may. Single-sex services can and do exclude trans women at the moment, using the law as it stands. Changing the definition of sex is unnecessary to achieve that policy aim. Indeed, the majority of the examples used around the room in this debate so far are already covered by the Equality Act. I am worried that the debate and the direction of travel in which this can take us could lead to a roll-back of hard-won rights for the LGBT+ community and will potentially exclude more trans people from public spaces and allow discrimination to go unchallenged.

I want to hear more trans voices in the debate and I would like us to spend as much time talking about trans people’s access to healthcare as we spend talking about trans people’s rights to use a toilet. In the south-west at the moment, the waiting list to access trans healthcare is seven years—it is seven years. That is a disgraceful amount of time. I challenge all those people who spend so much time focusing on toilets to spend as much time focusing on healthcare and the delays in the system in order to achieve a fair place for us all. Let me say this clearly: the carefully crafted words that suggest that trans people accessing the toilets or changing rooms that they are legally allowed to access makes them a sexual predator are disgusting and wrong. What that does is contribute to a rise in hate against people. One of my friends, who describes herself as a butch lesbian, has been asked to leave toilets countless times. All she wants to do is go for a wee. But she has been asked to leave toilets countless times because of a rise in hate. She was born a girl; she is now a proud woman—a proud lesbian. But the rise in hate in the debate and around our country means that she worries about going to the toilet because of what other people may think of her. That is not right.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Luke Pollard]

I will carry on if I may, because I am running out of time. It is important that we defend the Equality Act, because there are so many examples that are already covered by the Equality Act; it is important that we all look carefully at it. I appreciate that some MPs have wanted to have this debate for quite some time—wanted to have a debate about biological sex. But what I hope we can all agree on is that the right of trans people to exist, to be authentically themselves and to thrive should not be up for debate. This is why we have to be careful. We need to ensure that the debate in this country does not go down the path of how we are seeing the debate develop in America. What happened in America—we can see this—is that first they came for trans people; then they came for the rest of the LGBT+ community. As we see from the 400 pieces of legislation—

Mental Health Support: Wirral

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 24th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I thank the Speaker, through you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to raise a number of issues relating to mental health care in the Wirral. I thank my constituents, a number of whom have come to see me to share their experience, which is why I requested this debate. I also thank the many community groups across the Wirral that do incredible work to support people with mental health conditions to try to change and improve our borough, to make it a better, more supportive place for all our mental health.

As I said, the need for this debate has arisen because more and more constituents have come to see me in recent years about mental health challenges. I assume that that is common to many of us across the House. More commonly, constituents come to see me about something else, but in the process of the discussion about whatever the problem is—be it social security, education or their life at work—it has come to light that they have an unmet mental health need. I have asked them about the support and care available to them through our NHS, and it has become apparent that the services provided through our NHS in the Wirral—and I am sure across the country—are not sufficient.

It is difficult to unpick this issue sometimes because the shame and stigma that still exist around mental health mean that we are much less likely to hear from our constituents about their mental health problems. Yet if there is a problem with getting through the front door of A&E at Arrowe Park Hospital, I will hear about it almost immediately. If there is a problem with cancer waiting times, or hips and knees treatment, I am convinced that I would know about that. I worry that the problems with mental health treatment services in this country are not brought to our constituency surgeries in the same way. That made me want to have this debate—to shine a light on what is happening.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way so early in her speech. I recently met a number of local school leaders in my constituency, who are concerned about children having gone through covid, not having the opportunity to play out, to be with their friends and to have regular schooling in the way that children normally do; not being able to play outside, do homework together and have sleepovers—all those bonding situations that are important in childhood. They are concerned about the mental health of their pupils. Does she agree that we need the Government to step up to the challenge, provide more sports for schools and follow Labour’s lead by committing to specialist support for mental health issues in every single school?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for making that point. We could have another Adjournment debate on mental health support services for children and the role that education should play. I will not focus on children and young people today, but I share her concerns and I thank her for putting them on the record.

When trying to find out more about exactly what is going on in the Wirral, it was pretty frustrating and challenging to get clarity on mental health waiting times. That is a big inequality with physical health, partly because our traditional way of measuring waiting times in the NHS is referral to a consultant for treatment. But in mental health, the big focus is on services in which someone, hopefully, will not need to see a consultant. Expanding access to talking therapies, which were previously known as the improving access to psychological therapies service, is not about getting a referral to see a consultant, so I do not think there is the same political eye on mental health waiting times. Will the Minister say what plans the Government have to structurally change that and to try to figure out a way for us to track mental health waiting times more effectively? As constituency MPs, we need to be much more aware of what services are being provided to our constituents and in what timeframe.

I mentioned the NHS focus on talking therapies and the IAPT service. Having prepared for the debate, the Minister may know that unfortunately in the Wirral we have a significant backlog in waiting times for the IAPT service. Through asking questions, I have discovered a significant failure against one of the key measures. As of December 2022, the

“number of individuals accessing IAPT services as a percentage of prevalence in the borough”

was just less than 10%, but the national target is 25%. In my view, that is a big failure. It represents a significant number of people who ought to be accessing talking therapies who are not. What more can the Minister tell me about the oversight that central Government have of that?

The talking therapies staff in the Wirral are brilliant. Having inherited the backlog as a new provider, they have worked incredibly hard to try to get on top of the situation. They are doing significant and important work, but the delays have big consequences for my constituents. Some people who have come to my constituency surgeries have experienced challenging situations but not had the kind of support they needed.

Looking at the figures from NHS Cheshire and Merseyside more closely shows that unfortunately the issues get worse. Within the talking therapies service, the waiting time for the more significant level of counselling support can be up to eight to nine months, and there are nearly 700 people waiting for that counselling support. If I needed counselling and I was told that the waiting time was nine months, I would be really desperate. How is anybody supposed to deal with that wait, when they already know that they need help and support to face a life challenge? That is not fair. If the waiting time related to physical rather than mental health, I think a lot more attention would be paid to it.

Unfortunately, things are even worse in the Wirral. We know that early intervention is important, but the backlog and what was historically going on within our talking therapies service has been mirrored in the community mental health scheme. I have spoken to constituents whose loved ones have experienced significant mental health problems, and they have asked me what is going on with our community mental health team. Unfortunately, there are long waits there, too.

This is really problematic because those people may have experienced in-patient care and may need support after that. The aim may even be to prevent in-patient care. Those people should be supported in the community, but there is an average wait of 11 weeks. I worry that that situation will escalate. We know that we have real problems across our NHS, whether that is access to A&E or other parts of primary care. If people with a mental health condition are not supported as would be expected and given the care they need to improve their situation, they will end up in crisis. That is just how it is, and it will mean a knock-on for our A&E staff. It is a really frustrating situation, and I ask the Minister what the Government’s plans are for resolving it. Do they have a strategy that could support improvement in the Wirral?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) said, we could have the same debate all over again—I will not suggest we do so tonight, because our staff may be hoping for a bit of an early night—about services for children and young people. Waiting times for them in the Wirral and across the rest of the country are really bad. The consequences of not getting support early are often worse for children and young people, who may be realising for the first time that they have a mental health condition. We need a strategy from the Government that includes children and young people, for all the reasons that I am sure the Minister is well aware of.

The gaps in performance and the poor quality of service across the Wirral and, I am sure, across the rest of the country are exacerbating inequality. Somebody who realises how long the wait on the NHS is for talking therapies or counselling, and who is in a well-paid or well-supported job may be able to access support almost immediately through their work plan, particularly if their job comes with an employee assistance programme. That is a good thing, because those people need help, but someone in a less secure job—on a zero-hours contract, perhaps, or on the minimum wage, as many social care staff and other key workers are—cannot access that support, so the situation is exacerbating inequality in our borough. I could say as much again about the structural causes of mental ill health, poor employment, poverty and other things, but I am sure the Minister is as concerned as I am about the exacerbation of structural inequality.

[Margaret Greenwood]

The Royal College of Psychiatrists published a report last year on the number of patients who are receiving support out of area, sometimes hundreds of miles from home. Anecdotally, I have heard about that happening in the Wirral. Does my hon. Friend share my concern about that? May I press the Minister today for an assurance that the Government will tackle the issue as a matter of urgency?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for that intervention, which I am sure the Minister has heard and will respond to.

There are three points on which I would really appreciate a response from the Minister. Having met providers of the talking therapies service and having listened to a whole host of professionals and constituents, I have come to the conclusion that one simple thing is needed to improve our mental health service in the Wirral: we need more staff. We need more people in primary care, especially because it will help to free up our secondary and specialist care. We have to get to people early. At the moment there is a false economy: people cannot be seen when they first present themselves to their GP, so their conditions end up getting worse. We need much more community mental health care in the Wirral. I would love to hear from the Minister what the workforce plan is. How can we get people into counselling and therapeutic roles, so we can get them quickly into a place where they can tackle the problems that people face?

We also need much smarter targets. As I have said to the Minister, I have found it exasperating how hard it is to work out what is going on. I know that targets can sometimes create a perverse culture, and we do not want to impose targets that are unhelpful, but it should be a basic feature of our NHS that people who need care are able to know roughly how long they will wait, and that we as politicians are able to judge whether that is appropriate. That is what we do, as constituency MPs, when it comes to every other aspect of the NHS. I am simply asking the Minister for smarter and more visible targets which will help us to improve the quality of mental health support in the Wirral. As I said earlier, most people do not need to see a consultant, so I do not think that the traditional way of doing things in the NHS works. Can we not have a simpler, basic access-to-service mental health target that will work?

Finally, let me say something about staff targets in respect of treatments and pathways. The Wirral is a very innovative place for mental health care. We are doing great things with social prescribing, which I invite the Minister to investigate if she does not know about them already. We have developed new partnerships with a host of organisations, targeting young people in particular, and considering how we can use the voluntary and community sectors in much better ways. The Minister may be aware of “Open Door”, which has delivered some particularly innovative ways of providing peer-to-peer support. Thinking more about the different kinds of support that are available, how they can help and how they can be delivered in the most cost-efficient way possible is, in my view, an urgent job of analysis for the Department, and I would love to hear more from the Minister about the Government’s plans for putting the various different treatments and pathways in place.

Ultimately, it comes down to this simple fact about the Wirral: we are not where we should be when it comes to giving people access to support. We need more counselling, and we need more therapeutic staff. I am keen to work with the Minister to try to deliver that.

P&O Ferries Redundancies

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) for his forensic speech, and for granting me permission to say a few words about the appalling redundancies of those 800 seafarers, and the lessons that have not been learned from the experience.

My hon. Friend outlined the outrage we all felt when Peter Hebblethwaite, the CEO, made an incredibly shocking admission in Parliament that he knowingly decided to break the law. I was on the Joint Committee when he told us:

“There is absolutely no doubt that we were required to consult with the unions. We chose not to do so.”

They made a calculated decision to break the law because they reckoned, rightly, that the unions would not accept an offer that would slash workers’ wages. They considered it more expedient to absent themselves from their legal obligations and price in the cost of law-breaking, and engage agency staff on pay as low as £1.80 an hour. They did that safe in the knowledge that any compensation that they would have to hand out to former unionised workers would be offset by the benefits of paying poverty wages to their replacements. They belong in the pages of a Dickens novel, not in 21st-century Britain. The fact that Mr Hebblethwaite remains in post at P&O is staggering. He should be disqualified from being a company director.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that agency crews are working unsafe roster patterns, being at sea for up to 17 weeks? That has implications for everybody who travels on those ferries.

[Andy McDonald]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is utterly staggering that those are the terms and conditions that these major companies are prepared to inflict on workers. It does not matter whether they are from Britain, Poland or wherever in the world. That they would treat human beings in that way is beyond barbaric. Sadly, the Government have simply not learned the lessons from that scandal. The action taken has been insufficient. The Secretary of State passed the buck to the Insolvency Service, which, after months of prevarication, said it would take no further action.

In lieu of that, Ministers could have imposed an unlimited fine on the company. The Opposition made it clear that we would have supported any necessary changes to legislation, but the Tories let P&O off the hook, I am afraid. Thanks to that inaction, we are witnessing a race to the bottom, which is likely spelling the end of any residual UK maritime workforce. All the while, P&O’s parent company, DP World, announced earlier this month that it had received record profits and a £3 billion final dividend for 2022. It also gets financial help from the Government for the berth at London Gateway.

I fear it is not just companies in the maritime industry that will follow suit; there will be others. Businesses across the economy will know that they can blithely commit such crimes of corporate thuggery, and decimate workers’ rights and protections in the process. I am going to finish, because I want to give the Minister the opportunity to respond. The events of the P&O Ferries scandal serve to underscore how much we need reform of employment rights and protections in this country.