Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

2. What steps his Department is taking to help the NHS achieve net zero.

[The Minister of State, Department for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

We are committed to supporting the NHS to achieve net zero by 2040 for direct emissions, with the Government already investing £280 million through the public sector decarbonisation scheme to support that ambition.

[Robbie Moore]

The NHS plays a key role in our national attempts to achieve net zero. I was therefore delighted to see the Airedale NHS Foundation Trust submit its plans for a new Airedale Hospital in my constituency. Those plans of course deal with the severe structural risk associated with aerated concrete, but they are also designed to create Europe’s first ever carbon neutral hospital. Does my hon. Friend agree that these are extremely exciting plans and that they are another reason why we should try to achieve a new Airedale Hospital in my constituency?

[Maria Caulfield]

I thank my hon. Friend, who campaigns hard on this issue for Airedale Hospital. I absolutely understand the urgency around aerated concrete given the effect it is having, and of course I agree that the NHS has a vital role in supporting net zero. He will understand that I cannot commit to any one application. We are reviewing all applications and we aim to make a final decision later this year.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Can the Minister assure me, and the House, that the money used for the purpose of achieving a net zero NHS will have no impact on, for instance, those who are on waiting lists for cataract operations, who cannot even see the environment because they have been waiting for their operations for so many years? Net zero is very important, but what is more important is getting those operations done.

[Maria Caulfield]

I think we can do both. We have already reduced emissions in the NHS by 30%, and there are a number of ways in which we can reduce them further, from changes in procurement—the NHS will no longer purchase from suppliers that are not aligned with net zero ambitions—to the delivery of estate change.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

3. If his Department will take steps to fully implement the international code of marketing of breastmilk substitutes.

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[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

7. What recent estimate he has made of the average waiting time for emergency care.

[The Minister of State, Department for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

NHS Digital publishes information on average waiting times, and the data for May shows that the median average total time spent in A&E for all patients was three hours and six minutes.

[Matt Western]

Across the west midlands, 38 people died waiting for ambulances between March and May 2022. In the same period in 2021, two people died; before 2019, in the corresponding period, there were no deaths. A week ago Sunday, 80 people were waiting in accident and emergency in my constituency. What are the causes of these problems?

[Maria Caulfield]

The west midlands is more affected than many regions of the ambulance service. There are a number of causes, the first of which is that we are living with covid, which has not disappeared. If we look at the in-patient rates, we see that they have increased significantly; last month, they were 17.9 per 100,000 and they are now up to 24.4 per 100,000 in the west midlands, which is experiencing significantly higher rates than other parts of the country. [Interruption.] If the shadow Secretary of State wants to hear this, I can tell him that we also have a significant number of staff sicknesses from covid; this time last year, it was about 4% of staff but when I spoke to some trusts this weekend I heard that it was up to 6%. That has a knock-on effect on acute and emergency services and ambulance services being able to respond.

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

Derek Taylor came to my surgery as his late wife Lynda had tragically passed away in Moses Gate country park while they were out walking together. The ambulance was unable to access the park due to barriers impeding entry, and he will never know whether Lynda’s life could have been saved. What steps can the Minister take to ensure that all public parks are accessible to ambulances in cases of emergency?

[Maria Caulfield]

I am very sad to hear of the experience of my hon. Friend’s constituent and he is right to say that emergency services need to be able to access public areas. I am happy to talk to him about that afterwards to see what more can be done.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

“24 hours in A&E” was a reality TV programme but now it appears to be the reality for far too many people. The zero tolerance standards on 12-hour A&E waits and 30-minute ambulance handover delays are being systematically and seriously breached. So when do the Government plan to achieve those standards, which were set and delivered by the Labour Government?

[Maria Caulfield]

Let me place on record my thanks to all the ambulance staff up and down the country who have gone above and beyond in the past 24 to 48 hours to be able to respond to extreme pressures that are only really seen in winter times. Let me give a scale of the pressures they are under. Compared with the situation in May last year, there have been over 100,000 more calls to the ambulance service, and there were 2.1 million attendances at A&E departments in June, which is 3.6% higher than the figure for June 2019. So they are under incredible pressure, and I pay tribute to all of them doing their best.

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

One issue affecting waiting times in many acute hospitals is the fact that so many people could be in community hospitals instead. In my constituency, I have a bid in to replace Shotley Bridge Community Hospital, doubling the capacity to 16 beds from the current eight. However, this is not under way just yet, as a few more hoops need to be jumped through. Will the Minister or Secretary of State come on a visit with me to North West Durham to see what more we can do to speed through the replacement hospital for Shotley Bridge as quickly as possible, to help ease some of the issues in our acute hospitals?

[Maria Caulfield]

My hon. Friend is right; the delayed discharges and being able to free up those beds has a knock-on effect on A&E, which in turn has a knock-on effect on ambulances being able to unload. We have the £2 billion better care fund, which is supposed to be addressing just that, to help integrated care boards deliver and help patients get out of hospital. I have a meeting with all the integrated care boards tomorrow, so his is a timely question, but I am happy to meet him as well.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. A&E waiting times are through the roof, and we have people waiting without a bed—not even a trolley. This is removing the dignity that every patient deserves, but, sadly, it is not a one-off; this is commonplace up and down the country. It is not the Health Secretary who is on the receiving end of it, but staff, who are running from patient to patient trying to ease pain, diagnose illness and save lives—most importantly, it is of course the most vulnerable themselves. When the Minister hears reports such as this, does she not feel ashamed of the decisions her Government have made over the past 12 years?

[Maria Caulfield]

I say gently to the hon. Lady, who does amazing work on the frontline in A&E, that I have worked in A&E under the last Labour Government—I am showing my age now—and there were trolley waits and ambulance queues then as well, just as there are in Wales, where Labour is running the NHS, and in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. This is unprecedented pressure, because we are trying to live with covid and deal with a backlog of procedures and rising cases. The shadow Secretary of State was not here yesterday, so he may have missed some of the support that we are putting in. We are putting £150 million of extra funding into the ambulance service, £50 million into 111 to increase capacity, and £30 million into an auxiliary ambulance service to increase support. We are supporting the service, but we must recognise that it is facing unprecedented pressures.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

With respect, I will take no lectures from the Minister about working in A&E under a Labour Government and a Conservative Government. I have worked in the NHS under a Labour Government, when NHS waiting times hit record lows, and I have worked under a Tory Government, when NHS waiting lists hit record highs.

The Minister can use the pandemic, the heatwave, or even winter as justification. I have seen that emergencies do increase demand for services, but there is no excuse for not hitting the four-hour A&E waiting target for seven years. There is no defence for stroke and heart-attack victims waiting almost an hour for an ambulance. Undoubtedly, lives will be lost that could have been saved. Will the Minister apologise for those failings?

[Maria Caulfield]

The hon. Lady says there is no excuse for missing those waiting times, but perhaps she can explain why the Labour Government in Wales are also missing those times.

[Nicola Richards (West Bromwich East) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to improve cancer outcomes.

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[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

10. What steps his Department is taking to support innovation in the treatment and care of NHS patients.

[The Minister of State, Department for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

The NHS has made significant progress in recent years in embracing innovations, from the NHS app where patients can now access their medical records, to the expansion of electronic patient records making it easier for healthcare professionals to share information for better, safer care for patients.

[Colleen Fletcher]

I recently visited Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust’s wound healing service and saw the ground-breaking work being undertaken there, which is changing the lives of people who were thought to be living with unhealable wounds. By adopting innovative methods of healing, the service has not only healed the unhealable, giving patients back the quality of life they deserve, but reduced the average cost of healing at the trust. Will the Minister look at how this approach could be adopted more broadly to improve patient care, save money, and reduce on-costs incurred through unhealed wounds?

[Maria Caulfield]

I thank the hon. Lady, because it is the first I have heard of that and it sounds very exciting. I know how difficult it is with chronic wound management to get wounds to heal. Often these are patients with multiple co-morbidities such as diabetes that make the wounds very difficult to treat. I am keen to visit her constituency and her trust to learn more about it.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

11. What steps he is taking to help reduce waiting lists for people transferring to a care setting.

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[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

22. If he will make an estimate with Cabinet colleagues of the amount of unusable PPE procured by Government since the outbreak of covid-19.

[The Minister of State, Department for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

Around 3% of PPE that the Department purchased was unusable. We are working to dispose of this unusable stock in the most environmentally friendly way.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am grateful for that response. From the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, the Scottish Government have worked with the NHS and Scottish suppliers, as well as on a four-nation basis, to ensure that Scotland has adequate stocks of PPE. In Scotland, 88% of PPE is produced locally, and the overall cost of pandemic procurement was a third less than for the UK. The Scottish Government have committed to retaining powerful safeguards on the use of public money in healthcare through strong procurement rules. Will the UK Government follow suit and replicate this ethical model?

[Maria Caulfield]

I am very interested to hear from the hon. Lady, because according to The Herald on Sunday recently, half a billion pounds-worth of procurement in Scotland during the pandemic did not go through the usual scrutiny process. I would be very interested to hear her update on that.

[Alan Brown]

The Public Accounts Committee found that there is £4 billion-worth of unusable, substandard PPE in storage, which is due to be incinerated, which is hardly environmentally friendly. While cronies and donors were fast-tracked, this substandard PPE put frontline workers’ lives at risk by preventing them from accessing the right equipment. How much of that £4 billion will be recovered, and what other actions are being pursued against these so-called suppliers?

[Maria Caulfield]

To put this in context, I make no apologies for all the efforts that were made to secure PPE for frontline staff. We delivered more than 21.5 billion items of PPE to keep frontline staff safe during a time when we had a dangerous virus that no one knew anything about, we had no vaccine and there was a global push on the market resources. Those products that we procured that did not meet the standards for health and social care were used in other avenues. For example, we donated masks to transport operators and to schools, so that we could reopen the economy and to help them to keep safe.

[Mr Speaker]

I call SNP spokesperson, Martyn Day.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

While the Tories flogged off PPE contracts to party donors and friends of Ministers through their unlawful VIP PPE lane, the Scottish Government’s processes ensured value for money, as we have heard; their PPE costs were less than a third of the UK Government’s. Will the UK Government follow Scotland’s example in future, and refuse to engage in cronyism and corruption?

[Maria Caulfield]

I outlined in my answer to the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) that around half a billion-worth of pounds of procurement in Scotland did not go through the usual channels. All offers that were identified, regardless of route, underwent rigorous financial, commercial, legal and policy assessment, led by officials, and the final decision on whether to enter a contract sat with the appropriate accounting officer at the Department.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

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[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

Last week, I chaired a joint meeting of the all-party parliamentary groups on maternity and on baby loss, where we heard from bereaved parents, maternity staff, and the fabulous and dedicated Donna Ockenden. Given that the women’s health strategy is about to be published, can the Minister or the Secretary of State reassure everybody in the sector that it will address maternity safety and the maternity staff numbers we so badly need?

[The Minister of State, Department for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

I thank my hon. Friend for all her hard work campaigning on pregnancy and baby loss. We will publish the women’s health strategy shortly. Baby loss featured heavily in the call for evidence, and we committed to provide more than £200 million of funding to improve maternity staffing after the Ockenden review.