Health, Social Care and Security

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ms Abbott]

Government Members can mock, but Londoners are very concerned that within the overall levels of crime, there is rising violent, knife and gun crime. No, I have never heard the Metropolitan police talk so clearly about funding problems.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

It is good to see you back in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I start my four minutes by paying tribute to the amazing maiden speeches we have heard this afternoon from my hon. Friends the Members for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), for Gordon (Colin Clark) and for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), and the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams). It is great to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine).

I will focus my short time on social care and the pay cap. I will not go over the same ground as my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), because she echoed everything I wanted to say. My message to Ministers is that the consultation is much welcome, because we cannot kid ourselves. The current social care system is not working. I echo that we need to move health and social care together by commissioning them together, paying for them together and delivering them together. Until we do, we are just rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship.

My plea to Ministers is that the consultation is not just about how we fund social care, because we will be missing a trick if we just do that. We need to consider the structure of social care and the population we aim to serve. When the system was set up many, many years ago, with the NHS looking after healthcare and local authorities looking after social care, the population we were caring for was very different. We now look after a much older population who have many comorbidities who need multiple services. We are now looking after patients who are living with diseases that people used to die from; those patients often die from something else completely. It is a different population, and we need to structure the service around their needs and what works best for them.

I declare an interest in the pay cap. Having worked as a nurse from 2010 to 2015 under the pay cap, I know exactly how difficult it is and how challenging the finances are. Most nurses I know work in their hospital bank to supplement their wages. Let us look at the issue seriously. On the whole, nurses were initially very understanding of the pay freeze, but we are now seven years into this, with no end date in sight. We need to support nurses and all healthcare professionals in this situation because, unless we do, the £3.7 billion that we currently spend on agency fees will only increase as people vote with their feet. Nurses make life-and-death decisions on every shift. It cannot be right that they are paid, on average, £34,000—the Royal College of Nursing disputes that figure, saying that the real figure is £26,000 a year, as most nurses are paid, on average, in bands 5 to 6—yet hospital managers, who make important but not life-threatening decisions, are paid on average £45,000 a year and senior managers are paid £75,000 a year. We need to look at the pay structure for nurses, as well as the pay freeze.

I have a final point to make. When the Labour Government were in control they had a great opportunity in 2004 to deal with that situation under Agenda for Change, but they wasted that opportunity. They wanted to reduce the wage bill by £1.3 billion and they downgraded nurses from the General Whitley Council to the Agenda for Change banding structure, with many nurses losing pay and grades as a result. Let us not pretend that when the Labour Government were in charge they did any better.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

The Independent Police Complaints Commission will take on this hugely important case which, by definition, will be an independent investigation. I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the Policing and Crime Bill will go further by giving even more protection to whistleblowers and more powers to the IPCC to take on and lead such cases without the need for the involvement of, or a recommendation from, the police in the first place. I am happy to write to the right hon. Gentleman with more detail.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

T9. Given the closure of the Calais camps last week, will Ministers update the House on what steps are being taken to protect migrants against illegal trafficking through the use of lorries on cross-channel ferries such as the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry, which serves my constituency?

[Amber Rudd]

Since the removals from the camps started—they have largely been completed—there has already been a tremendous reduction in the number of clandestines and illegal refugees trying to get across to the UK. We hope that, working closely with the French, we will be able to continue to ensure that my hon. Friend’s constituents, as well as everyone else’s, feel better protected.

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Unless I am much mistaken, the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), who is a most assiduous attender at our proceedings, was not here at the start of these exchanges in the Chamber. [Interruption.] If she was, that is fine. I had been advised that she was not, but her word is good enough. If she says she was, that is good enough for me. Was she here at the start of the exchanges on this matter?

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

indicated assent.

[Mr Speaker]

Very good.

[Maria Caulfield]

Do Professor Jay and the panel have the resources they need to complete this inquiry, and if not, what extra help can be given to them?

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. These inquiries are not always popular because they can be costly, but the Home Office has a management technique to make sure that we always look carefully at the costs that might be involved. I assure her that we will always make sure that they are sufficiently funded to do the job well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Harrington]

As I explained to the right hon. Lady, I think the number will be increasing significantly in the future. The most significant thing is the speed this takes once a child claims asylum; it takes a short period— in many cases, it is two weeks—and I am hoping to improve on that.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

8. What steps she is taking to ensure the security of the UK border at Newhaven port.

[The Minister for Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

Border Force officers in Newhaven maintain 100% checks of arriving passengers and undertake intelligence-led activity to tackle both people-based and commodity-based threats. They collaborate effectively with the police, the National Crime Agency and their French counterparts in Dieppe to identify and disrupt attempts to smuggle migrants and commodities into the UK illegally through that port.

[Maria Caulfield]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I recently met Newhaven Port Authority to discuss the future of the Newhaven ferry, and I was told that last year was its most successful ever, with a 50% increase in passengers and freight. That is welcome, but it is putting extreme pressure on the existing Border Force officials. Will the Minister reassure me that this Government are doing everything they can to ensure that this vital travel and trade link is kept secure?

[James Brokenshire]

I congratulate the port operators on the work they have done to see the success that my hon. Friend has highlighted, and I am sure her work has given them support, too. I assure her that Border Force’s model operates not only to ensure that we have the necessary core team to tackle business-as-usual activity, but to surge additional resource, in line with intelligence, where we have identified particular threats.

Policing and Crime Bill (Second sitting)

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Jack Dromey]

I am happy not to ask mine.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Q I am the MP for Lewes in Sussex, and we used to have one of the highest rates of patients with mental health problems being in police cells, but that is turning around. I want to highlight that it can work. Katy Bourne, the police and crime commissioner, has now allocated for mental health nurses to go out with the police. Is that something that you would like to see rolled out nationwide? It has certainly transformed care for patients in mental health crisis in Sussex.

Dr Chalmers: Certainly in my experience working in Oxfordshire—the city of Oxford was one of the nine pilot projects—we saw remarkable changes. There was a substantial reduction of, I think, 85% in the use of police cells as places of safety. Alongside that, there was a willingness among the commissioners and, in particular, the providers to increase the number of hospital-based places of safety. I would not be too prescriptive with the models, because there are a range of models. There is the nurse who goes out or there is someone in the control room. I think in the West Midlands they have all-singing, all-dancing ambulance, police and mental health all going together. If you give guiding principles, areas can perhaps decide what is best for them. I would hope that that would be driven by what is best for patients, rather than what is best for the budget.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much. On behalf of the Committee, I thank both of you for bringing your great wealth of professional and personal experience to our attention. It is very helpful. If there are no further questions, which there are not, can we move on to the next witnesses? Thank you.

Examination of Witnesses

Dame Anne Owers, Professor Dame Shirley Pearce and Alex Marshall gave evidence.