Excess Death Trends

Debate between Maria Caulfield and Gary Streeter

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Neale Hanvey]

The Minister knows as well as I do that the yellow card scheme sits at the heart of safe clinical care, but allegations are circulating that the MHRA is sitting on 50 times more yellow cards related to the covid-19 vaccine than those related to any other vaccine that have been reported to it. Will she commit to asking the MHRA to account for that and to taking urgent action if, indeed, it is sitting on the yellow card system reports?

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Minister, please leave some time for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Maria Caulfield]

Thank you, Sir Gary, for reminding me that I have two minutes left.

I absolutely take the hon. Gentleman’s point. If people have concerns, I am more than happy to raise them with organisations or to provide hon. and right hon. Members with answers. Although we have had over 8,000 claims to the vaccine damage payment scheme so far, 4,000 of them have been rejected on the grounds of causation or not meeting the severity threshold, and 159 have been awarded—156 for the AZ vaccine, two for Pfizer and one for Moderna. As well as the information that the MHRA is collecting, we are analysing the vaccine damage payment scheme to keep constantly reviewing the safety of the vaccines.

We must be careful with the language we use. We have a measles outbreak at the moment that is affecting young children, with particularly high outbreaks in London and the west midlands. Thankfully, it is mild in most cases, but children can die or have long-term side effects, and there is a danger if we are not careful with the language we use. We should absolutely scrutinise the safety of vaccines, but we need to make sure that we are not deterring parents from coming forward. We nearly eradicated measles, and we are now seeing outbreaks because of concerns about vaccinations. Although we have concerns, we also have responsibilities.

I do not have much time left, so I will make one quick point. If clinicians and experts have concerns, we should point them to the funding that we have made available for the National Institute for Health and Care Research. Some £110 million has been allocated for covid-19 vaccine research, and I encourage them to make use of that fund to develop our knowledge further.

I reassure colleagues that we absolutely acknowledge that there is a risk of excess deaths. We are working towards how we reduce that as quickly as possible, but the lockdowns have had a negative effect in many cases. We are also mindful of the safety of vaccinations, and have taken action when safety concerns have been raised.

My hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) mentioned coronial delays. That is a matter for the Ministry of Justice, but if he wants to write to me with the details of his case, I would be happy to take it up with that Department.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire for bringing forward this issue. My door is open, and I am very happy to continue the discussion with him on it.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Andrew Bridgen will have the final say.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Maria Caulfield and Gary Streeter

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

I agree and we are taking action now. Our aim is to expand the mental health workforce by an additional 27,000 healthcare professionals by 2023-24. We have already seen an increase—almost 6,900 more full-time equivalent staff. The workforce are the key to that, which is why are investing in them so heavily.

[Sir Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

Waiting times to access mental health specialists in my area are unacceptably high, and I am constantly told there is simply an inability to recruit mental health specialists. I know the Minister works very hard on this subject and she just mentioned what we are doing over the next couple of years. What practical steps can the Government take to ensure that, this year, 2022, there are more mental health specialists available to serve my constituents in Plymouth and south-west Devon?

[Maria Caulfield]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We have introduced standards to measure waiting times because the situation is very diverse across the country. NHS England is consulting on introducing five new standards so we can keep track of where the gaps are. Patients can also refer themselves to talking and psychological therapies: over 1 million people have self-referred through the NHS website without having to go and see their GP, so they can get direct access and support when they need it.

New Developments on Green-belt Land

Debate between Maria Caulfield and Gary Streeter

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Maria Caulfield]

I will not because there is little time left.

That is not fair because the housing being built on those sites is not affordable for local families. It is £400,000 or £500,000 for a starter home, and those are three-bedroom or four-bedroom homes that do not allow our older residents to downsize and stay, or our new young families to start their life in their community. This is not the right housing. We were trying to build communities, not just homes, and the system has failed us.

I have seven key asks of the Minister. Many Members have raised the brownfield first strategy, which was highlighted by the previous Prime Minister and hinted at by our current Prime Minister. We need clarity on that. In Lewes town, we had the Phoenix quarter, which would have delivered thousands of new homes. The Government gave the council £1 million to start that scheme, but not a brick has been laid on the site. Meanwhile, our green fields are being concreted over.

We need to be able to force local councils to get their local plans in place. It cannot be right that we had a plan in place that delivered the housing numbers and the housing that our communities wanted, but that the local plan is not happening because the council is squabbling over housing numbers. All that is now a hostage to fortune. It is the same in the Wealden district of my constituency, which I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne. There has never been a local plan and the district is holding out for the Government either to scrap housing numbers or to deliver a different housing strategy. Meanwhile, every greenfield site is open to challenge from developers.

The standard method was touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson). I have received letters from the previous Housing Minister saying that it is not a target, just an indication, but local councils do not feel confident enough to take matters to appeal, because when they do so the planning inspector does not uphold that view. The 2014 housing numbers, which form the standard method, as has been highlighted, are inaccurate and out of date.

We need to take the heat out of the south-east. Members across the Chamber might not agree with me, but we are talking about applications in their thousands, not their hundreds. We have GPs who have closed their lists because they cannot cope, schools that are full and roads that are congested. At the end of the day, we are just not building the housing that helps our local communities, and residents have had enough.

On the land banking issue, Oliver Letwin did a review a couple of years ago and said there was no problem—“Nothing to see here, folks.” Actually, I agree with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne. Wealden district has 8,000 units that have planning permission, but because they are mainly on brownfield sites, it is cheaper, quicker and easier for developers to challenge the council, win at appeal and build on greenfield sites instead.

We absolutely need to support our local planning authorities. In the case of the proposed Mornings Mill development, the council has refused it twice and it has gone to appeal. I am concerned not about the cost but about the principles behind that decision. What is the point of having planning authorities? We might as well give the decision to planning inspectors in the first place. We have tried to build the housing that we are required to build, we did our local plan and our neighbourhood plan, and it cannot be right that decisions by democratically elected councillors are overturned. Developers have the money and legal expertise to be able to win every single case.

Finally, I will address the issue of local plans and five-year land supplies going out of date. Does it really need to take years? They were good plans, and there are only a couple of sites that did not come to fruition. It should take months to revamp that, and we should be able to keep those local plans and the legal protections they provide for our constituencies.

The odds are stacked against our communities at the moment, and we need the Minister’s help. We want to build housing, but it must be the right type of housing for our communities, and we want to build communities and not just homes.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

I thank all of you for your co-operation this morning.