Social Care Reform

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. Social care is and has long been the poor relation of healthcare that successive Conservative Governments have promised to fix yet taken no action on. Here we are, eight years on from when the coalition Government announced and subsequently put into law a new model of social care funding based on Andrew Dilnot’s recommendations, but the Conservatives refused to implement it.

Instead, we had real-terms cuts in social care funding, and now we have yet another top-down reorganisation of the NHS that promises integration, but will do nothing to address the structural or funding reform needed in social care. The Budget, at the start of this month, did not even mention social care. Is it any wonder that most people feel that 1.5 million people with unmet care needs are just not a priority for the Government? Thank goodness for our 9 million unpaid carers, who daily pick up the slack and pay an enormous price, both financially and in their own physical and mental wellbeing, without any recognition. Where would we be without them?

Our care system, as many have already said, was already in peril pre pandemic and is even more so now. Adult social care has consistently been an afterthought for Ministers throughout this pandemic, with more than 25,000 lives lost in care homes to coronavirus and delays in securing PPE and testing for the care sector during the first wave. Many care homes are now teetering on the brink financially. The sector is crying out—with one voice, loud and clear—for a proper, joined-up workforce strategy. We have a staggering 112,000 vacancies, and one in six of the workforce are migrant workers, yet the vast majority of social care roles do not qualify under the new points-based immigration system, even after recent changes.

With 1.6 million social care workers earning less than the living wage, a quarter of the workforce on zero-hours contracts and limited career prospects, how on earth can we expect to provide decent, sustainable care for the most vulnerable adults in our country? The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) referred to our mums and dads. It is not only our mums and dads but our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters; a large number of those needing care are actually working-age adults—almost half.

It is time for urgent cross-party action. The letter from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to all MPs last March inviting suggestions for social care really does not cut it. Over the last year, the Liberal Democrats have twice formally requested that the Government initiate cross-party discussions. As the Health Foundation says:

“These problems are not intractable but solving them requires political will and government spending.”

Given the monumental challenge before us, when will Ministers make good on the Prime Minister’s promise to fix social care and invite others to the table to help develop those solutions?

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

The good news is that Members have been very good at sticking to time, so we actually have a little bit of extra time to play with. If the three Front Benchers all stick to 11 minutes, that will give the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) time to wind up the debate. First of all, we are off to bonny Scotland and Dr Philippa Whitford for the SNP.

Covid-19: Government’s Publication of Contracts

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and I am happy to say he is absolutely right. He has a lot of experience in government and in this space. All those contracts and all assessments of contracts, whichever route they came via, went through the eight-stage process of assessment by independent civil servants who know commerce and know procurement. I would not for a moment cast aspersions on their judgment, and Ministers did not determine which contracts were or were not awarded in that context.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

Given the number of fast-track VIP covid contracts that have resulted in unusable protective equipment, will the Minister commit to recovering public money from the companies that did not meet their contractual obligations? Does he agree that those hundreds of millions of pounds might have been better spent on a decent pay rise for the NHS workforce?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about contracts that either failed to deliver or where PPE, for example, did not meet the required standards. I can reassure her that we are undertaking a stocktake—an audit—of exactly that, and we are already pursuing a number of cases where, if PPE was either not to the required standard or was not delivered, we will recoup the money from that.

NHS Staff Pay

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The NHS workforce is the exception to the pay freeze for the wider public sector, recognising the huge amount of work done and the lengths they have gone to in looking after us all during covid. He is absolutely right that we will wait for the response from the independent pay review bodies before we announce the pay settlement.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

The Test and Trace programme, which the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies considers has had only a marginal impact on covid-19 transmission, will have had an almost 150% increase on its original £15 billion price tag following the small print buried in the Chancellor’s Budget last week. Is this Government’s claim that the 1% pay offer to NHS staff is all they can afford actually serious?

[Helen Whately]

The first thing I would say to the hon. Member is that the Test and Trace programme is doing a truly phenomenal job. The other thing I would say is that in the pandemic what we absolutely need is an effective test and trace programme, so I make no apologies for the fact that we are making sure it is funded.

Covid-19 Update

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

That is an incredibly important question, and I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has done in getting that message out. In Harrow we are vaccinating in mosques, temples, and GP surgeries. A critical part of the roll-out is to ensure that the message gets to everybody that this vaccine is safe and it works. It is no good just my saying that. We want to, and we are, engaging with leaders of all communities—faith leaders, and people who have strong voices in their community. Critically, we must ensure that people feel as much as possible that the vaccination effort is accessible to them. It is on us to ensure that the vaccines are easy to get hold of, and that people get answers to any reasonable questions they may have. I look forward to working further with my hon. Friend on delivering that across Harrow and the whole of the country.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

I am sure the Secretary of State will agree that every hour is vital in tracking down new positive cases, particularly new cases of new variants. Will he explain why the eye-watering £22 billion that has been spent on the test and trace system does not track each and every test that is sent out, based on a unique code for every test? Surely that would help close the net on positive tests much quicker than the public calls for help that we have seen over the past few days, when that vital information is missing when each test is returned.

[Matt Hancock]

I am not sure you were in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, when I addressed that precise question in my statement. Not having the contact details happens in about 0.1% of tests. In this case, we think the test was done as part of a home test kit, when it is incumbent on the individual to set out those details. Home test kits can be sent to someone’s home, in which case of course we have the details of where it was sent. Alternatively, in response to surges, tests can be taken round by local authority teams and dropped off. We therefore need to find out exactly where this test was dropped off. What the hon. Lady omitted to say is that the team has done a good job of narrowing down where that may be to 379 households. The call-out at the weekend was answered with a number of leads, and we are working hard to make sure we find the individual concerned.

Covid-19

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

I have just been prompted by my husband to tell the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) that it is not just mums, but dads who are delighted to have schools reopening—my husband has been home-schooling our daughter for many weeks.

Our children and young people have too often been forgotten about during this pandemic. They have been cast aside and, until today, put low on the priority list, so I very much welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment today to reopen schools on 8 March to those who are not currently allowed to attend. Clearly, children’s education is critically important, but so is their mental health and wellbeing. We cannot underestimate the toll the pandemic has taken on our children and young people. They have had face-to-face learning curtailed, time playing and socialising with friends banned, sporting and other recreational activities banned, and exams on and then off, all the while with ongoing uncertainty about what assessment will entail.

The Prince’s Trust says that more than half of young people are anxious. We know that one in six children aged five to 15 now suffers from a probable mental health condition. One in four has self-harmed over the past year and the pressure on child and adolescent mental health services beds is being described by health officials as being at crisis point. So while the Government’s £1 billion catch-up fund to help tackle the impact of lost teaching time is very welcome, any academic catch-up will be undermined by poor mental health.

Although schools have flexibility in spending the catch-up premium, Government guidance heavily emphasises academic catch-up. Early evidence suggests that while some schools are using a small proportion of the funding on additional wellbeing and mental health support, it is overwhelmingly being used to support academic catch-up. That is why I am calling on the Government today to invest in a ring-fenced resilience fund, as recommended by YoungMinds. This £20 per pupil fund will ensure the value of the academic catch-up fund is fully realised and prevent vulnerable young people from being left behind. The additional funds would allow schools to develop bespoke mental health packages for their pupils, such as counselling, digital support, staff wellbeing, peer support programmes and access to extracurricular activities in a covid-safe way. No two schools are the same. Each face their own challenges and know their children best, so the resilience fund must be flexible to allow schools to provide support that meets their own needs.

Last week, the Children’s Commissioner said in her final speech:

“I want to see the Prime Minister getting passionate about making sure that we don’t define children by what’s happened during this year, but we define ourselves by what we offer to them.”

I urge the Minister today, if the Government are really serious about putting children first, they should offer our children and young people a holistic package of support that is not just focused on their academic needs, but puts their wellbeing at its heart.

Future of Health and Care

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. There are measures in this White Paper that precisely pick up the work of the prevention Green Paper that my hon. Friend did so much to shape when he was in the Department with me. In fact, many of the proposals in the White Paper are built from conversations that he and I shared. I want to put on the record my gratitude for the work that he did in shaping this agenda, because ultimately a population health agenda is an agenda about the prevention of ill health. Of course we must—and we will—treat those who become ill, but it is far better for everybody to support people to take a shared responsibility, including their own personal responsibility to stay healthy in the first place. The population health agenda that will be at the heart of the integrated care systems is ultimately a preventive agenda, and one that I am very glad to hear that he supports so wholeheartedly.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

On this day eight years ago, the Government announced and then legislated for a new funding model for social care, which the Tories then scrapped two years later. Eight years on, we have yet another NHS reform announcement, but only yet another promise to reform social care. With 25,000 care home deaths during the pandemic, what will it take for the Prime Minister to make good on his promise to fix social care, and when will the Secretary of State start the long-promised cross-party talks to find a solution?

[Matt Hancock]

On the contrary—this White Paper covers health and care. It covers the integration of the NHS and social care at a local level. Of course there is further work on funding, as we have committed to in our manifesto, but the integration of those services, which has been so important during the pandemic, is one of the critical pieces of the forthcoming health and care Bill.

Covid-19 Update

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

On the first point—the point of clarity—my hon. Friend has stated the position exactly correctly. On the second, we want of course to be able to exit from these arrangements into a system of safe international travel as soon as practicable and as soon as is safe, and Professor Van-Tam last night set out some of the details that we need to see in the effectiveness of the current vaccines on the variants of concern in order to have that assurance. If that is not forthcoming, we will need to vaccinate with a further booster jab in the autumn, on which we are working with the vaccine industry.

These are the uncertainties within which we are operating. Hence, for now, my judgment is that the package that we have announced today is the right one.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

Many of us have been urging the Government for about 12 months now to take stronger action at our borders, so the measures announced today are very welcome, but Ministers have been consistently slow on this issue. With the ONS estimating today that, tragically, covid deaths in the UK have now surpassed 125,000, how many of those deaths does the Secretary of State believe could have been prevented by imposing much stricter public health measures at our borders since last March?

[Matt Hancock]

We have had significant measures at the border throughout. The new, stronger measures are necessary because of the arrival around the world of new variants of concern at the same time as the vaccine roll-out is progressing successfully. We do not want the very successful vaccine roll-out to be undermined, so it is reasonable to take a precautionary approach to international travel now, while we assess the effectiveness of the vaccines. We are clear that they have some effectiveness; the question is to what degree. That is being tested right now.

Covid-19 Vaccine Update

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question. I certainly join her in thanking the teams that have been working and delivering in North Lincolnshire. These are extraordinary people doing really incredible work, and I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart.

We try as hard as we can in the team to make sure we give as much notice as possible to local teams about when they are getting their delivery. This week, yesterday—Wednesday—everyone would have had notice of their deliveries for next week. We want to give as much notice as possible. Our limiting factor remains vaccine supply. It is becoming more stable, and we have greater visibility of vaccines all the way through to March, hence our confidence about meeting our targets. I can reassure my hon. Friend that her local teams will get the vaccines they need to meet the mid-February target of vaccinating the top four cohorts and protecting them before that date.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

It was an immense privilege this morning to visit the Stoop in Twickenham, home to Harlequins rugby, which opens today as a local mass vaccination hub. The NHS, Quins and the council have done an incredible job to be in a position to start vaccinating 500 people a day.

The Minister has spoken quite a lot about care home staff and some of the challenges in driving uptake among those staff, but we know that domiciliary care staff are also lagging behind in the vaccination rates. One industry survey has suggested that only 32% have been vaccinated so far. Could I press the Minister again: what are the latest vaccination rates for both care home staff and home care staff, what are the reasons for this lag and how can we best work together to address this problem?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question. It is great to hear about the Harlequins joining the fight, as they always do, when it comes to the United Kingdom actually getting people protected and vaccinated.

Care home and domiciliary staff are both on our priority list, as the hon. Lady knows. We are working with local government, and David Pearson, who is of course a champion of the social care sector, has been working with local government to identify them. The best way to identify domiciliary staff is through local government, because a lot of people will be with agencies and, as the hon. Lady quite rightly pointed out, are hard to reach. They are in our target: they are part of the top four categories, with those who are caring for the elderly in residential care homes, and we will meet our target of offering them a vaccine by mid-February.

Covid-19 Update

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, of course.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

With the Prince’s Trust reporting a record high of more than half of young people often feeling anxious, and some A&Es reporting daily seeing children coming in after self-harming or overdosing, it is clear that the pandemic is taking an enormous toll on children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing due to school closures, family pressures, social isolation, and bereavement. Will the Secretary of State commit today, in children’s mental health week, urgently to form a cross-departmental plan for tackling the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of children and young people?

[Matt Hancock]

We have put a significant amount of extra funding into supporting children’s mental health alongside adult mental health. We know that one of the consequences of the lockdown, which is absolutely necessary, is that it puts significant pressure on mental health services. We have seen the increased burden on those services, and it is very important that people get the support they need.

Covid Security at UK Borders

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

I welcome the recent announcements by the Home Secretary to implement additional public health measures at our borders, as recommended to the Government by the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, which is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), and of which I am a member. However, the Government’s announcement last week was, as we have seen time and again throughout this pandemic, too little, too late. It did not go far enough. The APPG recommends that quarantining at regulated locations should apply to arrivals from all countries, and that testing should be done on arrival at the airport and subsequently. Such measures have proved successful for countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand—just compare their case and death rates with those of the UK.

On arrival at the airport, the myriad private options for testing are confusing and the rules are perverse. Just this weekend, I received an email from a Whitton resident who had chosen not to participate in the test to release scheme, because of the prohibitive costs of a private test, and to self-isolate at home for 10 days instead. She was subsequently offered an NHS test as part of a research programme, yet was told that an NHS test delivering a negative result would still require the full 10-day isolation but that exactly the same test provided privately, at great expense, on day five would result in immediate release if negative. I would be grateful if the Minister would comment on whether that policy is based on scientific or medical advice.

Although the NHS should be praised for making excellent progress with the vaccination programme roll-out, without much firmer controls at our borders it is like having the heating on with the windows open. Today’s announcement is testament to that, and the costs and sacrifices of lockdown are immense, so let us not squander those gains. We will be able to emerge safely from lockdown only with a combination of tougher controls at our borders, a functioning test, trace and isolate system, and vaccination.

Having a constituency so close to Heathrow, I must make a few remarks on support for the aviation sector, which needs to come with clear environmental conditions. Many of my constituents work in the aviation and travel sectors, and have lost their jobs or been at risk of losing their jobs under draconian fire and rehire schemes, which ought to be outlawed, but which the Government have refused to take action on. The airport and ground operations scheme provides limited welcome relief but does not go far enough and was finally implemented only last week. It is clear that the aviation sector will probably never fully recover, and even then it will take a long time to partially recover. A sector-specific package is needed, with strong green environmental strings attached, alongside a comprehensive programme of retraining and reskilling, and investment in green transport and infrastructure.