National Security and Investment Bill (Fifth sitting)

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 1st December 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Nadhim Zahawi)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, and to speak on this important Bill. I am grateful for the congratulations—or perhaps commiserations!—of the shadow Minister and all colleagues on my new role as the vaccines delivery Minister. I am obviously focused on the NSI Bill now, but I am also conscious of my responsibility for delivery, and I had a very good conversation with the devolved Administrations last night.

I hope that the Committee agrees that the Second Reading debate and the evidence sessions last week demonstrated the importance both of this legislation and of getting it right. I again place on record my thanks to the Opposition parties for the constructive way in which they have approached the Bill thus far, and I look forward to discussing the amendments that they have tabled to this part of the Bill.

Amendment 3 requires the Secretary of State to assess a multi-agency review or recommendation of the Intelligence and Security Committee before issuing a call-in notice. I remind hon. Members that it is vital for the Government to have the necessary powers fully to scrutinise acquisitions of control over entities and assets that may pose national security risks. To enable this, clause 1 gives the Secretary of State power to issue a call-in notice when he or she reasonably suspects that a trigger event has taken place, or is in progress or contemplation, and that that has given rise to, or may give rise to, a national security risk. It is entirely reasonable, as Committee Members have said, to want the Secretary of State to make full use of expertise across Government and Parliament to run the most effective and proportionate regime that he or she can. The amendment aims to recognise that.

To explain why the amendment would not achieve that noble aim, it would be helpful briefly to summarise the overall screening process. First, businesses and investors can notify the Secretary of State of trigger events of potential national security concern. In certain parts of some sectors, notification by the acquirer will be mandatory. Following a notification, the Secretary of State will have a maximum of 30 working days to decide whether to call in a trigger event to scrutinise it for national security concerns. For non-notified acquisitions, the Secretary of State may call in a completed trigger event within six months of becoming aware of it, both on a case-by-case basis and when developing his overall approach. The Secretary of State intends to draw on a wide variety of expertise from across, and potentially beyond, Government as is appropriate.

If the Secretary of State calls in a trigger event, there will be a detailed review. At the end of the review, the Secretary of State may impose any remedies that he reasonably considers necessary and proportionate to address any national security risk that has been identified. The Bill gives the Secretary of State 30 working days to conduct an assessment, but this may be extended for a further 45 working days if a legal test is met, and then for a further period or periods with the agreement of the acquirer. The purpose of the initial assessment of whether a trigger event should be called in is not to conduct a detailed review of the entire case, or to determine whether the trigger event in question gives rise, or would give rise, to a risk to national security. That comes later. It is simply a preliminary assessment of whether the trigger event warrants a full assessment. Prohibiting the Secretary of State from calling in a trigger event until a multi-agency review has taken place, or the Intelligence and Security Committee has provided a recommendation, could severely upset the process – as we heard eloquently from my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the Minister for giving way and again congratulate him on his new role. I also thank him for his constructive tone. I sense a contradiction in the point he is making. He is saying that the Business Secretary will call on a wide range of advice and expertise, but that if he is required to call on a wide range of advice and expertise, it will upset the process.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

What I am trying to get at is the point made so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble—the bottleneck issue. It is unlikely that adding this review, or requirement for a recommendation at the stage where the Secretary of State is assessing whether to issue a call-in notice, would be feasible within the 30-day window following the notification.

I remind the Committee that the Government’s impact assessment estimates that there will be at least 1,000 notifications every year. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble said, under this amendment, every single one would need a multi-agency review or an Intelligence and Security Committee recommendation, which would be a truly massive and, in my view, unfeasible undertaking.

[Chi Onwurah]

The review would be required before issuing a call-in notice. The impact assessment mentioned about 1,830 notifications, but only 90 call-in notices. It is not accurate to say that the amendment would require about 1,800 reviews. It is only for those that would lead to a call-in notice, which is a much lower number.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We can debate the number, but the issue is one of delay and bottlenecks. It could mean that the Secretary of State was timed out of calling in potentially harmful acquisitions and of imposing any national security remedies. Alternatively, if the initial assessment period following a notification was extended beyond 30 working days, which is not currently possible under the Bill, that could reduce certainty for businesses, which I know the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Aberavon were also concerned about. Any delay to remedies addressing national security risks would be a problem. However, I assure hon. Members that the Secretary of State will eagerly seek expertise and advice from a wide range of sources, and we will work together to safeguard our national security. Having a slick and efficient call-in process is vital to that.

Amendment 4 seeks to require the Secretary of State to consult the Intelligence and Security Committee prior to publishing a statement on the exercise of the call-in power, known as the statement of policy intent. Clause 4 requires the Secretary of State to carry out such a consultation on a draft of the statement as he thinks appropriate, and to take into account the response to any such consultation during the drafting process. That process could include engagement with interested parties across the House, and I am delighted to learn that such esteemed colleagues as members of the ISC might wish to discuss the statement in detail. Parliament has been provided with the first draft of the statement, and we would welcome its view on its content.

I draw attention to the fact that clause 4 requires the Secretary of State to lay the statement before Parliament, as my brilliant hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine rightly pointed out. If either House resolves not to approve the statement within 40 sitting days, the Secretary of State must withdraw it. That provides Parliament, including members of the ISC, with plenty of opportunity to influence and scrutinise the contents of the statement, which I believe is the aim of the amendment and which I am therefore not able to accept.

Amendment 5 would require the Secretary of State to notify the Intelligence and Security Committee prior to making regulations under clause 6 and to enable the Committee to respond with recommendations. I welcome the contributions made by many members of the ISC on Second Reading, and I have since written to the Committee Chair, who unfortunately was unable to attend, to follow up on a number of the recommendations made by his colleagues.

Clause 6 defines the circumstances covered by mandatory notification. The Bill calls them “notifiable acquisitions” on the basis that they must be notified and cleared by the Secretary of State before they can take place.

Members are aware that any modern investment screening regime must provide sufficient flexibility for the Government to examine a broad range of circumstances, bearing in mind the increasingly novel way in which acquisitions are being constructed and hostile actors are pursuing their ends. The regime needs to be able to respond and adapt quickly. Regulations made under the clause will be subject to parliamentary approval through the draft affirmative procedure, giving Members ample opportunity to ensure that mandatory notification and clearance regimes work effectively.

The draft affirmative procedure means that regulations may not be made unless a draft has been laid before Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House. I am pleased to advise esteemed members of the ISC that in developing the regulations the Secretary of State will take the greatest care, and will consult as widely as is judged appropriate, while ensuring he is able to act as quickly as needed. I see no need for a formal consultation mechanism. Indeed, such a mechanism between the Committee and the Secretary of State would be unprecedented.

For the reasons I have set out, I am not able to accept the amendments, and I hope that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central will not press them.

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Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

It is vital that the Government have the powers necessary fully to scrutinise acquisitions and control over entities and assets that might pose national security risks. The Bill refers to such acquisitions as trigger events.

The clause therefore gives the Secretary of State the power to issue a call-in notice when he or she reasonably suspects that such a trigger event has taken place or is in progress or contemplation and it has given rise to, or may give rise to, a national security risk.

The parameters of the call-in powers will give the Secretary of State sufficient flexibility to examine potentially sensitive acquisitions connected to the United Kingdom while ensuring they may be used only for national security reasons. The Committee will note that in the acquisition of or control over businesses, unlike in the Enterprise Act, there are no minimum thresholds for market share or turnover.

Why is that necessary? It is necessary because acquisitions of small businesses at the start of their ascendancy can harm our national security, particularly if they involve the kind of cutting edge, world-leading technology for which this country is known. Although there is a broad range of scenarios in which the power may be used, of course, most trigger events will not be called in, as they will not raise national security concerns.

Examples of those that may be more likely to be called in include a person acquiring control over an entity that operates part of our critical national infrastructure; a person acquiring the right to use sensitive, cutting-edge intellectual property; and boardroom changes that mean that a person acquires material influence over the policy of a key Government supplier. Clauses 5 to 12 and schedule 1 set that out in detail.

Call-in notices may be issued in relation to trigger events that are in contemplation or in progress, as well as those that have already taken place. That will ensure that potential national security risks can be examined at any stage of the process rather than, for example, waiting until a transaction has taken place or is nearing completion, when it is more difficult for the parties involved to make any changes that may be required. It is envisaged that, in most circumstances, call-in notices will be issued after the Secretary of State has received a notification about a trigger event from an involved party, but it is also important that the Secretary of State retains the ability to call in trigger events where no such notification has been received. The limits for issuing a call-in notice are set out in clause 2.

The Government are committed to ensuring that businesses have as much clarity as possible when it comes to the use of this power. We heard in the evidence session about the need for real clarity for businesses, so the Bill is proportionate. The Secretary of State may not, therefore, exercise the power until he publishes a statement for the purposes of clause 3, setting out how he expects to use the power. The Secretary of State must have regard to the statement before giving a call-in notice. A draft of the statement was published when the Bill was introduced. I do not intend to anticipate our discussions in respect of the statement when we move on to clauses 3 and 4, but I am confident that it will provide reassurance that the Secretary of State intends to exercise the call-in powers in a measured and considered way.

Hon. Members will appreciate, though, that it would not be responsible, given that national security may be at stake, for the Secretary of State to be restricted to exercising the power only in the circumstances envisaged in the statement. The purpose of the statement is, after all, to set out how the Secretary of State expects to exercise the call-in power, not to give binding assurances. That is why clause 1 specifies that nothing in the statement limits the power of the Secretary of State to give a call-in notice, though I reiterate that I expect the vast majority of call-in notices to be issued in accordance with the expectations set out in the statement.

I hope that hon. Members will agree that clause 1, alongside clauses 2, 3 and 4, enables the Government to carry out a vital assessment of relevant trigger events in a measured and effective way.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the Minister for his remarks on clause 1 stand part and for setting out the Bill’s aims and ambitions. We largely agree with those aims and ambitions, and in that spirit I will give further clarity on the Opposition’s overall position. We stand in support of the need for the Bill, and indeed we sought it years ago. We support the need for the new powers to protect our national security, as set out by the Minister, and the need for those new powers in the context of changing technological, commercial and geopolitical realities. Our approach to the Bill is therefore one of constructive challenge and is guided by three principles, the first being the security of our citizens. We do not want narrow legal definitions. Our proposed amendment to clause 1 would have ensured broad input into the considerations, such that our national security was not threatened as a result of insufficient expert advice or by the pure, ministerial market ideology of recent record. Our group of amendments sought to bring legal powers, multi-agency expertise and proper decision making to bear in putting British security first.

There has already been significant discussion of the right national security powers, both on Second Reading and in the Committee evidence sessions. An essential part of that discussion has been focused on the merits of giving the Government powers to protect our national security by using a public interest test. There are understandable concerns that too broad a test might result in a drop in investment for the UK’s start-ups and businesses, and these concerns note an economic challenge in expanding our national security powers. At the same time, however, there is widespread agreement that national security and economic security are not entirely separate. They are deeply linked. A national security expert told us that a narrow focus on direct technologies of defence, for example, was mistaken, and that we should look at the defence of technologies that seem economically strategic today and might become more strategic in future.

Our concern is that we have a Government who are years behind our allies in even contemplating the new national security investment regime. We have seen only 12 national security screenings in 18 years, and not a single instance of the Government acting decisively to block a takeover and guard our national security. In the context of what other countries are doing and how rapidly technologies progress from being economically strategic to becoming security threats, we must not just consider a narrow national security test, but pursue a road to sovereign technological capability and much more ambitious and robust routes to protecting national security and strategic interests. The Opposition will therefore put the security of our citizens first. We will not shy away from regaining national sovereign capability, and we assure our citizens that Britain will have the technology and the capability to protect its national security.

In scrutinising the Bill and this clause, we will champion clarity and support for our prized SMEs and innovative start-ups—the engine of British jobs and British prosperity. We have already heard from market participants that the Government’s belated rush with this Bill has created huge uncertainty and concern over the ability of BEIS to operate the new investment screening regime that the Minister set out. The Government’s impact assessment notes that 80% of transactions in the scope of mandatory notification will be by SMEs. We heard from our expert witnesses that the impact assessment fails to account for the costs faced by the acquired companies, and for the overall impact on funding for our start-ups. The Opposition will not turn a blind eye to those costs for our small and medium-sized enterprises. At each step, the Opposition will plug gaps left by the Government in coherent policy making, to champion British creativity and innovation. It is the least our small and medium-sized enterprises deserve.

Finally, we will stand for effective scrutiny of the Government of the day. That is why we tabled the amendment, which has unfortunately not been accepted by the Committee. However, we will find proportionate, robust and democratically legitimate means of seeking accountable action to protect our national security. Our amendments will stand up for British security, and for competent and coherent decision making. Clearly, we regret the Committee’s decision on our amendment, but we will not oppose the clause standing part of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2

Further provision about call-in notices

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I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment, and certainly the spirit in which it is intended. Although we want to make it clear that it is important that, as often as possible, the trigger event and the associated call-in are clear, resolved and put to bed thereafter, there are circumstances where that is not possible, and the Minister should have the ability to rectify that problem and act in the best interests of national security and of fair play for the companies involved.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I hope that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test and other hon. Members will permit me, in responding to the hon. Gentleman’s points, to begin by considering stand part and by laying out the Government’s broad rationale before turning to the substance of the amendment.

The clause contains further provisions about the use of the call-in power. It is vital that the Secretary of State is able to call in and scrutinise trigger events that have taken place. However, it is right that clear limits are placed on the call-in power to ensure that it is used in a proportionate manner—the whole point here is proportionality. The clause therefore prohibits a trigger event from being called in more than once. It also provides that the Secretary of State may issue a call-in notice only up to five years after a trigger event has taken place and no longer than six months after becoming aware of the trigger event.

The time limit of five years strikes the right balance between ensuring the Secretary of State has enough time to spot completed trigger events that may pose a risk to national security. The hon. Gentleman cited evidence from Dr Lenihan on 3Leaf, which speaks more to the screening operation than the amendment. Of course, the Secretary of State also has to make sure that the risks to national security are balanced against avoiding undue uncertainty for the parties involved, which we all want to make sure we look after, and we have heard from colleagues about the challenges that small businesses face in building or rebuilding their business

For trigger events that take place before commencement but after the introduction of the Bill, the five-year time limit starts at commencement rather than from when the trigger event takes place. If the Secretary of State becomes aware of that trigger event before commencement, the six-month time limit also starts at commencement. The ability to call in trigger events that take place before the commencement of the call-in power but after the introduction of the Bill will help to safeguard against hostile actors rushing through sensitive acquisitions to avoid the new regime, now that we have set out our main areas of interest.

The five-year time limit does not apply if the Secretary of State has been given false or misleading information, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) reminded us, or in relation to notifiable acquisitions that have been completed without prior approval.

In all this, we will seek to provide as much transparency and predictability as possible. The Secretary of State may not, therefore, exercise the power until under, clause 3, a statement is published setting out how.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Could the Minister say a little more about what the problem is with not having the Minister’s or the Secretary of State’s hands tied? Our amendment simply says that if information comes to light that creates cause for concern, the Secretary of State may, if he or she so wishes, look into it again. It is not an obligation; it simply makes sure that the option is there.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I was going to address that at the end of my remarks, but I will touch on it briefly and hopefully reiterate it at the end. It is about certainty and proportionality. Everything we are doing by legislating in this way has an impact on businesses and the certainty of attracting investment and growing, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, reminded us in her opening speech.

As I was saying, a draft of the statement was published alongside the Bill. Following commencement, if parties involved in trigger events are concerned about them being called in, they will be able to remove any doubt about this by notifying the Secretary of State of their event. They will then be entitled to receive a quick and binding decision on whether the Secretary of State will call in the event.

I will turn briefly to amendment 10, which seeks to extend the Secretary of State’s power to issue a call-in notice in respect of a trigger event that has previously been called in when no new material information becomes available within five years of the trigger event. After a trigger event is called in, the Secretary of State has—

Healthcare in Oxfordshire

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of healthcare in Oxfordshire.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. May I, at the outset, thank colleagues from both sides of the House for attending and the Minister for replying? I have deliberately left the wording of the motion quite open, because I want all colleagues to have the chance to set on the record any of their thoughts about the future of healthcare in Oxfordshire.

This is a multifaceted, complex topic. I will of course concentrate on west Oxfordshire and hope I will be forgiven for doing so. We all have particular concerns, and this topic perhaps matters to our constituents more than any other. I would like to broadly separate the debate into the following sections. I will review what was done within the first phase of the sustainability and transformation plan process, how it was handled, the split of the consultation into two phases, how the public were involved in the matter and the outcomes. I will then look forward to phase 2, the proposed changes that have been included and how the clinical commissioning group can work better with the public and all stakeholders throughout the process. I will explore ways in which we can move forward and give Members the chance to raise specific concerns from their constituencies. I will review the past, but for the sake of learning for the future.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Horton General Hospital is unique in that it serves not only Oxfordshire but Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and even Gloucestershire. I was very concerned about the lack of engagement by Oxfordshire CCG with relevant stakeholders in Warwickshire in phase 1 of its consultation. There was very little communication between the Oxfordshire and South Warwickshire CCGs, despite the fact that there is obviously a knock-on effect on Warwick Hospital. Why was there not greater communication? Colleagues have raised that repeatedly, but with few outcomes.

[Robert Courts]

That intervention precisely illustrates the point I will make in the course of this small speech about a lack of public consultation. That is most marked in the areas we will be talking about—in my case, Witney in west Oxfordshire, and in the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), Banbury and the Horton. The point is that the issues surrounding the Horton go far further than Banbury; they relate to Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and the north of west Oxfordshire. The lack of engagement is perhaps the main theme of my speech, so I am grateful for that intervention.

I will start by talking about Deer Park surgery. I was elected just under a year ago today, when I faced an unfolding local press crisis. There was a lot of press attention and, understandably, an extremely distressed patient group centred around the closure of its much-loved practice, Deer Park medical centre. To give a short history, the practice was run by Virgin Care. The contract ended and was retendered, and Oxfordshire CCG health bosses received a bid from Virgin that, in their view, did not meet the requirements they were looking for, so they decided to close this small but very well-performing and popular surgery that provided an outstanding and much-needed service for Witney and its immediate surroundings.

The real kicker was that there was no real or meaningful consultation with the people of Witney before that took place. There was little discussion with the district or county councils as to how they may be able move things forward or help or to discuss the building that was coming down the line, nor with patient groups, who might have been able to suggest a way forward. The patients and elected representatives were simply told that it was happening. I met the CCG, Virgin and the patient groups many times, including here in Parliament, but the CCG was resolute: it had decided that the practice would close. Its view was that the lower level of service offered in the tender was not sufficient and that it could not justify spending that money on the surgery, even though the significant growth, to the tune of thousands of houses that we know Witney will have in the years to come, means that the need for the practice is not only present now but will remain so in the future.

The decision to close the practice led to legal action by a patient, funded by legal aid, to keep it open. After sustained campaigning by myself, the patient group and local councillors, the Oxfordshire joint health overview and scrutiny committee voted that making that change without consulting was a substantial change in service, which—I hope I am not going beyond my remit in saying this—it clearly was.

The matter was referred to the Secretary of State for Health, who referred it to the Independent Reconfiguration Panel. That was the first time a primary care decision had been referred to that level—the highest possible level. Ultimately, the IRP ruled that the CCG did not have to reopen the practice, but it did provide specific strictures about the way the decision had been handled and about consultation. It specified that the CCG needed to improve the way that it engaged and further to consider Witney’s healthcare needs.

I hope everybody will forgive me if I quote a short chunk of the IRP report that is pertinent to my point:

“The CCG should immediately commission a time limited project to develop a comprehensive plan for primary care and related services in Witney and its surrounds. At the heart of this must be the engagement of the public and patients in assessing current and future health needs, understanding what the options are for meeting their needs and co-producing the solutions. This work should seek to produce a strategic vision for future primary care provision in line with national and regional aims and should not preclude the possibility of providing services from the Deer Park Medical Centre in the future.”

It is quite clear from that report that the CCG requires a separate project to assess the primary healthcare needs of Witney. Its immediate surrounding areas are included, but that wider reading should not include the entirety of west Oxfordshire, which would enable the CCG to—as it seems to wish—simply wrap this piece of work into the wider STP work it is carrying out in any event.

The IRP is clear that the CCG is required to produce a specific, specially focused piece of work on Witney and its primary care needs. That is what the people of Witney should have. That should include a consideration of the impact upon projected housing growth in and around the town and a roadmap for primary care, covering what will be provided, by whom and at what place. Above all, the people of Witney should be presented with a range of options and scenarios, because if there is only one, there is no consultation. The CCG’s approach is a little bit like Henry Ford saying to the customer, “You can have whatever colour car you like, provided it’s a black one.”

I opened with that story and took some time over it because it is a microcosm of the problems that west Oxfordshire is facing with its CCG, and I suspect—we will hear from them in due course—that other Members in Oxfordshire feel the same. Oxfordshire has been facing a systemic issue with its CCG. The public have not been fully consulted and engaged in a dialogue about the overall picture of the future of healthcare in Oxfordshire any more than they were over the future of Deer Park medical centre.

The CCG is embarking on a consultation regarding primary care in Oxfordshire over the next month, and I am sure all colleagues will join me in engaging with that process, but there are lessons to be learned from Deer Park. I focus on it today because I want those lessons to be learned, and I am keen that we look at how we can avoid this happening again, rather than simply look back and dwell on the mistakes of the past.

Let me be quite clear: I am not a doctor. I do not presume to tell doctors, healthcare professionals or those who commission them how to do their job. I am one of those who feel that, by and large, the profession should be left in peace to do what they do best and to practise their job. However, I expect the people of Witney to be consulted at all times. I expect their voice to be heard and listened to, and for their needs to be met.

The impression should not be gained that I am against any change. I accept that healthcare professionals must allocate their resources in the most efficient way to ensure the best treatment for patients. I might not disagree with changes being made per se, if there was a clinical need, they worked well with other healthcare provision in the area and they were in the interests of the people of Witney and west Oxfordshire, including when we consider the challenges of the future, particularly in respect of housing. I might not be against what is suggested, but if there is to be change, the public and local stakeholders must be fully informed and involved in decision making at the earliest opportunity. The local community must not be surprised by changes being sprung on them. They must be aware of how any proposed changes will affect them and why those changes, in the CCG’s view, need to be made. If the changes are indeed for the better, the sensible, reasonable people of Witney and west Oxfordshire will support them, provided that they are properly explained.

I shall move on to the far wider issue of the STP process across west Oxfordshire. As I said, I do not necessarily disagree with decisions that are made from a clinical perspective. I might or might not agree with decisions, although let me be clear that I do disagree with some of the decisions that have been made. However, what always concerns me in every case is the way in which they are handled.

I have made my response to phase 1 of the STP publicly available—it is on my website—and it clearly outlines my concerns. I will not go through it all in detail now, but I will go through the headlines. The first is “Process”. I do not feel that the STP should ever have been split into two phases, and I made that abundantly clear to the CCG at the time. It is a simple headline point. How can we assess Oxfordshire’s healthcare needs when we hive off the decisions for the Horton, which have an impact on Chipping Norton, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, and then say that there are some other decisions that are linked inextricably to the first section that we will look at at some future point—a date that keeps going further back into next year? The whole point of the STP process is to look at healthcare needs in the round, not piecemeal, with penny-packet decisions made earlier, making that process impossible. As I have said, the CCG has a duty to the public to provide multiple viable solutions to enable true choice and real consultation.

I shall give an example of how local communities have not been involved. The projected ambulance times from the Horton or Chipping Norton to the John Radcliffe Hospital are simply improbable. Indeed, the journey times are wildly optimistic. There is an over-reliance on Google Maps. Anyone who lives locally in Chipping Norton or Banbury can tell us how long it actually takes to get from either of those towns to the John Radcliffe in traffic, because they do that journey all the time. There is a serious lack of indication of any involvement with South Central Ambulance Service, and they are the people who will be taking heavily pregnant mothers in the late stages of labour from north Oxfordshire or the north of west Oxfordshire to the John Radcliffe. The decision permanently to downgrade maternity services at the Horton, which was made by the CCG board in August, has been unanimously referred by the health overview and scrutiny committee to the Secretary of State, alongside the judicial review appeal that we know about. I go no further at this stage than to say that that indicates a seriously flawed decision-making process.

I make it clear at this stage that for those who live in the north of my constituency, around Chipping Norton, the downgrade of the Horton is greeted with utter dismay. It is important to understand why. Chipping Norton is rural. It is one of the highest places in Oxfordshire; it is one of the few places that still gets snow in winter—people do not get it anywhere else, but they do in Chipping Norton. A journey to Oxford takes, with traffic, the best part of an hour, or more if someone is in one of the outlying villages. I made it clear in the baby loss debate last week that I fear the consequences of an absence of proper obstetric services in the north of Oxfordshire, even more so if the Horton midwife-led unit does not have a standby ambulance. Those proposals are simply not safe, and the deeply moving baby loss debate reminded us last week, if we ever needed reminding, of the consequences of getting this wrong.

For the same reasons, the services at Chipping Norton hospital itself must be safeguarded. Chipping Norton is seeing significant development and needs its own NHS services, which are based in a new building alongside a superb GP medical centre. Perhaps the best example of the mess caused by the split consultation is the confusing reference to the possible closure of the Chipping Norton MLU in phase 1, which purports to deal only with the Horton. How on earth can we say, “We’ll have as a possible solution in phase 1 the possible closure of Chipping Norton; oh, but we won’t make any decisions about Chipping Norton until we come to phase 2”—which will be at some stage in the future—when that clearly impacts on the Horton? How can we decide what is right at the Horton unless we know what there will be at Chipping Norton? It is the same point again. We cannot decide on the future of Oxfordshire’s services unless we look at them as a whole. They ought not to be hived off piecemeal.

Let us look ahead to phase 2. I hope that it is clear from the points I have made that the consultation around phase 1 was inadequate. I stress again that I am not a doctor. If the decisions are in the interest of public safety, I of course appreciate their importance.

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[John Howell]

I thank the Minister for that point; I was not suggesting that it was an inevitability. However, at this stage let me extend an invitation to him to visit the hospital so he can see how it works and how it has integrated social care with the medical activities there. It is based around a RACU—a rapid access care unit—which is similar to the EMU—emergency multidisciplinary unit—in Abingdon that is being proposed elsewhere. As I said, it turns the hospital into a diagnostics hospital, similar to a hospital developed in Welwyn Garden City that I went to see.

I saw the difficulty for the CCG with regard to its consultation when I went to a SELF—a South East Locality Forum—meeting. People from Henley were sitting around the table with big beaming smiles on their faces saying how wonderful the hospital was, and a member of the CCG had to stop them and say, “Well, it is a pity you didn’t say that when we were developing the hospital. Right to the end of the consultation you were attacking us on this and on taking the beds out and putting them in a care home at the side of the hospital. That is working very well and now you say that it is absolutely wonderful.” The fact is that, apart from some minor snags with the new hospital, it is a fantastic new investment by the Department of Health. It shows the way a community hospital should be developed not just in Oxfordshire but across the country. I repeat my invitation to the Minister to come and visit.

The great thing about the hospital was not the consultation initiated by the CCG but the support that I got from the Royal College of Physicians, which came out very strongly in favour of an ambulatory healthcare model and very favourably in support of the hospital. That is an interesting point, which goes back to my comments in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Witney about the lack of consultation experience on the part of the CCG. That organisation is willing to learn, and I hope that it will. I also hope that we, as MPs who meet it from time to time, will be able to keep up our pressure on it to deliver the sort of services that we feel our constituents want.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

On the point about learning, the Oxfordshire clinical commissioning group has only one district council from Warwickshire—Stratford-on-Avon District Council—on its board. In phase 1 of the consultation, which began in January, it only met the council in March; the council’s overview and scrutiny committee had requested a much earlier meeting. Should that not be part of the learning process?

[John Howell]

I fully agree that it should be. As I said, I am not here to defend how the CCG does its consultation. If I had the chance, I would make many changes to the consultation, and including others on the list of people who will be consulted as part of the decision-making process would be an important part of that.

I think I have probably said enough both to support my hon. Friend the Member for Witney and to make the point that it is possible to get through even a bad consultation by a CCG and get a fantastic hospital—ours is doing a brilliant job for all the constituents of south Oxfordshire, not just for one town.

Contaminated Blood

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

I am very grateful to you, Mr Speaker. May I join colleagues in paying tribute to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) and the work she has done in leading the all-party group, as well to my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who has been a joint chairman of that group?

I have been working with the victims in my constituency since 2011—for the past six years—and I consider myself a new boy when it comes to this particular tragedy and scandal. My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) has spent many hours working tirelessly on behalf of those of his constituents who are victims. I pay tribute to him; I know he wanted to take part in the debate but could not because of Government business.

I thank the Prime Minister for listening to the victims of this extraordinary tragedy and to colleagues in the House, and announcing the inquiry. I acknowledge the Minister’s saying to colleagues that the Government are in listening mode on the inquiry’s terms of reference and that they will put the victims at its heart. That is what the victims would expect, and they will be grateful for it.

Many victims—this is certainly true of my constituent Clare Walton—initially did not want an inquiry; they wanted a settlement instead. I pay tribute to Andy Burnham for his work on this issue, as well as to the journalists the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North cited. The new evidence that was uncovered led Clare Walton to change her view, and she is now very much supportive of and looking forward to engaging with the inquiry.

It is important that the inquiry looks into the subsequent treatment of victims and holds the relevant bodies to account. On Clare Walton’s behalf, I have been attempting to communicate with the Macfarlane Trust, which was one of the five charities set up to help the victims. I say “help,” but I have to tell the Minister that in my experience the Macfarlane Trust has done anything but help my constituent. It has behaved in an utterly despicable way. It refuses to meet my constituent or me—I have requested meetings for the past six years, but they always come back with a reason why they cannot meet.

The trustees of the Macfarlane Trust have bullied my constituent and “fed her with scraps”—those are her words—while at the same time having a charge over her property for all this time and making a profit on it. The trust refuses to discuss the future of the charge on her property. The scheme administrator will soon be changed to the NHS business advisory service, so she wants to know what will happen when that change takes place. I hope the Government will take some of these issues away and respond more fully at the appropriate time. The Macfarlane Trust says that it cannot give any more information until it has clarity from the Department of Health about transitional arrangements; Clare really wants that clarity. I hope the Minister will intimate, as his predecessor did, that the Macfarlane Trust is not much longer for this world. I have struggled even to speak to the trust on the phone.

Another of my constituents, Adrian Melson, is particularly concerned about the discretionary payments on which many victims rely. I hope that as the Minister begins to look at the evidence before him he will look closely at making sure that, if discretionary payments have become something much more permanent, they are recognised as such and not treated as discretionary. Under the previous Prime Minister, whom I commend for coming out and wanting to resolve this issue, we promised our constituents that no victim would suffer financially under any compensation structure we put in place.

I shall take Mr Speaker’s eloquent words on board and end there, other than to say that this is not a party political issue: successive Governments have failed the victims. I hope we can now come together and have this inquiry, but we must make sure that there is a clear timeline and a deadline.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on her leadership on this issue. On the hon. Gentleman’s point about coming together, it is important for this issue to be considered at a UK level, because it predates devolution. It is important that the Minister—I thought he was going to speak second in the debate—works with the devolved Administrations and that any future compensation is provided at a UK level so that there are no second-class citizens in the United Kingdom.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I think the victims who looked at the Scottish settlement have taken that point on board—that is certainly the case with Adrian Melson—and I am sure that the Government listened to the hon. Gentleman’s view. Let us come together and provide a clear timeline for when the victims can get not only justice but compensation.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

Yes; the hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. One of the unintended consequences of devolution is that we are ending up with such a mishmash of schemes, and that is of concern for the people affected.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

One of my constituents, Mr M, makes exactly that point: it is unfair that the Scottish settlement is so different from the settlement for him in Stratford-on-Avon. Most importantly, one of my constituents, who is in the Public Gallery, wants to remind the House that there are fewer than 300 primary beneficiaries left, and it is vital that they are not forgotten.

[Diana Johnson]

Absolutely. That is a very important point. I will come on to the primary beneficiaries in a while, but I will now make some progress.

My first concern was about the different schemes that are available. The second issue, which is also important, is that we know the five existing trusts will be amalgamated into a single body to administer the scheme at some point in 2017. I am deeply troubled by the fact that the administration of the new body looks likely to be done by a profit-making private company. I know that Atos and Capita have attended meetings with Department of Health officials about the new contract. Formal tender submissions will be due soon, with a decision on the contractor set to be made in 2017. No Health Minister has had the courtesy to tell the all-party group of these plans, nor were the beneficiaries asked for their views about this in the survey done in January. Even the Department’s response to the survey, which was published in July, made absolutely no mention of such a prospect. Alongside hon. Members on both sides of the House, I cannot support proposals to contract out provision to Atos or Capita.

Let me remind the House how many in this community were infected in the first place. Many contracted HIV and hepatitis C from American blood products supplied by profit-making private companies. The United States, unlike the UK, has always allowed the commercial purchase of blood products, and those products were often donated by people who desperately needed money and were willing to be less than honest about their chances of infection. This is the reason why so many in the affected community harbour such distrust of private companies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Since being elected to this House, every Friday at surgery I have talked to one or two constituents on this subject. In the few moments that I have, I want to share with the House what it has taught me about the impact of this extraordinary tragedy. I have lived with them through all the frustrations and all the false hope that we will finally reach a settlement.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for the incredible work she has done in leading all of us on a cross-party basis to get the message across in respect of all those people—all those human beings, and all that human suffering. I also congratulate the Minister on her role and pay tribute to her predecessor, who worked hard, working with many of us, to try to get to a full and final settlement. I hope the Prime Minister and the Treasury are listening carefully to this debate, and that it is not beyond us to work together now to get what we have been promising our constituents—those people who, through no crime of their own, have been infected with HIV or hep C—that they will get a settlement and, as the previous Prime Minister said, nobody will be worse off.

This is a question about fairness, as the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) rightly emphasised. I do not think it is fair that my constituents should feel that people infected in Scotland get a better deal than they do in Stratford-on-Avon.

The difficulty for Mr M—as I will refer to him, because it is right that he maintains his privacy—is that for a very long time there has been something called the discretionary payment, which in reality is not discretionary in any way. It is something that he absolutely relies upon to make sure that at the end of the week and the month he can balance the books; he can live just well enough to be able to feel that he has regained his dignity and his freedom. The difficulty for the Minister is that there is this sum of money, but I urge the Government to look again at this matter, because it could lead to a legal challenge if people feel that they are being unfairly treated vis-à-vis Scottish settlements or other parts of our country. Some of my constituents are considering that course of action.

I want to move on to the case of Ms W, whose anonymity I am protecting because she deserves that protection. Her issue has involved the Macfarlane Trust and she is not alone in feeling that the trust is not fit for purpose. I have attempted to deal with the trust on her behalf; every step of the way it has blocked my attempts to get her case across. My message to those on the Front Bench is that it would be an outrage if the trust were to continue to deal with my constituents in any way, because it is simply not fit for purpose.

I will end my speech by mentioning Mr D, who is infected with hepatitis C, to remind colleagues of the urgency of this matter. We must not find ourselves back here again in a year’s time still looking for a settlement. Just this morning I received a call from Mr D’s wife, who works in our NHS, to tell me that he had been admitted to hospital following a severe deterioration in his liver due to the advanced hepatitis C. He might not be around by the time we come to a settlement, so I urge the Minister to remind her Government that this is about fairness and about speed of settlement.

Brain Tumours

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Monday 18th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

That £35 million includes spending from the voluntary sector. The report states that it is simply not good enough for the Government to leave decisions on such spending solely to the voluntary sector.

We welcome the decision of Cancer Research UK and Children with Cancer UK to prioritise spending on brain tumour research as a cancer of unmet need, but we are calling on the Government to identify the gaps in funding, to take action to remedy them and most important, to make it clear that they see this research as a priority. We heard evidence that creating a positive research environment with an emphasis on increasing funding would not only keep our scientists in this country, but attract scientists from elsewhere in the world. Britain has the potential to be a world leader in this sort of research but at the moment we are not.

The Government said in their reply to the petition that decisions on funding are based on a number of factors, including the size and quality of the workforce. That ignores the fact that, as the hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) said, this is a Catch-22 situation. At the moment, young trained oncologists are having to change specialties or leave this country to pursue their research. Without an increase in funding, we simply cannot attract the good PhD students and postdoctoral researchers we need to make progress and to build up the cohort of young scientists who will go on to research this disease and may make the important discoveries of the future.

There are other barriers to research. One is the difficulty of getting enough tissue to work on. Only about 30% of patients are asked whether they will donate tissue, yet polls show that up to 90% would do so if asked. We do not have enough specialist support nurses and, according to the evidence, we do not even have enough people who can transfer tissue from hospitals to laboratories.

The other problem that researchers come across—the Government really could act in this area—is that they must make applications to many local biobanks to get enough material to work on. Often, those biobanks have different procedures, application forms and so on. We urge the Government, while keeping safeguards in place, to try to tackle the problem of biobanking. Unless researchers have access to tissue, they cannot do the fundamental research that we need. The University of Southampton has started to use tissue left over from diagnosis but, again, the system is grossly underfunded. In the end, I am afraid the issue comes back to money if we want to make progress.

We also highlight other issues, such as the need for access to non-therapeutic drugs, which can improve brain surgery outcomes, and the need for access to off-patent drugs, which can be used for new indications. The Government said in response to the Off-patent Drugs Bill that they did not need a Bill to allow that. We need to make progress in that area urgently, but I will not spend too much time on it now, because we are pressed for time.

I do, however, want to say this to the Government. I said earlier that brain tumours may not be as rare as is perceived, and the reasons for that are simple. The numbers are going up. The system of recording has been changed. The experts who spoke to us said that they do not yet know the reasons for that. Secondary tumours are not recorded, yet they still have to be treated, and benign tumours are not recorded, but they can still kill. It is that, and the huge burden of the disease, that we think the Minister ought to take into account, or at least ought to get his Department to take into account, to deal with this issue. The five-year survival rate for brain tumours is only 19.8%. When it comes to cancer as a whole, 50% survive for 10 years or more. That is the difference, because of lack of funding and lack of research.

I hope that the Minister will look at the personal stories in our report. They are there for a reason. Let me remind people of some of them: Saira Ahmed, dead at the age of 6, Abbie Walker, also dead at 6, Lucy Goulding, who died at 16, and Stephen Realf, whose sister started the petition. An RAF officer who was apparently in excellent health, he was diagnosed at 19 and dead at 26. There are many more, whom I do not have time to name. There are those who died and those who survived—remarkable people such as Hannah Jones, a young woman who gave evidence to us and now devotes her time to promoting the HeadSmart campaign. And there are the families of those who died. In all my time in Parliament, I have never met such an amazing group of people. They had undergone the most appalling tragedies, but did not want to point the finger of blame. They simply wanted to use their experience to make life better for others. They deserve that we listen to what they say.

I say gently to the Minister that it is not often in ministerial life that one gets a chance to make a real difference. We know that Ministers get bogged down in the minutiae of every day and that things come down the chain to them, but this is a chance to make a difference. It is a chance to leave a mark that will be there long after he leaves ministerial office—not that I am hoping he will leave soon—long after most of us have left Parliament, in fact.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Jones]

I am going to wind up my speech, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.

This is a real chance to save lives, so I say to the Minister: read the report and champion its recommendations in government. That way we can have world-class scientists in this country and save the lives of many people, including young people, who will have the chance to make an enormous contribution to this country. It is as simple as that. This cancer has been neglected for far too long. That now has to change. [Applause.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. As a member of the Petitions Committee, it is a pleasure to be called to speak in this debate. I add my thanks to those who put together the petition, particularly Maria Lester and the Realf family—their love and passion for their son and brother came across in all our evidence sessions—and to all the others who came along and gave evidence. Hopefully this will be their report.

I declare that I am the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on rare, genetic and undiagnosed conditions. Given the vast number of factors that cause brain tumours, I join colleagues in using this opportunity to call on the Government to do more to redistribute research funding more fairly among different cancer groups. There are limited resources available.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I commend the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing this important debate. The UK model of partnership between Government, industry, universities, the NHS and charities is the right leadership model. The Government have led the way with a taskforce on anti-microbial resistance; maybe the way forward here is a taskforce on how to deal with early diagnosis and extra funding, as well as bids from charities that would attract that funding.

[Ben Howlett]

I agree that the Government have been leading the way. No doubt we will hear from the Minister about some of the work that they have been doing to create such partnership models. I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has been delivering in that area.

Limited resources are available to fund research. A vast number of conditions fight desperately for every resource available, and researchers in every field work hard to get one step closer to a cure. It is important that we take a moment to thank all our constituents who are working tirelessly to advance medicine, find cures and improve the life chances of all of us.

Contaminated Blood

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Tuesday 12th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

It is a privilege and an honour to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). I commend her for her leadership in bringing Parliament together on this very important subject.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak in this important debate on such a sombre and saddening topic. I speak as the representative of a number of individuals in my constituency whose lives and the lives of those they love have been grievously, unfairly and irreversibly affected by the terrible injustice we address this afternoon.

The Prime Minister, on behalf of the Government, has apologised for the infection of individuals with contaminated blood—an apology that is now more than a year old, for a scandal that is more than 20 years old. When he rightly addressed the matter last year, my right hon. Friend said that it was

“difficult to imagine the feelings of unfairness”—[Official Report, 25 March 2015; Vol. 594, c. 1423.]

that those who have been affected must feel. My constituents and others around the country were let down, when they or their family members were at their most vulnerable, by the health service that was supposed to keep them safe. It truly is difficult to imagine.

I am sorry to say that the feelings of unfairness have not been lessened by the proposals in this consultation; if anything, they have been made worse. Lives have been changed and lives have been taken. So much has been lost, but the Government must now focus on lessening and mitigating this loss as much as can ever be possible.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

On mitigating the loss, I am here to represent several constituents, but one in particular—Andy Gunn. He is extremely concerned by the Health Secretary’s suggestion that the funding might come from the NHS budget. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that would be highly inappropriate?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I have had similar representations from my constituents, and I hope that those on the Treasury Bench take on board the comments of Andy Gunn and of others in my constituency.

The vastness of the loss we are addressing today is such that even the ideal solution cannot do much to address it, but what has been proposed does so much less. The proposals contained in the consultation are far from what the victims of this injustice expected or were led to believe they would receive. I know that many of my colleagues have similar stories to tell. I have had constituents visit my surgeries who have always been so incredibly strong about what has happened to them and hopeful for the potential of a good settlement from the Government, but have now been left in tears. They feel let down and fear that these proposals will make life even harder for them.

Those are people whose lives have turned out to be radically different from what they had planned, through absolutely no fault of their own. They struggle to get insurance or pensions—things we take for granted in this place—and have had their careers curtailed. Even worse, they have been unable to have children, or have seen loved ones die tragically soon. These people should be helped and need to be provided with a full and final settlement that allows them to move on, without being worse off.

There remains much misunderstanding about the medical conditions of the victims and the treatments available. The improvements in care for those with HIV/AIDS have been a blessing for many. However, the disease remains incurable, and haemophiliacs and those with other conditions such as hepatitis C cannot take the medication that could help them. We must also properly consider those infected by more than one disease. Those with both HIV and HCV have a threefold greater risk of progression to cirrhosis or decompensated liver disease than those infected only with HCV. We should not misunderstand, underestimate or underplay the dangers of these diseases.

My constituents, and the constituents of so many of us here today, have suffered a grave injustice. It is an injustice that they never expected to suffer, would never have been able to prepare for, and for which the blame rests entirely elsewhere. They or their loved ones have experienced terrible illness and their lives have been changed or ended. “Unfairness” does not seem strong enough to describe it, but that word is the best we can do.

The Prime Minister was right to apologise, but this consultation does not go far enough. When my constituents only have to look north of the border to see a better deal on the table, with talk about public monuments to those sadly lost, and are then faced with an option here that could leave them in an even worse position, anger and resentment are more than understandable.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a danger that the consultation will undo the good of the apology? The impact assessment states that the intention of the policy is to safeguard the interests of those who are chronically infected and receive an annual payment, but that annual payment is no longer index-linked, and people have made their assumptions on that basis. My constituent, Norah Tracey, has had to take early retirement because she has hepatitis C, and she based her projections on those financial assumptions. If it is no longer index linked, we are making a mockery of what the impact assessment says and we are undoing the sincerity of the apology.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I have heard similar representations from my constituents. Indeed, the all-party group found that the representations were very similar across the board. I sincerely hope that those on the Government Front Bench are listening to these interventions today.

The Prime Minister said last year:

“As a wealthy and successful country we should be helping these people more. We will help them more”—[Official Report, 11 March 2015; Vol. 594, C. 289.]

I agree with him and support those words entirely. I hope that the Minister and the Department of Health will ensure that the settlement for the victims will meet the intentions of what the Prime Minister said last year.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Victims of Contaminated Blood: Support

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

I slightly regret the right hon. Gentleman’s tone, and I am totally mystified by his point about the meeting. A meeting was organised with the all-party group and his colleague the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North. I think the meeting might have been moved once, at the request of the all-party group, but the details and arrangements for the meeting with me were circulated by that group, and six right. hon. and hon. Members attended the meeting. I am sorry if there was some confusion, but I do not think it was on the part of me or my officials. A number of colleagues came to the meeting. We had a very useful discussion and I have sought to update others since.

The right hon. Gentleman is right that we need to move towards a conclusion, but it is also a matter of record that he was, at times, a member of the last Labour Government, who, for 13 years, did not move forward on this matter.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

The Minister will be aware of my frustration in dealing, on behalf of a constituent, with the Macfarlane Trust, which she knows, from the weight of evidence in the consultation, is not fit for purpose. Will she confirm that any full and final settlement will not be administered by that trust?

[Jane Ellison]

I am well aware of the shortcomings of some of the schemes identified by colleagues and those affected by this tragedy, and I have obviously read the details from the all-party group and other Members’ communications. I have confirmed before that reducing the number of schemes will be part of the consultation on reforming the schemes, so my hon. Friend’s point is well made. For the record, though, I should add that I had a meeting recently with the staff of the schemes—the people who man the phones and deal on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis with sufferers—and I am clear that they, as distinct from the people who head up the trusts, are working hard to offer a service to people in difficult circumstances.

Contaminated Blood

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

My right hon. Friend has been a doughty campaigner on this issue, and I have been grateful to her for her support. Let me put some flesh on what she has just said and on those figures. I will start with Hayden. His wife wrote to a friend of mine and said:

“I would dearly like to see an end to the campaigning and put this issue to bed. There needs to be an apology, there needs to be a big overhaul of the various Trusts… definitely not to make you feel as though you are going ‘cap in hand’ to them. That’s disgraceful. I want to go to Hayden’s grave and say once and for all ‘it’s sorted.’ Then I will know he is resting in peace.”

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

On the point about the support mechanism, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is unacceptable that the very organisations that were set up to support individuals, such as the MacFarlane Trust, do not treat beneficiaries equitably? My constituent who went to the trust and questioned the response times was branded a troublemaker and her applications for grants were either delayed or, in some cases, frustrated completely. That is the reality on the ground. Will he say something about some of those organisations?

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend is right that many beneficiaries have expressed deep concern about the workings of the trust. The all-party group report that came out yesterday will be addressed by other colleagues. On the MacFarlane Trust in particular he should know that I share his concerns. I do not believe that that trust is salvageable or saveable, and I will speak about that later.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The most damaging thing for patient care would be a pay award, which the hon. Gentleman sounds like his is supporting, that would mean the potential loss of 6,000 nursing jobs from our front line. That would be incredibly bad for patients and incredibly bad for nurses. All nurses are getting a minimum 1% rise. That is the right thing to do. That is supported by the shadow Chancellor but not, apparently, by the shadow Health Secretary.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

20. In a report published by the King’s Fund last month, South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust was highlighted as a leading example of compassionate care for the frail elderly. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the trust’s staff on the move away from tick-box targets, and visit the trust to see this new emergency care model in practice?

[Mr Hunt]

I much enjoyed a recent dinner where I had the chance to meet a consultant from South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust. One of the discussions I remember having with him was how inside the NHS the definition of success for a hospital was in the past too narrowly focused on targets and financial balance, and not enough on patient safety, compassionate care and clinical outcomes. He, and many other people in the NHS, welcome the change that this Government have made in the past year to change that balance.

Hepatitis C (Haemophiliacs)

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

I am grateful for this opportunity, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) on securing this important debate. I know that many colleagues feel passionately about the issue. Indeed, one can feel little else when one realises what a long and painful shadow has been cast on the haemophiliac community. They are people who put their faith in a system that has let them down.

I welcome the points raised by other right hon. and hon. Members on the anomalies in financial support for those who contracted hepatitis C. Indeed, those issues have affected one of my own constituents, Mr Dennis, who was infected with hepatitis C in the 1980s and has since been diagnosed with polyarthritis and, most recently, with liver cancer. He has raised with me on a number of occasions the lack of additional support for those with tertiary conditions such as polyarthritis, as well as his difficulty in obtaining disability benefits, for which previous assessments have been based on his mobility rather than his ability to care for himself and to undertake everyday tasks. Although polyarthritis affects only some 4% of chronic hepatitis C sufferers, it has had a huge impact on Mr Dennis’s quality of life.

There is another group that warrants significant attention, however: those who contracted HIV through their NHS treatment. When we talk about financial support mechanisms, we should learn from their experience of the Macfarlane Trust, which sadly, is not a tale of best practice. One person said that the trust

“neither cares nor understands what we have been, or are, going through”.

Another said that the trust is:

“No longer fit for purpose”.

A third person said that the trust is:

“An embarrassment to the government that funds it”.

Those are just a selection of the damning descriptions of the Macfarlane Trust that I have received from both beneficiaries and, significantly, trustees. I know that Health Ministers have tried hard to regain the trust of the haemophilia community, but the sad fact is that their efforts are constantly undermined by the failings of the Macfarlane Trust.

We cannot turn the clock back and undo the damage done, nor can we pretend that we can wholly make up for the years of distress. However, we can, and must, ensure that the support provided by the Government is not administered in a way that serves as a further source of anger, upset and frustration. Yet I hear time and time again that that is the daily frustrating experience of many beneficiaries. The experience is that policies are created ad hoc with little continuity or clarity, that intrusive and personal details are demanded in response to the simplest of requests and that the attitude towards beneficiaries is one of arrogance. Beneficiaries feel at best confused, and at worst bullied, by the very organisation created to support them.

In preparing for this debate, I have spoken to two previous trustees, who both suggested that the management of the trust was completely out of tune with the needs of beneficiaries. They described an organisation that was completely unwilling to make the case for further funding from the Department of Health and that dismissed complaints without due care and attention. Although I recognise that the trust is independent of the Department, the Minister must recognise the harm that is being done and, in turn, how that reflects on her Government.

I know many of those concerns were raised with the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), during the recent AGM of the all-party group on haemophilia and contaminated blood, and I therefore hope that the Minister will continue with the internal review that I understand was subsequently initiated, and that she will agree to meet with representatives from across the community. The community do not want to be perceived as victims forced to go “cap in hand” to beg for support.

Clare Walton, another of my constituents, says:

“I want to be empowered, and have autonomy over my own life, rather than continue with this victim culture through charity.”

The sobering reality is that the Government cannot afford to wait another 20 years. The people who need support are dying in ever increasing numbers.

As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) rightly commented, the Prime Minister has an outstanding record of seeking to address historical wrongs. Personally, I cannot think of a better time to address

“the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS.”

[Jim Dobbin (in the Chair)]

I thank all hon. Members who have taken part for their time discipline in this extremely important debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jane Ellison]

May I continue, as I fear I will not get through the remaining points? I will be happy to speak to the right hon. Gentleman straight after the debate.

We have made available to Lord Penrose any additional documents that he has felt are necessary to his inquiry. While it is continuing, I shall not comment on the inquiry or evidence given to it, but I shall consider whether the Department will make a response. Given that Lord Penrose is considering pre-devolution matters, it is hard to imagine that there will not be implications to which I and the Department shall need to respond. We do not know the exact shape of things, but the inquiry is on my radar, and we shall be considering it.

The hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) made a point about specialist hepatitis C nurses. That is the responsibility of NHS England, and I undertake to write to that body to draw its attention to his comments.

I think that I have now covered most of the specific points that I can answer today; unfortunately, I cannot respond to some of the detailed points. There was a challenge about the number of Skipton Fund stage 1 beneficiaries; there are difficulties in identifying the numbers, but we will examine that issue and see whether we can respond in more detail to the challenge given by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North.

Inevitably the debate has been, for me, an invaluable opportunity more to hear some of the arguments than to give specific answers on the important points that colleagues have raised so well on their constituents’ behalf. I am happy to have the meetings that have been suggested.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Jane Ellison]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I need to conclude.

I have heard the big challenge that I have been set this morning. It is one that many of my distinguished predecessors have been set, and I do not underestimate its nature or scale. There is, and has been for a long time, great unhappiness about this topic; many people have wrestled with it. I assure right hon. and hon. Members that I will do my best to rise to the challenge.