Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

Nadine Dorries Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I feel privileged to be able to introduce a debate on the Government’s policy on preventing carbon monoxide poisoning.

I think you will agree, Ms Dorries, that many of the best campaigns in this House derive from constituency experience and the constituents who come to us with particular problems. About 10 years ago, a little boy, Dominic Rodgers, was found dead in bed by his mum, Stacey Rodgers. He had died from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was 10 years of age. He had been killed by a faulty boiler in a house next door—the gas had leaked across from one premises to the next. At that time, I promised that young lady that I would never give up campaigning against unnecessary deaths by carbon monoxide.

Over the years, through the all-party parliamentary gas safety group and in other ways, we have had a constant campaign to try to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries from carbon monoxide poisoning. Many people do not realise how prevalent they are. The group has just had a major inquiry, chaired by Baroness Finlay. The latest statistics found in evidence that, every year, approximately 4,000 people are diagnosed by accident and emergency departments as having been poisoned by carbon monoxide. If they were poisoned by carbon monoxide, that means that they could have died from it.

I was talking to a casualty surgeon this week, at the launch of the Baroness’s report. Simon Clarke, an accident and emergency consultant from Frimley Park hospital, said that the other week he had a young woman come in who was not dead but severely affected by carbon monoxide. The two budgerigars in the house, however, were dead. Interestingly, I read a recent report that people do not keep budgies and canaries much these days—except in this case. The old use of the canary in the mine was to prevent the miners from being trapped by rising carbon monoxide.

Carbon monoxide poisoning is a very real problem that we face in this country. Many people do not recognise it because it is a silent killer—carbon monoxide is odourless and we cannot tell when it is around. The poisoning symptoms are tricky, and people might feel that they have a heavy cold or the flu. They might present themselves to their GP or even to A and E, but be sent home to the very environment that can kill because the symptoms are not recognised. We need a fully trained work force carrying out regular inspections in rented and owned property in this country.

When I started campaigning, the real problem was student accommodation, particularly if not very good landlords had not inspected the gas appliances, which became neglected and ceased to work properly. Time and again, we read of tragedies involving students dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. The regulations were changed, and landlords now have to inspect their property annually and have the appliances in such accommodation checked every year. What a fantastic lifesaver! We now rarely hear of students or people living in rented accommodation suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Yet that regulation does not apply to ordinary people’s homes.

We are keen on warm zones and green zones and all the good things we do to insulate our homes, such as having double or triple glazing, cavity wall insulation and thicker stuff in our lofts or attics, to make our little domestic idylls warm and cheap to heat. At the same time, however, we block out all the draughts and incoming fresh air which, often, saved us from carbon monoxide poisoning in the old days. Both this Government and the previous one had programmes to improve people’s ability to keep warm at low cost, but at the same time we added to the danger because less fresh air was coming in. This week in London—they are still in the city I think—we had a wonderful couple, Ken and Kimberly Hansen, whose young daughter of 17 died of carbon monoxide poisoning two years ago when she was at a sleepover at a friend’s house. Ken and Kimberly are from Buffalo, in up-state New York, which gets very cold in winter. As our winters get colder, we will have the same problem, with people again trying to keep warm and cut down energy bills but not venting through chimneys any more, so when it gets cold they block off that bit of air that seems to cause a draught in the apartment or house and then, of course, the carbon monoxide kills.

Deaths can also be caused when people to whom we refer, probably disrespectfully, as “cowboys” are not properly licensed to attend to gas appliances in the home such as boilers and other vectors.

We are considering not only gas but solid fuel, such as wood burning stoves or barbecues. My next-door neighbour the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) will be saying something about barbecues, because he lost a constituent who used a barbecue on a camping holiday only this year. All forms of gas—propane, bottled gas, liquefied petroleum gas—kill people as well, with approximately 50 deaths a year from all sources, of 4,000 reported cases in A and E.

If people go on holiday—to France—they should take a portable gas detector. I do not have a portable one with me, but one for the home, which is still quite small. In France, there were 200 deaths last year from those little gas heaters that the French are so fond of in their bathrooms and kitchens. An early-day motion tabled by the all-party group, appropriately in July, was intended to make people aware of what was happening.

Carbon monoxide poisoning is a great danger to our constituents. What we really want is regular servicing by properly trained engineers, and that annual check in all homes if we can have it. If we cannot have that, in the short term, we really need a detector in every home—such detectors are cheap. I sometimes ask the financial and insurance community why on earth a home insurance policy would be given without a detector in the home. The detectors can cost as little as £15 to £25, and they should be given to everyone who buys a home insurance policy or gets a mortgage. Forty-five thousand people a month in the spring and summer change their house, so why does a detector not go into a house every time one changes hands? I would like dual use with a smoke alarm, but a detector alone would be a great lifesaver. We have run the campaign for 10 years and I have become very intolerant of the slow approach. We want the detectors in the short term—now.

Tomorrow, with my colleagues and on an all-party basis, I shall promote a symbolic Bill, which privately I call Dominic’s Bill after the little boy who died in my constituency, to demand a carbon monoxide detector in every home in the United Kingdom. That would save us from many deaths and many cases of poisoning through carbon monoxide. I have to tell you, Ms Dorries—I know of your interest in health—that even cutting down long-term exposure that is not fatal would be a great breakthrough, because all the research shows that any exposure to carbon monoxide influences health and ability to function and can damage brain function.

I do not want to detain the Chamber, except to say that the campaign came from constituents and from a brave young woman, Stacey Rodgers, who instead of turning in on herself and destroying herself as many of our constituents do when they have a tragic loss, started campaigning, as did that American couple. She has been campaigning for 10 years, going into schools and doing something; there is no one better than her at explaining to young people the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning.

In a sense, we have reached a day of celebration, in that the “Preventing Carbon Monoxide Poisoning” report came out on Monday, and Baroness Finlay should be given all the credit for it, although there was also the work of the people who gave evidence. The Minister had input into the report, so he must pretty much approve of the 17 recommendations and I hope that he will take them on board. I also hope that he will look at our Bill. Let us get some action. Let us cut the deaths and the exposure to carbon monoxide, and let us do something practical for the short and the long term for our constituents.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

May I check with Mr Sheerman and the Minister that it is okay for Mr McCartney to speak—you have cleared it?

[Mr Sheerman]

We agree to that—we plotted beforehand.