Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review

Debate between Nadine Dorries and Fiona Bruce

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

We will be considering all the recommendations and returning to the House with a full report as soon as possible.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

As vice-chair of the all-party group on valproate and other anti-epileptic drugs in pregnancy, I thank the Minister for her tone today. Does she agree that it is shocking that the Committee on Safety of Medicines as long ago as 1973—this is the predecessor of the MHRA—was clearly aware of the risks in pregnancy of the use of anticonvulsants? It said that they are liable to produce abnormalities. Over that period of time, 20,000 children could have been affected. There are families, such as those of Janet Williams and Emma Murphy, who have campaigned tirelessly—I pay tribute to them too on this issue—who now have to care for those children, potentially for their entire lives. Much more support is needed for those children from local authorities and health authorities. It has not been given until now as a result of the lack of recognition of the link between, and risks of, anticonvulsants in pregnancy and abnormalities. Will the Minister, when she meets us, focus on ensuring that that issue is taken forward so that more support can be provided?

[Ms Dorries]

I absolutely will. My hon. Friend highlights how long it takes for women’s voices to be heard—since 1973—and I will do as she asks.

Children with Life-limiting Conditions

Debate between Nadine Dorries and Fiona Bruce

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It is humbling to follow the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). I want to put on record my respect for her campaigning on this and other issues, and for my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach).

I commend the work of the Donna Louise Children’s Hospice in Stoke-on-Trent, which provides children’s and young people’s hospice services across Staffordshire and south-east Cheshire. It has written to me this week—given that time is short, I will pass the Minister a copy of the letter after the debate. It talks about the quality of palliative care as patchy:

“The way in which NHS CCGs and local authorities plan, fund and monitor children’s palliative care in hospitals, children’s hospices and the community represents”—

as we have heard—

“a postcode lottery. Staffordshire has no coherent plan and this is reflected in the poor financial support the Hospice receives from local commissioners. Donna Louise receives 8.9% of its income from the NHS”.

The hospice calls on the Government and NHS England

“to consider appropriate mechanisms to bridge the children’s palliative care accountability gap.”

I want to spend most of my speech talking about an issue that I know is uncomfortable for some people to hear about. For that reason, I am delighted that you are in the Chair, Ms Dorries, because you have spoken about this issue on a number of occasions. Many families face a difficult decision when a child in the womb is diagnosed with a life-limiting or life-threatening condition. This is not a small issue: in 2017 there were a total of 3,314 ground E abortions on the grounds that the child was diagnosed with a substantial risk that, if born, they would suffer from physical or mental abnormalities, such as being seriously handicapped. Parents have to make really agonising decisions.

A few years ago, I held an inquiry in this place on the difficult situations that parents face when their child is diagnosed in this way and they have to consider an abortion. We took evidence from dozens of witnesses. Some had come under huge pressure to have an abortion, and the support they were given to consider keeping their baby was very limited. Many told us that they were steered towards an abortion, and they felt like the medical profession was irritated by them. Many felt like they were given no information on the support they might get; often the best information they got was through contacting charities, which could put them in touch with parents who were bringing up children—often very successfully. Those children brought great joy to their families, but the medical professionals did not give the families the information they needed to make a decision that was right for them. Some told us that all they received was a leaflet telling them how to have an abortion. The mothers who had kept their children, even if it was for a very short time, felt like they could grieve and care for their children in a way they had not been able to do otherwise. One mother had to have an abortion with her first baby and then decided she would keep the second, even though she knew the condition was life-limiting. She felt like there was a much better outcome for her and her family’s going through the grieving process.

The inquiry made a series of recommendations—I will pass a copy to the Minister because time is very short. I hope she will consider them and respond to me. Many people generally find this issue a very difficult one to address, as do—I am sorry to say—Ministers. Many of the recommendations in that report, which was published a few years ago, are still valid today. We recommended that guidelines for the medical profession should include training for obstetricians, foetal medicine specialists and midwives on the practical realities of the lives of children who have such conditions, so that they can better advise parents and give them better information when they make this difficult decision. One parent summarised what many others reported:

“Guidelines and standards need to be set in place”

so that all hospitals can meet a certain standard. Can the Minister assure me that she will look at our report and perhaps produce guidance to ensure that all mothers feel like they can make a genuinely informed decision when they are carrying a baby with a life-limiting condition? Does she agree that we ought to provide much better information, so that parents in such circumstances can make an informed choice?

[Ms Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

I am afraid that I will now have to put a formal time limit of four minutes on Back-Bench speeches.

Cross-departmental Strategy on Social Justice

Debate between Nadine Dorries and Fiona Bruce

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Ms Ansell, I am more concerned about the length of your intervention than your use of the word “you”.

[Fiona Bruce]

My hon. Friend puts that point very succinctly, and better than I have in my prepared speech. She speaks not only from long experience but from the heart. Her commitment to family concerns has become well recognised since she entered the House, and I thank her for that.

There are examples of good practice in the form of joined-up governmental thinking. The previous Social Justice Cabinet Committee found that when Departments took a strategic approach to working together on issues such as the dreadful outcomes for care leavers, on which the DWP’s work was backed up by the work of the Department for Education, the then Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department of Health, the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the Ministry of Justice and others, they could generate a wave of reform, not just a few isolated initiatives. For example, Jobcentre Plus advisers now know that when they have a care leaver in front of them, they will get extra support or flexibility, including early access to the Work programme; there are more funds for housing for those people and help for them to save through the junior ISA; and there is a care leavers champion in the criminal justice system. The list of co-ordinated Government action is long and should make us and our former coalition partners proud.

I and many others were deeply encouraged when Lord Freud explained during the Report stage of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill in the House of Lords that the life chances strategy would cover measures relating to

“family breakdown, problem debt, and drug and alcohol addiction.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 January 2016; Vol. 768, c. 1084.]

I welcome that. It would be wonderful for the kind of cross-departmental work and ministerial leadership that we have seen on support for care leavers to be applied to family life. When it comes to the knotty problem of family breakdown, I am an incurable optimist, despite my law firm background, but I doubt our ability to successfully reverse the epidemically high rates of divorce, separation and family dysfunction in our society unless there are clear accountabilities across the full range of Government Departments represented in the Social Reform Cabinet Committee.

I pay tribute to my noble Friend Lord Farmer for his commitment to promoting and strengthening family life and all he has done in this place. I also pay tribute to Dr Samantha Callan, who works with him, for the many years of work research and advice she has dedicated to this field, particularly but not exclusively with the Centre for Social Justice. She has laboured for years to emphasise the concern we should all have about the impact of family life on children in particular. At times she may have wondered whether anyone from Government was really listening, but I am optimistic that those years are behind us and that now there are people in the top levels of Government who are listening. My noble Friend Lord Farmer recently wrote in The Times that we need a Minister in every Department who is explicitly responsible for leading a strand of family-strengthening policy. I agree and would add that we also need a Cabinet Minister with overall responsibility for the family.

Better support for marriage by beefing up our slender tax allowance that recognises enduring aspirations to make a commitment in the teeth of the many financial pressures that can make marriage seem so unattainable would be good, as would be community-based support in family hubs for people to get advice when they are struggling with parenting and relationships. I hope the Minister has seen the report I recently produced as chair of the all-party group on children’s centres entitled “Family Hubs: The Future of Children’s Centres”, which proposed that and a number of other actions to strengthen family relationships in our local communities.

Support for action to ensure that prisoners maintain the family ties that can boost rehabilitation efforts and make jails safer would also benefit from a co-ordinated approach. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), our previous Prisons Minister, for all he has done to emphasise the importance of strengthening prisoners’ family relationships. Mental health services that work with all the family dynamics underlying children’s problems could be better co-ordinated, but without a level of steely-eyed determination I fear our life chances indicators in these areas will put us to shame.

As I said, I am incurably hopeful, particularly as our new Prime Minister is the only person ever to have had the title Secretary of State for the Family—albeit that was preceded by the word “shadow”, when we were in opposition. It is now time for family policy to come out of the shadows, take its rightful place in her new Cabinet Committee along with many other important areas of social justice—I am look forward to hearing about those from colleagues over the course of the debate—and be tackled unflinchingly with the energy and talent of all those around the Cabinet table.