Business of the House
Nigel Evans Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. As always, many right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye, but time is especially constrained today as the autumn statement will begin at 11.15. As a consequence, there is a premium on brevity from Back and Front Benches alike, beginning with Mr Nigel Evans.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Ind)
Some 44 million people worldwide suffer with Alzheimer’s disease and it is estimated that the number will treble by 2050. May we have a debate on dementia to see what more we can do to help carers, those who have a loved one suffering with Alzheimer’s, and research and development in order to give hope to people suffering with Alzheimer’s?
Mr Lansley
Members across the House will share with my hon. Friend a sense of the importance that we attach to making further progress in the research into the causes of dementia and its treatment, and the way in which we as a society respond to those with dementia. I was very pleased that the Backbench Business Committee was able to schedule a debate before the G8 summit next Wednesday. I hope that with the progress we are making in research on dementia and its treatment, there may be further opportunities in the new year.
Business of the House
Nigel Evans Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Ind)
On 25 October I received a parliamentary answer informing me that, out of 2,533 railway stations, only 452 had disabled access to all platforms. That is clearly inadequate in the 21st century, so would it be possible for a Minister to make a statement on when that inadequacy will be rectified, placing particular emphasis on rural areas?
Mr Lansley
There are stations in my constituency where it is difficult for people with disabilities to access all platforms to change trains, so my hon. Friend makes a good point. I will ask my colleagues at the Department for Transport to write to him as he has just missed the opportunity to raise that point during Question Time.
Business of the House
Nigel Evans Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Mr Lansley
We welcome the establishment of the all-party group in Northern Ireland considering these issues, and we are very glad that Dr Richard Haass is chairing the talks; he does so with great ability. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland met Dr Haass for the third time this week and gives that process her full support. As my hon. Friend knows, the process itself is owned by the Northern Ireland political parties, not the Government, so it will be for them to decide when and what to publish, but that will be of great interest to Members across the House and I know my right hon. Friend will ensure that my hon. Friend and others in the House are informed about the progress of the talks.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Ind)
May I add my voice to those who have asked for a debate on the national health service? Last year there were 5.3 million admissions to A and E, an increase of 47% over 15 years, which is totally unsustainable. Perhaps we can look at one of the reasons this is happening, which is to do with access to GP services in the evenings and at weekends—unbelievably, people do get ill at these times. We need to look at the whole of the national health service so people get the service they deserve.
Mr Lansley
I hope that before too long the House will have an opportunity to hear from my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary about the further measures he is taking that will have a positive impact this winter, both in relation to supporting general practitioners in looking after patients in the community, rather than admitting them to hospital, and in using the integration funds the Chancellor set out in his spending review— £3.8 billion to enable local authorities and the NHS to work together to ensure community services are there and are effective in minimising the number of emergency admissions to hospital.
Business of the House
Nigel Evans Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Lansley
We are continually engaging in a debate on the issues relating to cost of living, and how families are able to cope with the consequences of the reduction of wealth in this country by 7.2% under the last Government, in the most serious recession we have faced in a century. It is inconceivable that such a reduction in wealth would not have consequences across society. Fortunately the number of workless households is now at its lowest level, and those who are in work are increasingly finding that their tax bills are going down. Inevitably and rightly, there are charitable and other endeavours to help those people who are in hardship, just as the benefit system should. We will have further opportunities to debate how we can target that support to best effect, and I look forward to those.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Ind)
Perhaps we could have a wider debate on planning laws. The issue that has had a real impact on the Ribble Valley, whose core strategy is not in place, is the number of speculative planning applications that have been put in. The local council turns them down, they go to appeal and the decisions are overturned. It is not only communities that feel frustrated, but local councillors, who wonder what the use is in rejecting such planning applications only to have their decisions overturned time and again.
Mr Lansley
I completely understand the point that my hon. Friend makes, not least because South Cambridgeshire—he will not be surprised to learn—has a heavy demand for new housing and many applications. We want to ensure that we also meet housing need by having local plans in place, including neighbourhood plans, so that decisions can be made consistent with the local understanding of how planning should be structured in the area. That is what needs to happen. If those local plans show how they will meet the housing demand for the next five years, they should be robust in the face of challenge.
Crime and Courts Bill [Lords] (Programme) ((No. 3)
Nigel Evans Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Llwyd
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, with which I agree fully.
The Executive are overriding completely the will of this place. The matters that we are not able to discuss are not minor ones; they are vital matters that concern people out there. They are not matters for the twittering classes of Westminster alone; they are vital matters that affect ordinary citizens up and down the UK. For example, we are dealing with automatic deportation and ensuring convention rights. We cannot be expected to run through such vital issues in a matter of minutes. I find the whole thing utterly unacceptable.
I was in Parliament in 1992 when the then Conservative Government thought better of such practices and provided time for debates to take place. Very rarely were debates truncated in this way. It is utterly unacceptable and I am sure that people outside this place will see that. We took a step forward this afternoon, but we are taking a major step back this evening.
Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
It is always great to be a legend in one’s own—whatever the saying is.
The Government’s response to the amendment is unwise and intolerable.
Mr Winnick
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Would it not be appropriate for the Leader of the House to show respect for the views that have been expressed in the past 15 minutes and at least come to the Dispatch Box and make some comments? He is just sitting there grinning and showing indifference. What sort of respect does that show for the views of the House of Commons?
Mr Deputy Speaker
Clearly, that is not a matter for the Chair.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Business of the House (6 February)
Nigel Evans Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Chope
That puts a slightly different complexion on it. It means that if we approve this motion, all my hon. Friends and Opposition Members will be free immediately after the Opposition day business and will not need to stay for the private business. Following my hon. Friend’s useful contribution, I hope that the Whip will be altered accordingly to reflect the fact that people on this side of the House will be free to leave at 4 o’clock at the latest on Wednesday and that we can then have the private business in our time and under our own rules, with those who are interested in participating present in the House and others who are not so interested absent. On that basis—that the Government are changing the whipping, so that private business is not whipped business—I shall not push this matter to a vote.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I will be staying for the private business, Mr Chope, and I can barely wait.
Question put and agreed to.
Select Committee Effectiveness, Resources and Powers
Nigel Evans Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is a real pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Liaison Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). He covered so much ground with his description of how the Select Committees began that I am tempted just to say, “I agree” and sit down. But this would not be Parliament without everyone adding a little extra to what he has said.
I should like to acknowledge the presence in the Chamber of many of the Select Committee Chairs. This could almost be the Liaison Committee meeting for the first time in the Chamber of the House of Commons. The Chairmen of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Environmental Audit Committee, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the Education Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee are all here this afternoon, as is my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee.
I would not want this debate to consist only of us talking about ourselves and about how well we have all done. The reason that we are in this place, and the reason that so much has changed in the past five years, is that Parliament has changed. The occupant of the Chair, in the person of Mr Speaker, has decided that the procedures of Parliament should make the Government much more accountable than I can remember them being in all the 25 years I have been in the House. I know that the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed has been here even longer than that. The fact that Mr Speaker has decided to use those processes to a much greater extent than they have ever been used before, and the fact that we have put in place the right reforms and that those on both Front Benches decided to implement them, mean that the Select Committee system is almost there, as far as scrutiny of the Government is concerned. I say “almost there” because, although the Chairman of the Liaison Committee rightly mentioned all the positive aspects of the system, there are a couple of things that I think could make it even better.
I also want to pay tribute to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, in the persona of the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), for going where no Committee, or Committee Chair, has dared to go before. He rightly mentioned phone hacking and the Rupert Murdoch affair, because those events represented a line in the sand for the powers of Select Committees. I can tell him that frequently when witnesses refuse to appear before the Home Affairs Committee, I do not have to come here and seek an order; all I have to do is remind them of what happened to Mr Rupert Murdoch when he decided he would not appear before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee—which conducted a very good inquiry, of course.
In a sense, however, we are making these rules up as we go along. As has been said, we do not know what powers we have at our disposal if somebody refuses to appear before a Committee. When witnesses say they are sick, I now ask for a sick note sent via a doctor with initials after their name, so I can be certain that that is why the witness cannot attend. We must clarify what these powers are. In one sense, I am reluctant to do so because it is always useful to have the mystique of Parliament—to have the fear of the unknown, so that people do not know what will happen. In that respect, therefore, it is better not to write things down, but to keep them vague and use that as a way to cajole people to appear. At some stage, somebody will refuse to attend and will not answer to a warrant, however, and that is when we will have to decide how to proceed.
I want to pay tribute to my Committee secretariat staff: Tom Healey, Richard Benwell, Elizabeth Flood and all the other staff who work extremely hard. The Chair of the Liaison Committee said that we had good staff, but he did not point out that we do not have sufficient resources. We need more resources if we are to be able to do our job effectively.
We need to put a stop to the practice of Clerks being moved around too regularly, and often just when they are about to really get into their job. In the past they have moved rather too swiftly. One of my former Clerks has ended up clerking three Committees and is currently clerking the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. She is so good that, like Ronaldo, she gets passed on to all the big teams. We should allow Committee staff to develop their specialisms. I am grateful to the powers that be for the fact that over the past year my Clerks have not changed, and I hope very much that we can stick to the unwritten rule that we have them for the whole of the Parliament, as that enables them to develop fields of expertise.
We look across the Atlantic in awe at the number of staff the chairs of congressional and senate committees have. Only a few months ago, I was in Washington and I met the chair of the homeland security committee, the equivalent of our Home Affairs Committee. I was told he had a staff of 32 and that was just for the majority side in Congress. I am not suggesting for one moment that we should increase the staffing of the HAC from nine to 32, because I know I would never get away with that. If we are to do our job, however, we need staff with expertise.
We also need to make sure our Committee staff are, indeed, Committee staff; far too often, they have to go off and do other House duties because that is part of the deal. I want them to be able to concentrate fully on the work we do.
Despite that little whinge, the HAC has thus far in this Session produced 11 reports, seen 118 witnesses in 49 sittings, and addressed 20 subjects. The House may therefore think that nine staff members is sufficient, and that the HAC should not be given any more staff as that would only mean we would go on for even longer. We are able to do so much work, however, only because of the expertise of the people who work for us.
The HAC has tried to travel around the country, although we do not do so often enough. We should engage with the public by getting them to come here, although they are very willing to do so because of the new regime that now runs the visitors’ facilities. We should also use social media, as the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) said that he did in the Education Committee. We stole his idea and used it the last time the Home Secretary appeared before the HAC.
Not all of the questions that were suggested by members of the public were constructive, but it is always nice to hear their thoughts not just about the Home Secretary, but about members of the Home Affairs Committee. That is all about public engagement, and I am willing to try anything new.
I welcome what has been done by the House authorities to change the websites over the past few years. We should embrace the new technology and develop it in the best way that we can.
Another way in which we could help the public to understand the distinctive contribution that Select Committees make would be to end the great ballot to find out in which room Select Committees will sit on any given day. In America, Select Committees have confirmed office space and rooms. Under that system, one would know that the Home Affairs Committee would always sit in Committee Room 19. I know that there is a problem in that the broadcasters choose which is the best session to cover.
I think that the House’s facilities should be used more imaginatively so that not only do we have a degree of permanence in where we sit, but Select Committee Chairs are close to their staff. I have an office in Norman Shaw North, but my Select Committee staff are in Millbank. I do not know about other Select Committee Chairs, but I would think that at least 60% to 70% of my work in this House is Select Committee related. It is not difficult to ring up Select Committee staff, but it would be much more helpful if they were in close proximity to the Chairs of their Committees.
We have reached a stage that some of us would not have thought possible even a few years ago. However, it is not enough to stand still. We need to move forward, because I still believe that the most effective way to scrutinise the operation of any Government is not at the Dispatch Box, where Members have the opportunity to ask just one question, apart from the Leader of the Opposition who gets several bites of the cherry, but in a Select Committee system, where one can probe, ask and sometimes even argue. At the end of the day, I believe that that sort of scrutiny gets a better result.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Three Members want to take part in this debate. We also need to get both Front Benchers in and leave a couple of minutes at the end for Sir Alan to wind up. I therefore ask Members to be mindful of the length of their contributions.
HEALTH
Nigel Evans Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
I wish to take the unusual step of telling the House and the Minister about the individual case of little Vinny Duggan to highlight a wider problem that the Government can solve by making legal changes so that other patients and other parents such as Andy and Andrea Duggan do not have to go through what this family has gone through in the past two and a half years. As Andrea has said to me, this is their fight, but it is also a fight for other people in their position.
I have been involved with the parents in the quest for information for only 10 months, whereas Mr and Mrs Duggan have been battling since Vinny was born nearly two and half years ago. At times, Vinny has fought for life. He is now a little lad who is full of life. I was with the family on Saturday, and he was smiling, laughing, climbing on the sofa and climbing on me, but he has a very serious congenital heart and lung condition. He has brain damage, likely to have been caused by a lack of oxygen, and he is unlikely ever to be able to speak. His parents have told me that they are very proud of Vinny and very grateful that they still have him here.
It has been touch and go at times. He was born on 20 August 2010 at Doncaster royal infirmary. He was full term and was a healthy 7 lb 9 oz. However, within the first day his mum, in particular, became concerned that he was very blue, that he was not feeding properly and that he was very sleepy. The following day, he was diagnosed with a heart murmur and the day after that he was discharged against the parents’ wishes, as they were concerned and wanted tests done before he was discharged. He was at home for two days and after that time, when he had not properly woken up or properly fed and had stopped wetting his nappies, they phoned the hospital and were advised to take him to the children’s observational unit, where they arrived at 7 o’clock that evening.
Within the first hour, they were assessed by a triage nurse as non-urgent—green, in other words—and had to wait almost another five hours before a doctor saw them. During that night, Vinny was put on a heart monitor and given the tests he needed. He had a very high heart rate and was transferred rapidly to the specialist unit at Leeds general infirmary. He was diagnosed as having a very serious life-threatening heart and lung condition. He was given open heart and major lung surgery and spent five months in Leeds hospital, six weeks of that in intensive care and 10 weeks in the high-dependency unit.
The internal investigation at Doncaster hospital afterwards concluded that there were “no real concerns” about the standard of care in Vinny’s case, despite the fact that there were many chances to notice that he was unwell, to do the tests that could have been required and to listen to Mr and Mrs Duggan’s concerns. There remain important discrepancies between the evidence of the parents and that of some of the staff and the hospital in the investigation. It took two years and a new chief executive before, six weeks ago, Mr and Mrs Duggan received a welcome letter from the new acting chief executive, Mike Pinkerton, who ended by saying:
“The care that Vinny received fell below the standard you have a right to expect from us and I do sincerely apologise.”
Like so many other parents, Mr and Mrs Duggan had principally wanted an explanation—not retribution or compensation. However, like many parents, they were driven down the route of trying to get answers through the courts, and that is what they are having to do. They also rightly turned to the professional body, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which is responsible for regulating Britain’s 670,000 nurses and midwives. Mrs Duggan submitted a complaint in September 2011, which was turned down in January 2012. She challenged it, which caused the council to look again at the argument that there was no case to answer, and the internal review concluded that the case should be referred back to the investigating committee for reconsideration.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council, however, has limited powers to review its decisions and that has been reinforced and restricted further by a High Court judgment in May in the case of R(B) v. NMC 2012. In other words, the NMC does not have the legal powers it needs to review its own decisions. The chief executive, Jackie Smith, was good enough to meet me in the summer and to agree to commission independent legal advice on Vinny’s case and on the NMC’s restrictions. That independent legal advice came from Mark Shaw QC, who concluded:
“The Order and Rules makes it plain that the NMC has no statutory power to review, re-open or reverse a disciplinary decision (in particular, a decision of the Investigating Committee that a registrant has no case to answer) beyond the specific circumstances stipulated in rule 7, namely: receipt of a fresh allegation within three years of the dismissal of a previous allegation against the same registrant.”
He went on to point out:
“Typically, other professional regulators have wider review powers, granted explicitly by secondary legislation.”
Those other professional bodies include the General Medical Council, which is responsible for regulating Britain’s 250,000 registered doctors. The GMC’s powers were rightly extended in 2004, so it has the power to review and reopen a complaint, to take a view that its earlier decisions might be flawed, to take new evidence into account and to act. It is considering a review of the complaint lodged with it about a doctor involved in this case and we expect a decision imminently.
The General Optical Council and the General Pharmaceutical Council have similar powers; the General Dental Council does not. At a time when complaints from patients are rising and pressures on staff are increasing, if we are to maintain trust and confidence in our health professionals and the NHS, we must have a better and more open system of complaints and we must have regulators with the powers to do the job they are set up to do: safeguard professional standards and safeguard patients and the public, too.
I know the Law Commission is reviewing the common enabling legislative framework for all health regulators. That could take three years, so I want the Minister to confirm today that he knows that there is a problem and that in the meantime, in advance of the Law Commission’s report, he will act to change the operating rules and orders so that those professional bodies can do the job. Otherwise, many other patients and parents will face the same fight for the truth—
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
In September 2012 the Royal College of Physicians published a report, “Hospitals on the edge? The time for action”, which sets out starkly the challenges facing our acute hospitals. It begins:
“All hospital inpatients deserve to receive safe, high-quality, sustainable care centred around their needs and delivered in an appropriate setting by respectful, compassionate, expert health professionals. Yet it is increasingly clear that our hospitals are struggling to cope with the challenge of an ageing population and increasing hospital admissions.”
It highlights the consequences of failing to meet the challenges and refers to the history of my own trust. When the public inquiry reports next month, we will have the opportunity to consider its implications for the NHS. Today I wish to concentrate on the Monitor review of my trust in the light of the continuing rise in pressure on acute services that the Royal College of Physicians highlights.
There are three common themes that I hear in the NHS these days. The first is that we need to do much more in the community and at home and much less in acute hospitals, and that we must therefore close acute hospital beds and use the money in the community. Although I agree with the premise, I dispute the conclusion. Community care is essential, but it must work before it results in a reduction in admissions and lengths of stay. The fact that admissions are rising and, according to the RCP, the fall in length of stay has flatlined in the past three years, even rising for patients over 85, indicates to me that the shift to the community either is not happening fast enough or indeed will not happen as expected.
The conclusion also seems to ignore demography. In the area served by the Mid Staffordshire Trust, the population is expected to rise by some 10% in the coming 23 years. The number of people over 60 will rise by nearly half, and the number of those 75 and older—those most likely to need acute services—will double. I suspect that is the situation in many parts of the country.
Increasing admissions, rising and ageing population, flatlining length of stays—all of these indicate an increased demand for acute services in the coming 20 years, yet the talk is, and has been for many years, of further reductions in acute beds. It makes little sense to do that until community services and other medical advances mean that those beds are proved to be no longer necessary. In Stafford, there is a shortage of step-down beds, so rather than closing acute beds altogether why not keep them as community beds on the same site, leaving the door open for increasing acute services in the future, if and when the need arises?
The second theme is that we need to integrate primary and secondary care more closely. I agree, yet actions sometimes have the opposite effect. The previous Government took away the responsibility for providing 24/7 primary care cover from GPs. I regret that, as it detracts from integration. It may also be responsible for placing a greater burden on accident and emergency departments at night. If out-of-hours care is not to be the responsibility of GPs, let it be centred, where geographically possible, on acute and community hospitals. This makes better use of NHS premises and, by being adjacent to A and E or other emergency units, can help take the pressure off them while providing the hospital with extra income. That would certainly work at Stafford and Cannock.
Tariffs can produce strange results. The University Hospital of North Staffordshire has a block contract for A and E admissions. For any admission in excess of that, it receives only 30% of the tariff, so what is it supposed to do—reject emergency admissions on the basis that they will be loss-making? Of course not. I would propose that emergency departments are funded at what it costs to provide that service safely. In Stafford, the emergency department has a deficit of some £2 million per year based on throughput and tariff. The number of patients attending—more than 50,000—could not possibly be safely accommodated elsewhere. Surrounding hospitals are already at capacity, so it makes little sense to impose a national tariff, which inevitably results in a loss and which in turn puts pressure on the hospital to prove that it is sustainable.
The third theme is that medicine is becoming increasingly specialised, so most work will inevitably migrate to large specialist units. There is truth in this belief, but there is also danger. There are 61 approved medical specialties in the UK, compared with 30 in Norway. As the RCP says, this has
“rendered the provision of continuity of care increasingly difficult.”
For older people, who often have complex and multiple needs, this can result in poorly co-ordinated care. This has not been helped by the introduction of shift-based systems under the new deal and the European working time directive, to replace the teams that took responsibility for individual patients. Specialisation also means that there is a much smaller pool of staff from which to select for each post.
If we were to design from scratch a hospital where those who will need it most— the elderly, as the statistics show—will receive safe and caring care for their complex needs as close to home and loved ones as possible, integrated into primary and community care, we would end up with something pretty much like the district general hospitals and community hospitals up and down the country, such as Stafford and Cannock.
This is not an argument for no change. I believe there must be much closer working between the larger and smaller trusts, for instance, and much more sharing of common services than at present. But it is a warning that national tariffs are not impartial arbiters. They generally work, I believe, against acute care.
Keith Vaz
I will not tease my hon. Friend, but I think that the word “McDonald’s” did enter the conversation somewhere. However, I accept that his response is now on the record.
I would support legislation aimed at ensuring that we are very careful about the amount of sugar, and salt, in our diet. Indeed, I have introduced a ten-minute rule Bill that says exactly that. Denmark started a “fat tax” but then decided that it was unworkable because the food industry lobbied so heavily against it, and so the tax was removed. I am not saying that the Government are going to legislate on this; I do not think they will. The food industry is one of the most powerful in this country. The sugary drinks industry, from Red Bull, a can of which contains more than eight teaspoons of sugar, right down to the people who make Coke and all these other drinks, will fight very hard on this. In the meantime, let us send out a message and work together to stop this epidemic consuming and subsuming our country.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
For the wind-ups, the guideline on speeches is 10 minutes, but the clock will not be in operation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
I have very much enjoyed sitting through this debate on health. I remember that when we had the equivalent debate last year, many speakers did not have the time they wanted to make their speeches. The fact that we have had longer today has enabled many right hon. and hon. Members to make valuable contributions on a number of subjects, focusing not only on health care issues in their constituencies and on important individual cases that highlight the need for changes in the system, but on the big challenges that face the NHS in tackling long-term medical conditions.
In the time available to me, I will do my best to answer the questions and points put across by Members on both sides of the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and I have met on a number of occasions, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), to talk through the challenges facing Mid Staffordshire trust. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford has been a great advocate for, and a great support to, the patients and staff at that trust. I would like to put on record my thanks to him for all that he has done for all his constituents. His advocacy during his time in this House has been tremendous.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford raised some important issues. We know that it is desirable, not only because it makes good health care economics but, more importantly, because it is good patient care, to keep people well and looked after in their own communities and in their own homes. My hon. Friend threw up a legitimate challenge when he said that if we are to deliver good care in the community and in people’s homes, we need to find a way of moving from the current situation. At the moment we have a crisis management response by default, where people are rushed into A and E, and he is right to highlight the fact that some parts of the country do not have an adequate GP out-of-hours system to look after people around the clock. We need to ask how we go from a system set up around crisis management to one that is better placed to meet the future needs of preventive care and looking after people with long-term conditions such as diabetes, dementia and heart disease in their own homes and communities. The Government are taking steps to address this issue by making sure that GPs and local health care commissioners, through clinical commissioning groups at a local level, will hold a lot of the health care budget. That will ensure that the focus is on primary preventive care and on better looking after people with long-term conditions.
My hon. Friend is right to say that we need sufficient numbers of hospital beds, but as time passes there might less need for beds in some hospitals if local CCGs effectively meet the challenge of ensuring that that they invest in community and preventive care. In the interim, we need to support good commissioning of beds locally. We must have intermediate care beds available at community hospitals and in other care settings in the community for step-up care, step-down care and respite care.
On the other side of the River Thames, the clinical director of St Thomas’ hospital, Ian Abbs, is looking into year-of-care tariffs, which look after patients with long-term conditions such as diabetes and heart disease in a holistic way that enables them to be supported when they need a hospital bed and need to be looked after in the community. That has to be the right way forward. We in the Department’s ministerial team will work with clinicians, medical directors, trusts and commissioning boards to make sure that Eurocare tariffs are in place, so that we can shift the focus away from the community, but in a managed way that means that hospital beds will still be available as people require them.
The hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) has been a strong advocate—he has raised his concerns many times—for constituents and others throughout his part of the country who are patients who need access to cancer care, cancer services, the cancer drugs fund and, indeed, high-quality radiotherapy. It is worth setting out some of the background—he outlined it himself in his speech—to the Government’s commitment to improving care for patients with cancer.
In 2011 the Government made a commitment to expand radiotherapy capacity by investing more than £150 million more over four years from 2011. As the hon. Gentleman knows, that was to increase the utilisation of existing equipment, support additional services and ensure that all high-priority patients with a need for proton beam therapy get access to it. In April 2012, the then Secretary of State announced that the Department had set aside up to £250 million of public capital, to be invested by the NHS in building proton beam therapy facilities at the Christie hospital in Manchester and the University college London hospital, to treat up to 1,500 patients each year. In October we announced a £15 million radiotherapy innovation fund for 2012-13, which brings this Government’s additional investment in radiotherapy over the spending review period to more than £165 million. The fund is designed to ensure that, from April 2013, radiotherapy centres will be ready to deliver intensity-modulated radiotherapy to all patients who need it.
The hon. Gentleman was right to say that, in spite of that increased investment, there are ongoing concerns about the variability of access to radiotherapy services in the NHS. I hope that it will reassure him that, in response to the requests of radiotherapy centres to the fund, we will go beyond the original commitment and will this week notify the centres of allocations totalling almost £23 million. We have taken on board the hon. Gentleman’s concerns and are making sure that we continue to invest in high-quality radiation in the years ahead. I know that he will hold the Government to that task in the coming years.
The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) has rightly raised issues of principle arising from the Vinny Duggan case. I want to put on record my best wishes to the family concerned. I will deal with two issues: first, the issue that arose from the way in which the trust handled the complaints procedure, and secondly, the wider point about the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
First, as the right hon. Gentleman has highlighted, the trust clearly failed to acknowledge to any adequate degree that mistakes happened and that the quality of care was not of the standard that it should have been. That much was clear in this regrettable episode in the trust’s history. Two years is an unacceptable amount of time to wait for an apology or for an adequate explanation for what went wrong. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that what patients want when things go wrong is a sincere apology and an explanation as to why things happened. We all know, no matter how good the care is in the NHS, that bad things will sometimes happen, but we need to know that that mistake has been recognised, that there has been an apology and that lessons have been learned for the future. We cannot rewrite history or always unpick mistakes, but we can learn lessons for the future and make sure that such bad things do not happen again. That is what good medicine is about. Clearly, in this case there were problems with the way in which the complaints were addressed.
Secondly, on the wider point raised by the right hon. Gentleman about the NMC and the disparity between how different professional regulators approach the complaints process, he is right that the NMC can review or reopen a case only when new evidence is available. If old evidence is reconsidered or if it changes, as in this case, it is very difficult to review it. There are differences between the medical and other professional regulators with regard to how such cases are handled, and the Law Commission has rightly highlighted those inconsistencies. There needs to be more consistency throughout all parts of the medical, nursing and allied health professional groups, in order to make sure that patients know that, when complaints are made and concerns are aired, they will be looked into and, where necessary, complaints can be reopened and reinvestigated.
The Law Commission proposals are expected to be introduced to the House in 2014. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether we could do anything sooner than that, but, as he will know, if we brought in a section 60 order, it would take about two years for it to get through the full parliamentary process. Given that the Law Commission proposals are holistic and apply to not just the NMC, but all health professions, we believe that the right approach is to consider those proposals in 2014. We hope that that will bring a lot more consistency, which I think we all feel is desirable, to future cases involving the professional conduct of all medical, nursing and other health care professionals.
I thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), for her kind comments about the work that I, other Suffolk MPs and, indeed, the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), have done in relation to problems with the East of England ambulance service. People in more rural counties, particularly North Norfolk and parts of Suffolk, appear to be getting a service that is not of the standard that we would expect. We need more transparency with regard to response times, not just on a regional level, but on a county-wide level. My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal asked whether there could be a breakdown by postcode. That is a little more challenging, because it is possible that, in any given month or response period, not enough people in a particular postcode will need an ambulance. There is a desire, however, for more transparency with regard to sub-geographical regions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) has also taken a keen interest in the issue and has recently been out with the ambulance service on a number of evenings.
Jim Dowd
Nobody disputes the Minister’s last point. That is why there is a reconfiguration process especially for that purpose. That is what should be used, rather than this back-door method.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Please complete your contribution within 60 seconds, Minister, so that we can move on.
Dr Poulter
I will do so, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will take those considerations into account when he receives the report and comes to his conclusions in due course. I know that the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge will continue to make his views clear.
Finally and importantly, I turn to the good remarks made by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). He is right to point out that one of the big challenges facing this country in health care terms is to better look after people with long-term conditions. Diabetes is a key challenge. Patients with diabetes have a higher risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, amputation, vascular disease and a number of other medical problems. One key way to deal with that is to focus more on prevention, rather than cure. That means investing in more GP-led care and primary prevention, rather than picking up the pieces in hospital. We should focus on helping people with type 1 diabetes to have a normal life by educating them to understand their condition, through the use of insulin pumps and by helping younger people to manage their condition.
The Government are committed to preventing diabetes and bad lifestyle habits from developing in the first place by focusing on better education in childhood. When local authorities have control of public health budgets, that will be a key priority for them. We must set good lifestyle habits from the early years to ensure that people do not develop diabetes later on.
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Transport
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
I will start by telling the Minister that there is great concern in my Derby constituency about the possibility of a pre-Christmas betrayal of the Bombardier work force in the city. In March 2011, the Prime Minister brought the Cabinet to Derby because he felt it was an excellent backdrop that would give credibility to his assertion that he wanted to rebalance the economy. Derby provided a perfect illustration of the sort of economy that the Government—who at the time were relatively new—wanted to create. Within a few weeks, however, that rhetoric sounded hollow. It was followed up in the Budget statement when the Chancellor spoke about the march of the makers:
“We are only going to raise the living standards of families if we have an economy that can compete in the modern age. So this is our plan for growth. We want the words: ‘Made in Britain’, ‘Created in Britain’, ‘Designed in Britain’ and ‘Invented in Britain’ to drive our nation forward—a Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers. That is how we will create jobs and support families.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 966.]
However, just a few months later, when the Government could have done something positive to show that they meant those words, they awarded preferred bidder status for the Thameslink contract to Siemens rather than to Bombardier in Derby.
Ministers seem to have ignored the provisions within the invitation to tender documentation. The ITT states that the successful bidder must demonstrate that it can exploit advances in technology and have a world-class proven solution in one package, but Siemens did not have that. It had not developed a lightweight bogie; indeed, plans were still on the draughtsman’s board and had not even been tested or put into any form of production. In spite of that, however, Ministers decided to appoint Siemens as the preferred bidder.
That decision has already led to 1,400 job losses in Derby at Bombardier, and considerably more jobs have been lost in the supply chain. The Department for Transport seems not to be acting in the national interest and to be completely out of control. We saw the fiasco of the franchise for the west coast main line and, as we know, that process was suspended. The same civil servants who gave rise to concern over that franchise also worked on the Thameslink contract, yet Ministers seem to draw a veil over that.
Ministers have also tried to blame EU regulations for the decision to award preferred bidder status to Siemens. However, that simply will not wash because, when convenient, Ministers have ignored EU regulations on the issue. EU regulations are enshrined in English law. Regulation 4 is apposite and states:
“A contracting authority shall (in accordance with Article 2 of the Public Sector Directive)…treat economic operators equally and in a non-discriminatory way.”
That did not happen. At the fourth stage of the evaluation process, the DFT adopted a complex methodology involving the use of discount rates as shown in the Treasury Green Book, which is complicated for a layperson like myself. When the Transport Committee took expert evidence, Professor Karel Williams from the Manchester business school stated that there was a
“bias in favour of Siemens because they had a superior credit rating and that gave them an advantage of maybe several hundred million pounds”.
It therefore seems clear that the Government are in breach of their obligations under regulation 4.
The Business Secretary reportedly said that the end result of the evaluation process was inevitable. The ITT makes it clear that the Secretary of State will let the contract. In my view, that makes the Thameslink contract a Government contract. Regulation 23(b) of the public contract regulations makes it clear that, where a bidder has been found guilty of corruption, it should be excluded from the process. We know that Siemens falls into that category, yet the Government have proceeded regardless.
When the matter has been raised with Ministers, they have claimed that Siemens should not be excluded from the bidding process, and to some extent I agree. Siemens plc is not part of the special purpose company—Cross London Trains—which has been created to take forward the Thameslink contract. Siemens Project Ventures GmbH, which is a division of Siemens AG, is part of that special purpose company. Siemens AG has been convicted of corruption which, in my view, makes it ineligible for the contract unless there is an overriding requirement “in the general interest” to include it—that is what the regulations state.
As I have said, Ministers say there are no grounds to eliminate Siemens but they are applying the wrong test. They should have been looking at whether it was right to include the special purpose company that includes Siemens AG as part of the consortium. I therefore hope that when he sums up the Minister will give a commitment to look at the issue again. I believe that the Government are in breach of regulations 4 and 23. We will not get value for money, although Ministers claim we will—they are adopting a very expensive model to procure the trains and there are less expensive ways of pursuing that.
The industry is in great shape and the market is expanding, and we have huge potential and a massive opportunity, so I urge the Minister to ensure that he does not allow the industry in this country to slip through his fingers. He has the power to stop the contract—the invitation to tender makes that extremely clear—to do the right thing and to look at it again. Hopefully, he will give Bombardier in Derby the opportunity to continue to deliver a train manufacturing industry—
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson). I pay tribute to him for the incredible campaign he has run in support of the workers in his constituency and the skills that have been brought to the country by the decades—over a century—of train manufacturing in Derby. It would be a crime if we lost that. The danger is that, unless the Bombardier contract is issued, there will be further job losses and further loss of train-making skills in this country.
We do not understand or value enough the heritage of the rail industry in this country, the skills involved in train manufacture and railway development, or the future of the industry. Following the closures, we have around 10,000 miles of track. We have a programme of railway network expansion, and more people travel by train than at any time since the second world war. The majority of the public who have access to railways prefer to use them—there is no question about that.
If we involve ourselves in a procurement process that specifically encourages sustainable, local-ish or UK-based employment, we will develop our industrial base and provide great opportunities for railway expansion in this country and other places. However, sadly, the model of privatisation adopted by the Conservative Government in the 1990s not only broke up our railway system but handed all the rolling stock to rather dubious leasing companies. Huge profits were made as a result, but 10 years into privatisation the Department for Transport’s procurement policies have moved much more into a totally market-based international comparator system rather than the system used for Transport for London, which has deliberately sought to develop UK-based employment, and fair wages and employment practices and so on.
Mr Burns
On the hon. Gentleman’s second point about the final part of that process, we expect a conclusion early in the new year, though I cannot provide a precise date at this point. On Crossrail, as I said to him earlier, the procurement contract is going ahead and normal processes will be abided by and gone through. It is premature at this stage to start speculating on the detail of future processes, because there is an element of commercial confidentiality and the deals, checks and balances that one would expect from a normal major procurement of this nature.
The Crossrail procurement is the responsibility of Crossrail Ltd. It is currently assessing the bids received at the end of October. I expect that all bidders will have submitted strong, competitive bids that meet the exacting requirements of Crossrail, while providing best value for money for the UK taxpayer and future fare payers. Crossrail and Thameslink will have a transformational impact on travel in London and the south-east. They will significantly boost jobs and growth more widely in the economy. Their benefits are vital and urgently needed, and the Government remain firmly committed to their delivery.
The hon. Member for Islington North mentioned a number of other issues. I will write to him about them, except to say—this will come as no surprise to him—that I do not share his enthusiasm for what would in effect be a renationalisation of the railways.
I should like to ensure that the House is fully aware of what is being done to help Bombardier and Derby. The hon. Member for Derby North will be aware that Bombardier recently secured a £188 million bid to build 130 new railway carriages following a procurement competition run by Southern Railways. Last week, Southern Railways announced that it was exercising an option to invest in 40 new Electrostar carriages from Bombardier. Bombardier is among the suppliers who have bid for the new Crossrail rolling stock, which I referred to earlier, but as the procurement process is live it would be inappropriate to go into details. The Department for Transport is working to develop proposals for a further procurement of 116 rolling stock vehicles, which Southern, if it goes ahead, will be able to bid for. Through its talent and expertise, Bombardier has secured a considerable amount of work. There are a number of significant opportunities for it to seek to make more procurement bids successfully, which would lead to a bright future for the company. If it secures all the potential bids, it will help it to strengthen its capabilities and work force, and allow it to develop its potential.
In conclusion, the Government do not just talk the talk, they walk the walk. In the past two and a half years, we have invested record amounts of money—billions of pounds—to play catch-up from the failure of successive previous Governments to invest in our railway infrastructure, so that we have a first-class, fit-for-purpose railway network that can compete with our European competitors and ensure that we get a higher standard of journey for passengers and more freight on to the railways. In recent years, since privatisation, we have seen freight on our networks increase by 60%, with all the benefits that follow on from taking the freight off our road networks. [Interruption.] On the prompting of one of my hon. Friends, I would like to wish you and the staff, Mr Deputy Speaker, a very happy Christmas, secure in the knowledge that we are investing significantly to improve our railways. If you are returning to your constituency for Christmas on the west coast main line with a Virgin train, I wish you a prompt, enjoyable and speedy journey.
General Matters
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
As we move on, maybe this is the time for me to talk the talk and wish all hon. Members and staff working at Parliament a very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy 2013. It would not be a Christmas general debate without a contribution from Mr David Amess, so let us start with Mr David Amess.
Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
Before the House adjourns for the Christmas recess, there are a number of points I wish to raise. Members are familiar with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. A number of constituents have raised with me the fact that they think it perverse that they cannot have the name and address of the person who raises the FOI inquiry. I agree with them; I think the law should be changed.
In October, I met Paul Atkinson, from Prysmian Group, who is very troubled by the state of electrical cables. He fears that safety regulation of imports is not currently strong enough, and that this is causing fires, as well as the loss of British jobs. Having recently met fire officers in my constituency, I think this is a real problem.
Earlier this year, I secured a debate on the lack of burial space. There were excellent contributions from the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), and a very good reply from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant). I hope that further work will be done on this issue because, as the hon. Member for Strangford said, the only things we can be certain of in life are death and taxes.
I have long campaigned in this House on the role of the Iranian resistance movement. There have been gross violations of human rights in Iran and the sharp rise in public executions continues. Her Majesty’s Government need further to support democracy and change in Iran, and the National Council of Resistance of Iran must be recognised as a legitimate opposition movement.
A few weeks ago, there was a power cut in my house and that of my next-door neighbour. I complained to E.ON, with whom I settle the bill, as did my neighbour. It was passed on to UK Power Networks, who passed me on to the energy ombudsman, which was an absolute waste of time. No one seems to be responsible for these matters, and my neighbour and I want compensation.
One of my constituents is particularly worried about postal vote fraud. To prove a point, he put five fictional names down at his address to register them as voters, and received postal votes for all of them. The census was obviously not checked to verify the residents in the property. He was arrested for electoral fraud, but the police brought no charges. We are both anxious about what appears to be a very lax system.
Last month, I visited Broadway Opticians in my constituency to see at first hand the different enhanced eye care services that optometrists and opticians can deliver. Community optometrists offer patient-centred, cost-effective quality eye care services in convenient, accessible locations. A key benefit of implementing those enhanced services is a reduction in referral rates to GPs and A and E units. These services are very patchy in our area. I ask what plans my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has to make sure that these enhanced services are available across the country.
No doubt the whole House would like to see driving become safer—according to my wife, if anyone drove with me they would see why. I was contacted by the Association of British Insurers, which is seeking to change the law on learning to drive. It wants a minimum one-year period for learning to drive and a ban on intensive driving courses. At the same time, it would like to allow teenagers to start learning to drive at 16 and a half, although as a politician I am not so sure about that.
On an issue of great concern to senior citizens, constituents of mine have been informed that their pensions will no longer be paid into the Post Office, but instead will be paid into a bank account. The letters informing them of the change came from Her Majesty’s Treasury, not the Post Office. This change is very difficult for many senior citizens to manage, and I urge Her Majesty’s Treasury as well as the Post Office to think through this change very carefully.
Another constituent of mine has raised with me his issues with Wonga, the pay-day loans company. He is particularly concerned about its television advertising, which does not mention the annual percentage rate of 4,214 applied to loans. It is worrying how easily one can obtain money from such companies. Its website guarantees quick decisions and money delivered swiftly. Any company making such quick decisions on loans can hardly be spending much time considering how the loans might affect the person’s life or how it could be paid back.
Dredging is damaging the environment in my constituency. It is affecting the cockle and the fishing industries, and is fundamentally changing the Southend coastline and affecting Southend pier, the longest in the world. I have seen the evidence with my own eyes. There has been a huge reduction in the amount of mud on the foreshore in Southend and Leigh. The pace of change is very dangerous. I have mentioned it in the House before, and I will continue my ongoing campaign to look after the Southend coastline.
Yet another constituent met me recently to discuss the creation of the supermarket watchdog, which is part of the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill, introduced in September. Supermarkets can treat suppliers badly without fear of any consequences. Although supermarkets are clearly beneficial to society, we must be careful to protect their customers and suppliers. I congratulate ActionAid on its long campaign and look forward to seeing the watchdog ensure fairness for producers, supermarkets and customers.
A constituent of mine, James Price, who belongs to the Plymouth Brethren, has been in contact with me on a number of occasions regarding the Charity Commission’s plan to remove charity status from the Brethren’s gospel halls. Not only should this group be able to keep its current status, but I am worried about the implications if it cannot do so. I was pleased with yesterday’s ten-minute rule motion on this subject. What is to say that other religious organisations, such as the Church of England or my own Catholic Church, will remain safe if the gospel halls are not?
The final subject that I wish to raise is art. Art is wonderful and should be cherished. Southend West is a centre of cultural excellence. I enjoyed hearing the inaugural concert of Southend youth orchestra and was particularly delighted to hear from David Stanley’s group, the Music Man Project, which offers a unique service for people with learning disabilities. It is absolutely wonderful. David and the orchestra deserve a national audience, and it was my joy to go to No. 10 Downing street yesterday and present the Prime Minister with the DVD. Furthermore, I will be organising an event called “Southend’s Got Talent” on 15 February further to promote the arts in my constituency, and I hope that hon. Members will join me on 4 March in the Jubilee Room, where we will be celebrating all that is wonderful in Southend.
This year, my mother turned 100, and we enjoyed the diamond jubilee and the Olympic games. I do not know what can top it next year, but some of us will be celebrating 30 years in Parliament. I wish you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and all the staff a very happy Christmas, and everyone else good health, peace, prosperity and a wonderful new year.
Mr Allen
It is important for those who served in Bomber Command and survived—it had the highest attrition rate of any theatre of combat in the second world war—get the full recognition they deserve. Finally the Arctic convoy veterans have got it. They have been honoured effusively in the former Soviet Union—what is now Russia—and indeed continue to be, in a way that we had to struggle for in our own country.
Having said that these are valuable moments for Back Benchers, let me raise a number of constituency and Back-Bench issues that are sadly all too familiar in my constituency. The first concerns the treatment of disabled people in my constituency. Many who are applying for incapacity benefit have to go through work capacity assessments with the Department for Work and Pensions through its stand-in, the French firm Atos, which colleagues in all parts of the House will have had experience of.
The waiting time for a disabled person in my constituency to be refused what they regard as their rightful entitlement because of their incapacity is 57 weeks, in some cases. It is unacceptable in a civilised society that they should have to wait that long for a decision on appeal. That is not the way we should treat our disabled people. It would not be good if it happened to just one person, or even if it happened to 10% of the people who appeal and who get what they deserve at the end of the day, but in fact, one in three cases are overturned on appeal. Those people need their incapacity benefit to live their lives effectively. The situation is unacceptable, and I have recently written to the Justice Secretary to express my concern. I was assured, in a letter from him dated 5 December, that extra resources were being brought in to press the numbers down and to enable the cases to be dealt with more expeditiously. I am very grateful for that but, sadly, two days later I received a letter from the Tribunals Service saying that the waiting times had gone up, and that it was now taking an average of 57 weeks for these cases to be dealt with.
I have a constituent named Susan Goldsmith who had her assessment in August 2011. She heard in October that she had failed. She felt aggrieved and immediately appealed. She lodged her appeal with the Tribunals Service in November and, following interventions by me, her appeal was finally heard this month. The judge took only a few minutes to decide to allow her appeal and to dismiss the opinion of Atos. My constituent, who needs her incapacity benefit, had experienced a delay of 54 weeks. I have had many similar cases, as have colleagues throughout the House. The system is a shambles, and I hope that colleagues will continue to write in about it until we get this right and start to treat our disabled people with the respect they deserve and to deal with their cases in a timely manner.
There are more than 500 young children in Nottinghamshire who are deaf or have a degree of deafness, and the National Deaf Children’s Society has asked me to raise a specific issue that is pertinent to them. I am going to write to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and ask him to look again at the personal independence payment that will replace the disability living allowance on 26 April next year. I am afraid that the change could result in a step backwards for many of those deaf young people. Following the abolition of the bottom rate of DLA, all those affected will have to apply for the bottom rate of the personal independence payment but, inexplicably, that will not be available to deaf young people unless they use sign language. In other words, those who use lip-reading or some other means of communication will fail to qualify for those payments, despite having previously been entitled to DLA. Only 10% of deaf young people use sign language, which means that 90% of them will not be entitled to apply for the PIP. I hope that that is simply an unintended consequence, and that my writing to the Secretary of State will result in his looking at the regulations and putting this right, so that all those deaf young people will not be hit disproportionately by this measure.
Another group that I would like to talk about came to visit us some time ago—
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, for presiding over our last debate before Christmas. I have one specific subject that I want to raise, and a couple of very little things that I shall mention at the end.
A lot of my constituency casework—about 40%—relates to the Home Office and to the UK Border Agency, and many of the cases involve people who are here legitimately and who want to renew their visas. The process is simply not working, and we need to sort that out. All sorts of people are affected, including people who are working here and need to renew their visa in order to carry on doing their job, and people who came here as spouses and need to renew their status to be able to continue to live with their wife, husband or partner.
People can choose how to apply to renew their visas. They can apply by post, or in person after booking an appointment online. The applications are not free. The minimum cost is about £300 and the maximum is about £2,000, so people are making a significant contribution. Both application systems have problems, and they are causing my constituents, and those of many other colleagues, severe inconvenience. It is possible to use the premium same-day service, and it costs between £300 and £400 more to apply in person than to apply by post.
My constituents tell me that the system often releases new appointments at midnight, which is inconvenient, and because everyone logs on to the website at midnight, the system regularly crashes. The website also has basic technical errors. One constituent, a friend of mine named Selcuk Akinci, found that it was offering appointments only for 2020, which was not particularly useful. There are rarely any appointments available within two months, although that fact is not advertised anywhere. Most people, quite reasonably, think about applying to extend their stay only one or two months before their current visa is due to expire. Many therefore find that they cannot get an appointment before their leave expires. They then have to apply by post, which often means a six-month wait without being able to travel. People will not have expected that, and it can cause real problems for them, especially if they need to visit family regularly or if their work involves frequent travel. This problem can often prevent people from doing their job, if they need to travel for work.
Appointments can be made at any of the seven public inquiry offices in the UK. The system tells people where the next available appointment is, and they might find that they have to go from south London to Glasgow or Birmingham. Many people have to travel a long way for their appointment. When they arrive, even if they have booked the premium same-day service, there is no guarantee that the application will be processed on the same day. If the UKBA decides that further checks are necessary, the application is taken out of the premium service queue and put into the postal applications queue, which means that it could take up to six months to process. There is no refund of the premium fee in those circumstances.
People have no way of knowing whether their case will require further checks, which can be triggered by many different factors. There can be genuinely good reasons for carrying out such checks. For example, the person’s name might generate a hit on the police national computer, they might have used a different identity in the past, or they might have no leave to remain at the time of their application. However, further checks are sometimes triggered for bad reasons. Whatever the reason, the person concerned is not allowed to talk to anyone. They are taken out of the premium application process and told that their case has gone into the postal system and that they have to go home and wait, perhaps for more than three months. The case is placed in a kind of “cannot process it today” queue and sent away to a casework centre.
Cases are sometimes referred for further checks for illegitimate reasons. My senior caseworker, James Harper, deals with such cases every day in our Bermondsey office, and I deal with them often. For example, a person’s records might not have been properly updated on the UKBA database. In a recent case, a Ghanaian couple travelled all the way to Birmingham so that the husband could apply to extend his marriage visa in the normal way. However, Mr Kusi’s records had not been properly updated on the Home Office system to show his existing leave to remain. It therefore appeared to the officers at the inquiry office that he had no right to apply, even though he did, and the couple were turned away and left with only three days to apply by post before his existing visa expired. The couple pleaded with the officers to ring the visa office that had dealt with the original application, but were told that that was not possible and that they would have to leave. This is really unacceptable.
In a further case, an Iranian woman in my constituency was applying to extend her stay as the wife of a British citizen. Her case was referred for further checks because it was believed that she did not have high enough English language test scores: level 4.0 on the IELTS—International English Language Testing System—scale in reading and writing. In fact, this was a misinterpretation of the rules, as level 4.0 is required only in speaking and listening. My constituent qualified and her case was sent on, but it was subject to a long delay; only after we intervened did the UKBA admit that an error had been made and then refund the additional premium fee.
Christmas Adjournment
Nigel Evans Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered matters to be raised before the forthcoming Adjournment.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Beautifully moved. Merry Christmas, Mr Amess. There will be a time limit of eight minutes on Back-Bench speeches in the debate. My guidance to the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) is that, although the clock will not be put on him, his time limit is 10 minutes.
Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority
Nigel Evans Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I point out that the motion—I am sure that every Member has read it—is a narrow motion.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
On the subject of pay and conditions, and the transparency and probity that IPSA is responsible for upholding in this place, does my hon. Friend deprecate, as I do, the fact that despite a very strong lead from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Government, IPSA set its face against that policy in paying its interim chief executive, through a tax-avoiding personal service company, the sum of £39,000?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I said that this is a very narrow motion, and that is certainly way outside its scope.
Mr Jackson
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The comments that I made relate specifically to the duties and responsibilities of board members, which are to protect the probity, honesty and transparency of this place, and I would respectfully submit that that is in order.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I am grateful to you for challenging the order of the Chair. I said that it was outside the scope of the motion, and it is.
Mr Chope
May I invite my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to address the issue of whether there is going to be an induction programme for the new members of the board? As a modernising House, we have induction programmes for new Members of Parliament and I think that they have been well received. I see that my right hon. Friend is nodding. Although I know that it is strictly outside the scope of the motion to say that the existing chairman should be invited to attend such an induction programme, perhaps he could be invited—even though it is three years late—so that those who sit on the independent board can be informed about our work.