High Cost Credit Bill

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Lyn Brown

Friday 12th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

I think that most hon. Members would recognise that the annual percentage rate—I will come on to APR later—that Wonga charges, which has just gone up to approximately 5,500%, is entirely inappropriate.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Is it not a fact that loans are rarely £150 over a two-week period? The people accessing loans at high interest rates will have already been turned down elsewhere for credit with lower interest rates. A typical loan for Wonga et al is not £150 for just two weeks; the problem is that they roll over and over.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I intend to come on to the issue of rollovers later.

NHS Reorganisation

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Lyn Brown

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I want to focus on one specific part of the Government’s plans, which has already been mentioned by a couple of my hon. Friends and by the former Secretary of State for Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson). It is the funding of our children’s hospitals.

I am fortunate enough to have at the heart of my constituency Sheffield children’s hospital, which is a centre of excellence for the region and for the country. It offers pioneering services in trauma and orthopaedics, it is a regional centre for the whole of the north of England for burns injuries and the principal treatment centre for South Yorkshire for childhood cancers, and its metabolic bone service is accessed from across the UK. It does a superb job treating some of our most critically ill children and I want to use one example to bring to light the importance of its work.

A young girl was left unconscious on the streets of Derbyshire with devastating brain injuries after being hit by a car. She was 13 years old. She was transferred to the hospital’s intensive care unit, where a scan revealed the full extent of her head injuries. She was seen to have diffuse axonal injury, one of the most devastating types of traumatic brain injury and, as the Secretary of State will know, a major cause of long-term unconsciousness. She was moved to the children’s hospital’s neurosciences unit, which has specialist equipment to support her rehabilitation and expert consultant neurosurgeons—these are crucial points. Her mother said:

“The doctors and nurses were wonderful and really did go above the call of duty to provide the very best care and treatment. The ward manager was like a second mum to her. The team cared for her like a member of their own family. She is now back at home, relearning simple things such as walking and talking. There is a long road ahead, but if it was not for the Children’s Hospital she wouldn’t be here.”

Such cases involve staff from many disciplines and services to ensure that the patient makes the best recovery possible. Neurosciences are one of the trust’s flagship services, treating children who have suffered brain injuries or who have other brain conditions, spinal cord conditions, diseases such as meningitis or conditions such as epilepsy. The intensive care unit is part of the hospital’s state-of-the-art critical care facility for children and is situated alongside high-dependency and neonatal surgical units, meaning that all the critical care services are in close proximity.

Such services come at a cost, however, and I have always understood that that is why we have had a top-up tariff to pay for the extra staff and the additional support needed to provide that specialist care to very young patients. We now understand that the Government plan—they might be in discussions, but we understand that this is the plan—to cut the tariff to less than a third of its current value.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that puts a whole new slant on the saying, “Women and children first”?