Disability History Month

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. As many people know, I am an ear, nose, and throat surgeon, with a special interest in hearing loss and ear diseases. That has been my life’s work, so I declare a big interest in this subject.

Deafness and hearing loss are invisible disabilities, but they are common—very common. They affect 70% of people over the age of 70, and 40% of people over the age of 40. Hearing aids are free on the NHS, but millions of people who could benefit from them do not have one, and many people who do have one simply do not use it—perhaps up to 5 million people. Perhaps a million of our fellow citizens cannot hear conversational speech, with many unable to contact their GP or use health services. Many deaf people do not work because the adjustments that could and should be made for them are not made. Deaf awareness among employers is insufficient.

I will talk a little about earwax. Occluding earwax, which causes hearing loss and is also caused by hearing aid moulds, is a huge issue for deaf people. The services in this country to remove it are very patchy. Before I became an MP, I was the chair of a deaf association in East Anglia, a charity that helped thousands of deaf people and had contracts from the NHS to provide ear care and hearing aids. I believe that charity is a model of community-based, not-for-profit NHS ear care to the population that could be widely copied. The charity has mobile services for rural locations and can provide ear care in residential settings with one-stop provision of wax removal, audiology and hearing aids, keeping people communicating, connected and able to work.

I also commend the work of many excellent larger charities set up to help people with hearing loss, some of which were here in Parliament this week. The RNID estimates that the cost of hearing loss to the economy is £30 billion a year due to loss of earnings, reduced quality of life and increased social care costs. The solution to much of the problem is obvious: hearing aids must be just about the most useful disability aid ever invented. Let us do what we can in this Parliament to support our NHS audiology and hearing aid services. After all, most of us will need them one day.

Let us not ignore deafness when we talk about disability. I read about a young person with hearing loss who said:

“One of the worst things is when people say something I miss…they say ‘oh it doesn’t matter’. It probably didn’t matter to them at the time, but it makes me feel I don’t matter.”

I think that matters to all of us.