G8 Summit on Dementia

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Huw Irranca-Davies

Thursday 28th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I am delighted to speak in this debate on behalf of many of my constituents from all areas who have asked me to attend, listen and contribute. I will focus in particular on Wales and Wales and the G8, as well as on the importance of collaboration, but I want to thank the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), not only for securing the debate but for championing the cause continually over a number of years. I also join them in praising the Prime Minister for putting this front and centre of the G8 summit. It is a worthy ambition, but as the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam set out, doing so has raised aspirations over what will be delivered. I sometimes feel for the Minister because he repeatedly faces people saying that we must do more on treatment, care, prevention and research on many conditions, but putting dementia four square at the head of the Government’s ambitions for the G8 summit shows that there is a level of desire for some real outcomes, not least of which should be long-term strategy and the co-ordination of spending internationally to make the most of it and see what more can be put into the pot. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned the ambition. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles spoke about turning the spotlight on to AIDS and HIV in the 1980s and 1990s, which really did make an unprecedented step change because there was an international focus on treatment and care. Massive interventions were made in previous decades on cancer treatment, and they had the same effect. There is a desire across the international community, especially given the opportunity provided by the G8, to have that same impetus. It is not simply an issue of spending; it is an issue of real focus and relentless drive on everything from prevention to treatment, care and research.

In Wales more than 45,000 people now have dementia, and that figure is forecast to increase to almost 60,000 by 2021. Hon. Members may be interested to know that in Wales only 38.5% have received formal diagnosis of their condition. That is lower than in other parts of the UK, which is interesting. There is good work going on within Wales. The Welsh Government published back in 2011 the national dementia vision for Wales, setting out their commitment to supporting research. The Welsh Government have also pledged to support research in dementia cause, cure and care. They offer funding opportunities to researchers who want to undertake research into dementia.

In the light of my intervention on the Minister’s speech, what is he doing to ensure that knowledge is disseminated well not only internationally but in Wales and England and other regions of the UK, that best practice is shared, and that research collaboration is streamlined properly? What is being done to co-ordinate at a government level in different parts of the UK work on dementia priorities? It would be a tragedy in times of stretched spending if there was duplication and a waste of effort all the way from social care through to research and so on. Let us make sure that it is all lined up in the right way. That is what the G8 summit can do on the international agenda as well.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I understand that around the world some $40 billion has been spent on dementia research, but all the drug trials have failed. The emphasis surely should be far more on prevention. Professor Smith, who was mentioned earlier, maintains that Alzheimer’s could be cut by a quarter. If he is right on that subject, that would mean massive savings on health care costs in Wales and across the rest of the country.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, which was also touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles. It is a startling fact that 0.1% of funding goes into prevention. Surely there has to be greater emphasis on that, because the outcomes of prevention are so beneficial.

I am sure that the Minister is aware of what is going on in Wales. The Welsh Government’s National Institute for Social Care and Health Research funds and manages the research activity in Wales. The total spend last year was £75.7 million, of which £3.54 million was spent on biomedical research project funding. Just over 15% of the budget was awarded to researchers working on projects directly relevant to neurology research, including mental health. The same organisation awarded the Wales dementias and neurodegenerative diseases research network £743,000 over five years for its research. It is about knowing what is going on not only in Wales and different parts of the UK, but internationally so that we can co-ordinate and make the optimum use of regional, national and international spend on prevention, care, treatment and research.

My final point—it is probably one for another debate—is that we cannot divorce the strategic matters from the operational ones, and that means looking at the huge stretch in social care. There are real and intense pressures on social care, and not just on resourcing, but on staffing, staffing expertise and the necessary reform of long-term social care funding. That is probably a subject for another day, but the reality is that there are pressures on the ground affecting many people with different types of dementia and their families. There is real anxiety.

SMEs (Public Sector Procurement)

Debate between Philip Hollobone and Huw Irranca-Davies

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

In one moment I shall call the first speaker in the debate. I can confidently predict that after Mr Irranca-Davies has made his opening speech, I will not be setting a time limit. The next speakers will be Andrew Bingham and Iain McKenzie, and we will then see who else turns up. I shall, however, call the Front-Bench spokespeople at no later than 3.30 pm, and perhaps sooner.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I admire your confidence, Mr Hollobone; I have been known to wax eloquent for days, but on this occasion I will be happy to allow others to contribute as well.

This is a welcome opportunity to debate an important subject. There is cross-party interest in ensuring that procurement works far better for small and medium-sized enterprises than it has done in the past. The Government here are doing work on that, and I will refer to some of the innovative and pioneering work of the Welsh Government. I also want to deal with some of the myths about why we cannot do more—not least, those about the European Union.

I know that props are not allowed in this or any other parliamentary Chamber, but I have in front of me an exposé from Farmers Weekly, which ran a good campaign called “Get Better, Get British”. We know that over many years, if not decades, British farmers have been asked, often quite rightly, to invest heavily in the highest standards of animal welfare, environmental measures and so on, but doing that brings costs. In the UK, we now have British buying standards, and the question is this: how do we translate those standards in food produce into being represented by SMEs that can supply to local government, the NHS, the Ministry of Defence and others? That does not seem to be happening.

If I may, I will briefly plug the Farmers Weekly “Get Better, Get British” campaign, which identified that one in 10 NHS hospital trusts sources 50% or less of its food from Britain. The campaign also points out that the cost of feeding a patient varies between £14.40 and £2.11 per day across trusts. Most people would think, “We can see how you could use good ingredients and get good nutritional standards by spending £14.40, sourcing, where the standards are appropriate, locally and regionally from British farmers.”

However, hospital spending on food goes down to as low as £2.11 per day. Most people would struggle to explain not simply the divergence in the figures but how the nutrient value can be achieved with that little money, and how there can be procurement for SMEs within the locality and the region. The NHS trusts at the lower end of the spend range would be performing a magic trick if they were pulling that off.

In addition, according to the campaign, 93% of NHS trusts do not carry out any traceability checks on their food. We know that, despite what I said earlier about British standards within food—the British buying standards and so on, of which the Government are a keen proponent—the standards do not apply to hospitals and NHS trusts. Hospital food does not have to meet British farm-assured standards, for example, that are signalled by the Red Tractor logo that everyone knows and in which many trust. That is a practical illustration of the job of work that has to be done. I am focusing on food in this debate, but we could go right across the spectrum—many producer organisations are SMEs. SMEs are where the bulk of our employment, innovation and entrepreneurship is, and they need a fair opportunity to get into procurement.

Often, the argument has been that we cannot specify British products—or products from Cornwall, Devon, Wales or wherever—because we have to play by the EU and World Trade Organisation rules, but a lot of Welsh Government work over a number of years has shown clearly that that argument is unjustified.

Excellent work is being done by not only the Welsh Government but leading-edge people in Bangor university. Dermot Cahill leads on a procurement project at Bangor, which considers the legality of the issues and the technical implementation of more innovative approaches. He will point clearly to the fact that EU law is far more flexible than it is often given credit for. Something like 80% of procurement contracts fall outside EU legislation anyway, as far as their size and shape is concerned, so the excuse that we are bound by EU regulations when tendering contracts does not seem to apply to eight out of 10 of those contracts.

The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 is often held up as a reason why we have difficulty in applying local and regional procurement, particularly with SMEs, but although neither the Act nor EU law is pertinent here—perhaps the Minister can confirm that—the latter is often directly blamed.

The McClelland review in Wales produced a groundbreaking report. It found, on the basis of the best available legal advice and technical interpretations, that there was no evidence that EU law obligations were inhibiting procurement reform. We must remember, of course, that EU law itself promotes transparency, and that is something that is lacking at the moment. I do not say that to criticise the Government but to highlight the point that we have come to: despite everything I have just said, all of which is legally grounded within the McClelland report and the work of legal experts in academia in Wales and elsewhere, the UK is the highest user, at 55%, of the restricted procedure.

We know from experience that many other EU countries use an open procedure, which makes procurement opportunities far more visible to SMEs and allows them much more participation within tendering competitions and bids.