Health, Social Care and Security
Debate between Philippa Whitford and Anna Soubry(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, and my congratulations, too, on your re-election.
I echo what the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) said when highlighting the fact that across all four NHS services the biggest challenge is the increased demand from an ageing population, with huge and growing workforce challenges. That has been aggravated by Brexit. There has been a 95% drop in nursing applications from the EU, along with a prolonged 1% pay cap. Members have rightly paid tribute to the emergency services after the terrorist attacks and the appalling Grenfell fire. It is now time that we met the rhetoric with a decent salary.
It is a bit strange to combine a debate on security with a debate on health, but when I made my maiden speech two years ago during a Queen’s Speech debate I highlighted to the Government the fact that their first priority was the security of their citizens, not by replacing weapons of mass destruction but by providing the security that comes from knowing that there is a roof over your head and food on the table. It also matters what kind of roof it is. The people of Grenfell were failed by local government scrimping and saving on cladding and sprinklers, and by successive UK Governments, who did not act on previous warnings. The issue of cladding and sprinklers was first raised as a result of a fatal fire in my constituency in 1999, when a disabled man lost his life. That was 18 years ago.
Anna Soubry
Does the hon. Lady not agree that it is absolutely imperative in the wake of this terrible tragedy that we wait to establish the facts? One fact that we know is that the local authority had almost a quarter of a billion pounds in reserves, which is a good indication that it was not about scrimping and scraping. There may well have been other serious failures, but we await the full public inquiry, and we will then establish all the facts.
Dr Whitford
I am not saying that the local authority was scrimping and saving because it did not have money; it was because it was not spending the money. It used cheap panels and it did not put in sprinklers. Some 600-plus buildings across London and England are covered in panels that clearly contain flammable materials. We hear from Camden that fire doors were missing, despite millions of pounds having been spent. As Ben Okri says in his poem, there has been a focus on surface and appearance rather than on the substance of such buildings and the protection of people who live in them.
Dr Whitford
The hon. Gentleman may feel that my remarks are premature with regard to Grenfell, but they are not when it comes to Lakanal, Irvine or other terrible fires that were clearly shown to relate to cladding and where sprinklers could have made a difference.
We have been repeatedly warned over the past 18 years and we have not taken action. The people in Grenfell died not only because of fire regulations, but because of inequality. They lived in the richest borough in the richest city, yet they were among the most poor and vulnerable. That tower stands like a black monolith shadowing the whole city and this place. The people in it were not well served.
We see people dying in Grenfell, suddenly—the drama and the horror. Yet people die of inequality, poverty and deprivation all the time. There is a 20-year gap in longevity between the richest and poorest, both in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy. Some 1,400 children under 15 die every year as a direct result of poverty—that is like the roof of a secondary school collapsing on them every year. If that happened, surely we would take action.
Anna Soubry
I echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison): I have a lot of respect for most of what the hon. Lady says. However, does she agree that no one side in this place has an exclusive hold on the moral things that guide us? All of us come into this place to make life better for all our constituents. The eradication of poverty runs deep to the roots of conservatism as it does elsewhere in this House.
Dr Whitford
If the right hon. Lady had listened to what I was saying, she would have heard me say “UK Governments”. I talked about a period of 18 years, which involves not one but repeated Governments, who have been complacent and not taken action.
The children who die because they are born into poverty die of low birthweight, chronic illness, suicide, road traffic accidents and—poignantly—house fires. Children who live in poverty suffer from hunger, malnutrition, cold and damp houses, and chronic illnesses. They lose their chance to succeed at school and to have the life opportunities that a lot of us take for granted.
The number of children living in poverty is now approaching 4 million and is expected to reach 5 million by the end of this decade; that is an indictment on everyone in this House. On average, 28% of UK children live in poverty, but that average hides the inequality across the UK. There are wards in the north of England where the figure reaches the high 40s—nearly half of the children in such areas grow up in poverty. Those children will not have decent life chances—and if we think that money is being saved, we are wrong: we will be picking up the pieces later in their lives when they end up with addictions or in the criminal justice system.
We need to tackle the situation now. The biggest driver of ill health is poverty and the biggest driver of poverty is the decisions that we make. We had welfare Acts in 2012 and 2015, and that was when child poverty stopped falling and started to rise. We need to change the situation. As the Prime Minister keeps saying, we have a responsibility to every single person across this country, and that includes children.