Budget Resolutions

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Jackie Doyle-Price

Thursday 7th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank my hon. Friend for that observation. I hesitate to agree with him definitively, because I just do not have the evidence, but I strongly agree with the basic point that we should not reach straight for the chemical solution. We should look at other solutions that are clinically much better for people, including the social prescribing to which he refers.

I could highlight many issues in the Budget that I know would be welcomed in Redditch. I have campaigned long and hard for the Alex hospital and the Conservatives have delivered an £18.8 million operating complex, now open, ensuring that we are making progress in cutting the waiting lists. People can get operations closer to home and can get home quicker, and they can have more lifesaving surgery closer to their homes. I was glad to see the emphasis yesterday on productivity gains in the NHS, as well as pouring in money. Constituents know that healthcare is expensive and valuable. Staff time and public resources must be properly stewarded and not wasted.

Yesterday, there was an unexpected but welcome announcement—a delightful one—by the Chancellor: £5 million to spend in Redditch on cultural projects. That will be massively welcomed in our area, where the arts play a huge part in our local life. I will talk to local and community groups about how we can best use that. We have plenty of potential destinations, including the Palace theatre, Arts in Redditch, our new library complex—also boosted by Government levelling-up funding—and many more.

I am particularly proud of the record of my local council, which is led by Councillor Matt Dormer, who instigated a council house building programme that has delivered 19 council houses. I always appreciate the fact that we need to go further, but that is a significant move because they are the first true council houses built in Redditch for 29 years. For all the years that it was in control, Labour did not build a single council house, even though they are much needed.

[Dame Jackie Doyle-Price]

Hear, hear!

Housing Infrastructure: Essex

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Jackie Doyle-Price

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Rachel Maclean)]

It is a huge pleasure to respond to my former colleague in the Home Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), and if you will indulge me for one moment, Dr Huq, to congratulate her from the Dispatch Box on her recent honour. She is now a dame, which is incredibly well deserved. I also thank her for her kind words about my work as a Minister. If I am a good Minister, it is because I learned it all from her. I saw her work as the Home Secretary, which is definitely the most difficult job in Government.

Back to matters connected to Witham, we share my right hon. Friend’s desire for the housing and planning system to work for absolutely everybody. We want to make this a country of home ownership. We are the party of home ownership, and we completely agree with her that we want to enable young people to buy a home of their own, and for families to have peace of mind that where they sleep is safe. Housing is at the heart of our efforts to level up growth across the country, including in Essex. That is the power of levelling up: it sees no community left behind. Essex is a thriving and growing area that contributes to the Treasury, as my right hon. Friend pointed out. It is one of the fastest growing parts of the country.

The Government are standing behind the ambitions of Essex and enabling it to unlock even more potential for its residents and people who would like to live there. That is why we have invested significantly in the renewal of town centres across the county. She mentioned a few of them, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). One example is the £85 million investment that we are putting into Harlow, Colchester and at Grays and Tilbury in the Thames estuary through the towns fund. A further £80 million will be invested in four levelling-up fund projects in Southend, Harlow, Colchester and Tendring. Essex is also the only county set to benefit from the creation of not one but two freeports: Thames Freeport in the south of the county and Freeport East in the north-east. I know that those will be huge economic drivers for the county.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham talked in huge detail about all the knotty issues connected to the planning system, and I fear that I will detain the House for too long if I elaborate at great length, so I will pick out a few key points. I will, however, happily respond to her invitation and meet with her, and with some of the groups that she mentioned, such as the all-party parliamentary group for the east of England, to discuss the matter in more detail. She is right in her central observation that we cannot do this in our Department alone; we have to bring together all the different levers of Government—Government funding, the Treasury, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and transport, as she specifically mentioned.

My right hon. Friend expressed the frustration of her constituents when they see development that is not in line with the local plan. That is why we are working to strengthen the role of local plans in the system through all the measures in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. That is absolutely right, because residents feel frustration when local plans are not in place, or cannot be enacted. Speculative development then comes in, leaving local communities feeling ignored. Communities in Witham are very fortunate to have such an effective champion, so their concerns are being heard here. That is why we are making changes to the planning system through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, including to strengthen the role played by neighbourhood plans, which are a valuable means for communities to shape their surroundings.

The national planning policy framework includes important protections for neighbourhood plans where speculative applications have been submitted and conflict with the plan. For instance, if a local planning authority cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of housing sites, which is currently required, a neighbourhood plan may benefit from protections. We are consulting on proposed changes to the paragraph 14 protections in the framework, which, as my right hon. Friend will know, will extend the time period that qualifying neighbourhood plans are afforded under paragraph 14 from two to five years, in recognition of the time it takes to produce a neighbourhood plan. We propose removing the requirement that a local planning authority has at least a three-year supply of deliverable housing sites and that its housing delivery is at least 45% of what was required over the previous three years. That will enable more neighbourhood plans to benefit from those protections, and I hope her residents will find that change reassuring.

The changes will empower local communities and place them at the heart of the planning system, and will remove barriers to building more homes. I will make a few remarks on the five-year land supply because, again, my right hon. Friend has effectively said how controversial that can be and how it can lead to developments coming forward in a way that does not come under the support of local areas. We propose removing the requirement for local planning authorities to maintain a five-year housing supply when they have an up-to-date local plan. We intend to make changes to simplify the policy as well as to clarify the use of historical over-supply in five-year housing land supply calculations. We will come forward with the outcome of our consultation analysis. That will provide yet more incentives for local authorities to work closely with their communities to agree local plans.

It is sometimes reported that we have dropped house building targets. That is not the case. I assure colleagues that we are absolutely committed to building the homes this country needs—the 300,000 homes that we need to be building. We are delivering them through a plan-led system with the consent of local communities that commands the support of Parliament, our colleagues and local democracy, which is at the heart of what we are doing.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I welcome the emphasis on local decision making—we all share that sentiment. The proposed Purfleet development in my constituency will result in 2,500 new homes on the River Thames, 45 minutes from the City of London, and they will sell like hot cakes. That is supported by the Government through the housing infrastructure fund and the development has been gifted the public land on which to build. The community wants it and fully supports the planning application, but National Highways is blocking it. What can we do to ensure a proper joined-up approach from Government so that the homes we need are delivered, because some other Departments are getting in the way?

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend raises an issue that I do not have any personal knowledge of, and it would be inappropriate for me to comment on a planning application. However, if she will allow me, I will investigate that issue and see what more I can do to unblock it in my capacity as planning Minister. If she is referring to the housing infrastructure fund, I may be able to assist her.

I will finish by raising the issue of the class Q permitted development raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham. The part 12 class Q committed development right permits development by or on behalf of the Crown for up to 12 months in response to an emergency. There are two key considerations. It must be an emergency defined as an event or situation that threatens serious damage to human welfare in a place, the environment of a place or the security of the United Kingdom. To make use of the right, the land must be Crown land. I am aware, as she is, that the Home Office has sought to use the right to provide temporary accommodation for asylum seekers. The House will need to forgive me because this is a live issue and it is subject to live legal proceedings. I therefore cannot comment on it due to fear of prejudicing this issue. My right hon. Friend has rightly brought the views of her constituents to this place, and I and other Ministers have taken note of them.

I would like to finish by thanking my right hon. Friend. It was an enormous pleasure and privilege for me to work with her for an all too brief period in the Home Office. It is a huge pleasure now to be working with her and other colleagues collaboratively to support her ambitions to ensure that Essex remains a fantastic place to live and work, and to be represented by her.

Question put and agreed to.

Violence Against Women and Girls: Police Response

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Jackie Doyle-Price

Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I am delighted to answer questions put to me by the hon. Lady and I look forward to many more opportunities to do so, but I must start by robustly rejecting her central accusation, which I think is that the Government have done nothing. May I remind her that the Government commissioned the report precisely because this is a priority for this Government? This Government have delivered a number of measures to keep women safer, whether they are legislative measures, funding to essential services to support women, toughening up laws or passing laws to keep more perpetrators behind bars.

Let me point to a couple of key parts of the strategy. We have appointed someone with a lifetime of experience to work with us; following the report published only last week, I am looking forward to working closely with Zoë Billingham. I will take forward what she comes out with very seriously to ensure that the police drive forward her recommendations.

Make no mistake: this issue is a central priority for me. I have been in my role for three days, but the hon. Lady will know that it is a priority for me and for the Home Office as a whole.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

There will not be a single woman in this House who has not been the victim of dehumanising behaviour from men. As my hon. Friend says, addressing that will require societal change, but we are increasingly seeing that women’s first exposure to that violent behaviour is in schools. What steps will she take to challenge the Department for Education to make sure that we have conversations about consent and tackling entitlement at the earliest possible time?

[Rachel Maclean]

I completely agree about the important issue of early intervention, working with families and young people and tackling the root cause of these horrific crimes. That is why, as part of the violence against women and girls action plan, we have commissioned a significant public communications campaign that will tackle many of the issues that my hon. Friend addresses, but it is also vital that I work with my colleagues in the DFE and that we ensure we are working in schools as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Jackie Doyle-Price

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

T2. Provision of in vitro fertilisation in Redditch has been reduced from two cycles to one. I warmly welcome the work that the Minister has done to increase equity across the country, but what more can she do to address the postcode lottery in this and other areas, such as hip and knee surgery?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jackie Doyle-Price)]

My hon. Friend is right: the postcode lottery is not acceptable, and patients manage to get around it; my local clinical commissioning group, having funded three courses of IVF, has had to reduce that to two, because demand has doubled owing to the lack of provision in neighbouring CCGs. I have made it very clear that it is unacceptable for any CCG to offer no IVF cycles at all; I have given them that guidance.

Alexandra Hospital, Redditch

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Jackie Doyle-Price

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jackie Doyle-Price)]

I really thank my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) for the passionate, articulate pitch she made on behalf of her constituents and the health services that they deserve, because obviously we all deserve good-quality health services. As the Minister responsible, it is my job to give challenge to ensure that we are delivering the best services we can. Obviously, they are not always as good as we would like them to be, but I can reassure my hon. Friend of my determination to make sure that we continue with the constant campaign for improvements, and for the best possible services. All our constituents, as taxpayers, are paying for those services, and they all deserve an equivalent service.

I thank my other hon. Friends from Worcestershire—my hon. Friends the Members for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) and for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston)—for showing their support. The issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch raises are clearly of concern across the wider area. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) has also lobbied me about this, notwithstanding the wider interests that he has in this place.

My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch raised several important points and areas of concern, which I will seek to address. She raised a number of points about maternity services. She is absolutely right that we must ensure that we have the safest possible environment in which people have their children. Obviously, having safer births is very much a national priority, so that issue is of particular concern to me. As my hon. Friend is aware, the decision to move maternity and children’s services from the Princess Alexandra Hospital to the Worcestershire Royal was implemented in 2017, and it was clearly controversial—many changes are, and this is no exception. That is why we need to continue to give appropriate scrutiny—my hon. Friend is absolutely right to do that—to ensure that we are serving all our constituents as well as we possibly can. She is also right to say that challenges remain. The trust continues to be scrutinised closely by the Care Quality Commission and in this House.

My hon. Friend asks how long we have to wait. Quite often, changes can be achieved very quickly. Sometimes, however, whether cultural or behavioural changes, they take much longer than any of us are happy with. I say to her that in my experience, constant scrutiny by the CQC does deliver results. I encourage her to continue her discussions with local interest groups and the CQC to ensure that all the constant scrutiny and challenge drives improvement. I do not know how many times I have said it in this place, but sunlight is the best disinfectant. Accountability will drive improvement and change.

All that said, we should recognise that there has been some important progress in the service at the trust. The CQC looked at the maternity in-patient survey for February 2017, which found that the Worcestershire Royal rated well against other maternity services in all aspects of care and scored among the best in the country in partner engagement and involvement in the appropriate length of stay in hospital. In addition, following the reconfiguration of services the neonatal rota is now fully staffed and recruitment is going in the right direction; the maternity doctors’ rota is fully staffed; and the trust has avoided a lot of the cancellation of antenatal or gynaecology clinics that was previously seen. I know that people will be concerned because of the historical record, but the scrutiny of the CQC shows that there are improvements.

According to the most recent CQC report, maternity and gynaecology services at the Alex are rated “good” for caring and “responsive” and “requires improvement” for other domains. Worcestershire Royal is rated “requires improvement” for safety and “good” in all other categories. The CQC recognised that the Worcestershire Royal’s maternity service was especially caring and responsive to parents who had suffered a pregnancy loss, such as miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death, and was committed to continually improving the care and services it provided for bereaved parents. That shows that there are some areas where the leadership are making an impact, but we clearly need to keep the situation under review.

In October 2018, the trust’s professional development team won the workforce team of the year award at the prestigious Nursing Times awards, which celebrate excellence in supporting the nursing and midwifery workforce. We congratulate them on that award. We should not be complacent, however. There is still very much more to do. I look forward to further discussions with my hon. Friend in the light of further investigations. We will do our best to support the entire community by making sure that performance is improved.

My hon. Friend raised the wider challenges facing the trust. It has been in special measures since December 2015. The latest CQC inspection judged the hospital as inadequate, with key concerns in urgent and emergency care, surgery and outpatients. I say again that scrutiny is the first catalyst to achieving improvement. It is worth noting that the trust achieved a “good” rating for the caring inspection domain in the latest CQC report, so in terms of patient experience there is clearly some improvement. However, nobody should be complacent about the scale of the task. As she says, her constituents really should not be expected to wait an undue length of time to achieve the quality of service that patients in other parts of the country receive.

I assure my hon. Friend that both the Government and national NHS bodies are committed to providing both the support and investment needed to help the trust make progress. I will be ensuring that we use our levers at a national level to give that appropriate challenge and support. Support currently in place for the trust includes a support package focusing on culture, risk and governance. That is very important. We always find, when a trust is going through the journey from requiring improvement to good, that leadership is crucial. I cannot overstate the importance of making sure that we are getting the right leaders in and mentoring them to deliver that. That support is crucial.

There is a quality improvement director, and there is a nurse retention collaborative programme to reduce turnover. There is a suggestion that that is starting to bear fruit. There will be emergency care support from the emergency care intensive support team and a peer support buddying arrangement with the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust. We have seen such buddying arrangements achieve real change, more than anything else by giving local leaders the confidence to be innovative and imaginative and really give additional challenge.

Local commissioners are closely involved in working with the trust to ensure that the quality of children’s and maternity services improves. Given the concerns my hon. Friend has expressed, I encourage her to engage with local commissioners to discuss how they are interpreting reviews of monthly divisional data and what they are doing to assure themselves of the quality of service. As a Minister, I can stand at the Dispatch Box and make promises, but ultimately I rely on local commissioners to do their bit to give challenge too. In giving me challenge, I encourage her also to give them challenge and have those discussions. The spirit of co-operation across the whole system is there to achieve improvements.

My hon. Friend rightly made her pitch for her constituents’ share of the increased funding for the NHS. While improvement is about more than just money, investment is clearly part of the picture. We will make the appropriate investments to support the trust. Recent examples of investments we have made are an award of £3.96 million for a breast imaging improvement plan, which will improve breast screening at the Alex; the development of a maternity hub to serve the Redditch area; and £3 million for a link bridge between the main hospital building and an outer building to be in place for the winter to assist with winter pressures.

I am confident that this will not be the last discussion my hon. Friend and I have about her local health services. I am grateful to her for bringing her concerns to me and putting them on the record. As I say, sunlight is the best disinfectant when it comes to inspection and challenge on the ground, but the opportunity to raise things here on the Floor of the House gives a signal to the entire health system that where we think things are not good enough and need to improve, we will not be shy in our determination to achieve that improvement.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the Minister for her comments and share her view that sunlight is a great disinfectant. May I press her? We have been undergoing this journey for four years, which is a long time. I had not been a Member of Parliament before and have never seen a trust turn around, so I would be grateful for some indication of how long she thinks it is reasonable for us to wait, with me as the local MP explaining to people, “You have to keep waiting.” Has she any examples of how it can happen and at what pace?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I will answer my hon. Friend’s question, but I will answer a different one too. She asks how long it is reasonable to wait. It is not reasonable to have to wait at all, because we should be delivering services of an appropriate quality. How long will people have to wait? We should be entirely honest when an institution requires improvement. She is right that four years seems like a long time. When my local trust went into special measures, it came out within two years, and the crucial ingredient was getting the right leader in at the top. Other trusts wait longer because other challenges can come into play that mean they are judged to require improvement—some trusts still struggle to get the right personnel, for example. We need to look in detail at exactly where the weaknesses are. My challenge to the system is to come up with a good plan to help get out of it. I would expect the buddying system with the Wolverhampton trust to start to deliver that more effectively, because there is no better driver of speed than external challenge.

With that in mind, I would like to close this excellent debate. The points made here should be considered very seriously by the local health system.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Jackie Doyle-Price

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that. She is right to do so. We are aware of some of the specific issues in her constituency, and I look forward to visiting and taking up some of the discussions directly.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

The Secretary of State has been kind enough to visit Worcestershire Royal Hospital, which serves people in my constituency. He saw for himself how small the emergency department is there. With £20 billion going into the NHS, does he agree that there is a good opportunity to look again at returning services to Redditch—in particular, the maternity and A&E departments, which have been removed?

Social Care

Debate between Rachel Maclean and Jackie Doyle-Price

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman; I am always looking for solutions. He is absolutely right that if we can look after our own wellbeing—both physical and mental—more effectively, the need for care will diminish. That is another reason why we need to have this public debate. Like the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), the hon. Gentleman has mentioned sleep-ins. It is a big issue, but we are working closely with the sector to make sure that we can address it.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I am currently caring for my 80-year-old mum who has dementia and lives on her own many hundreds of miles away from me. I pay tribute to the fantastic support she receives from the Cumbria services—it is excellent and it reassures me, when I am standing here, that she is being looked after.

My experience of door-knocking during the election demonstrated strongly that the public do not understand this issue. Dementia patients in particular are not able to understand how care can be funded. When I spoke to people from the Alzheimer’s Society in Redditch, they welcomed the focus in our manifesto on this difficult issue. Will the Minister also comment on the fact that countries across the world face a similar challenge? This is really not about who is in power or in government; it is a feature of ageing societies. That is why we must look at it in the round.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend is right. I mentioned that local authorities are very keen for us to find a solution to this problem, but it is the Alzheimer’s lobby that is keener than anyone. At the moment, one in 10 people faces long-term care bills. Therefore, if we are looking at an individual’s risk, making financial provision is not necessarily something that they will do, so we do need a solution. The one in 10 people who face long-term care costs generally do face them as a consequence of dementia and the costs are very significant. That is exactly what we are trying to tackle by introducing a cap on the overall costs. That is why it is important that we all get involved and why the Alzheimer’s lobby is so keen that we establish cross-party consensus.

My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. The fact is that over the past 50 years, our lifestyles have changed significantly. Looking at my family, everybody lives within half a mile of each other, so as we get older it is very easy for the family to pick up caring responsibilities and share them about. I live 300 miles away from them. That is increasingly the pattern. Like her, when I knocked on doors during the election, I saw people in their late 80s whose families were living many miles away. That is something that we have failed to address over decades, and we need to address it now.