Health and Wellbeing Services: East of England

Debate between Richard Bacon and Priti Patel

Wednesday 1st March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Gentleman is right. For years, I have spoken about local healthcare provision. Practitioners know best, and it is not for central structures to dictate the needs of a local community. With that, there is the issue of access to services that matter so much. Dentistry has been controversial for too long. As a result, children are not accessing dentistry in the way they should, and health outcomes are absolutely shocking and appalling, particularly in young children.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate. I recently had a meeting with Dr Nick Stolls, who for 20 years ran the local dentistry committee in Norfolk and Suffolk and is now the professional lead for dentistry and wellbeing for the integrated care board. He described work done by the British Dental Association that points out that Norfolk is almost a dental desert, with no dentists able to take contracts, in some cases because of NHS England’s inflexibility. Does my right hon. Friend agree that reform is needed? Will she invite the Minister to agree that, as the British Dental Association said, fundamental reform of the NHS dental contract is urgently required to truly address the challenges that patients, dentists and the wider NHS are experiencing?

[Priti Patel]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. The British Dental Association has been pressing for reform probably for as long as I have been in Parliament, and I am very familiar with its case. My hon. Friend speaks very clearly about access and inflexibility. Importantly, if there is no flexibility in the system, there is no opportunity to provide services to meet local need accessibly and in a way that means people do not think they will be charged or subject to barriers to access.

East of England Ambulance Service

Debate between Richard Bacon and Priti Patel

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Mr. Howarth, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning. I thank Mr Speaker for granting me this debate and I thank all colleagues from across the region who are present today for their support in securing this debate and for pursuing this issue so assiduously.

We in the east of England are fortunate that two of our Members of Parliament are Ministers—the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), and the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb)—and both are well aware of this issue and have taken a great deal of interest in it. I put on the record my thanks in particular to my noble Friend Lord Howe, who has not only taken a strong interest in this subject, but helped facilitate many meetings with various bodies and the ambulance trust, and others, to explore this issue further. I know that this Minister will be well briefed on this matter and will be aware of the many and considerable concerns of colleagues in the region about the performance of the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust. She has shown strong interest in the health problems of my constituents and they will welcome her active involvement in helping to get this trust turned around.

This is a timely debate, following on from the scandalous revelations about the cover-up at the Care Quality Commission and the lack of responsibility and accountability from NHS directors. This trust has also experienced serious issues with accountability and mismanagement. It is suffering from the rotten culture that my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich recently mentioned.

Before I run through many of the problems with the trust encountered by my constituents and I, and the challenges, including delays, response times, damning reports from the CQC and from Dr Anthony Marsh, I should like to begin on a positive note and pay tribute to the outstanding work undertaken by the front-line staff. Despite many problems with the trust and its board, the front-line staff have earned admiration and a great deal of respect from all our constituents. They work in difficult conditions, all made worse by the failure of the trust’s board, but they continue to save lives daily and, of course, they help patients get better.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I support what my hon. Friend says about front-line staff; I have had personal experience of that in my own family in Norfolk. The paramedics that we encountered were outstanding. Does she share my puzzlement that some of the best staff in the call centre, whom I have sat next to, were bewildered by the systems they were asked to deal with? The problem is not the front-line staff at all, who are superb, but is basically one of leadership.

[Priti Patel]

Of course, my hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. This is about management and lack of leadership and direction from the trust.

I also pay tribute to the volunteer community first responders who support the trust. I think that all hon. Members will have met first responders in their constituencies. Let us be clear that those individuals sacrifice their own time to attend to ill and injured people quickly and remain with them until paramedics arrive. I have been briefed by the co-ordinator of first responders in my constituency and am more than impressed by the actions they take to save the lives of patients in emergency situations, dealing with a wide range of conditions, including heart attacks, allergic reactions and unconsciousness. This month, the trust announced that 30 more of these volunteers had completed their two-day training course. We should celebrate that achievement and praise those volunteers for their dedication to helping the ambulance service and, of course, all our constituents. Those front-line members put the needs of patients first.

With so much devotion and commitment from the front-line staff and volunteers, of course it is more than disappointing that they have been so badly let down by the trust’s board and management. Staff and volunteers deserve more support and strategic leadership from the trust. It is because the trust’s board has failed to demonstrate in the boardroom the high level of expertise, skill and devotion required that is displayed on the front line that the trust has been brought into such a dreadful state.

The biggest danger to patients, which many hon. Members have experienced, is delays getting ambulances to them. The Minister will know that this trust has failed lamentably to meet the A8 and A19 targets. Patients with life-threatening conditions are being made to wait longer than they should for paramedics to arrive.