World Autism Awareness Week
Roger Mullin Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Brendan O'Hara
The hon. Lady is absolutely correct, and it is something I will touch on in a moment.
Nearly 70% of people living with autism believe that the public see them as antisocial and almost one third have been asked to leave a public place for displaying behaviour associated with their condition. As a result, as the hon. Lady just alluded to, four in every five people living with autism in the UK feel isolated from society and half do not go out for fear of how people will react to their condition. As I said, those statistics make for pretty depressing reading and should force us all to look at our behaviour and question what we are doing, as a community, to our fellow citizens that makes them prefer social isolation to the way they are treated by the public, ourselves included.
It is not all bad news, however, as the NAS report also contains some good news. Its research shows that with greater knowledge and better understanding, the general public will behave with much greater empathy towards autistic people.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
One piece of good news is that many areas of Scotland are blessed with specialist speech and language therapists who well understand the condition and give particular support in schools, for example, to those with communication challenges.
Brendan O'Hara
I thank my hon. Friend, who is a specialist in this area, for his intervention, and I commend the great work done throughout Scotland—and, I assume and hope, the UK—in that field.
As I say, there is much to look forward to and to be hopeful about. We have to get the key messages out to the public, and those key messages are: people with autism might need extra time to process information and respond to people; people with autism can become anxious in social situations; people with autism can become anxious when faced with unexpected changes or unscheduled events; people with autism can often be hyper-sensitive to noise, light, smell or colour; and, you know what, when things get too much, people with autism can have a meltdown. Deal with it!
To conclude, I will quote from the Scottish Government’s autism strategy. Their vision is
“that individuals on the autism spectrum are respected, accepted and valued by their communities and have confidence in services to treat them fairly so that they are able to have meaningful and satisfying lives.”
That is something around which the entire House can unite.
Oral Answers to Questions
Roger Mullin Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alistair Burt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What has caused the confusion has been a definition of loss of liberty and dying in state detention that bears no relation to anyone’s common-sense understanding of the situation. Whatever new legislation is proposed by the Law Commission, it must meet the test of being much simpler, but it must also meet the legislative test of meaning what it says so that it does not get disrupted in the courts again.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
3. If he will make it his policy to eliminate hepatitis C.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
The UK Government take the issue of prevention, diagnosis and treatment of hepatitis very seriously. I can confirm that Public Health England and NHS England, together with key stakeholders, are continuing to develop a strategic approach to tackling hepatitis C, including plans which have now been published for treatment through operational delivery networks.
Roger Mullin
So far as I am aware, the Scottish Government provide treatment for all those with sensitive hepatitis C, including those infected with contaminated blood, and that transforms the lives of patients and reduces the risk of further infection in the population. Will the Minister commit to providing similar access to treatment in England?
Jane Ellison
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has provided guidance on the new drug, so the hon. Gentleman is right to highlight how effective the new treatments are compared with what was previously available. The NHS is in the process of rolling out its response. It has already treated a number of people, and there is a commitment to treat 10,000 people with those treatments in 2016-17. We are of course looking more widely at how we can tackle these issues, not least in the context of the tragedy of those infected with contaminated blood, which he has highlighted.
Community Pharmacies
Roger Mullin Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. As this is a health debate, I hope you will not consider it inappropriate if I start by saying that my thoughts are very much with Pauline Cafferkey. Earlier today she was hospitalised in Glasgow for the third time after contracting the Ebola virus. She is being flown to London for treatment at the Royal Free hospital. I am sure that the whole House will join me in wishing her the very best.
The debate has been extraordinarily good, so I extend my thanks to the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for this timely initiative on his part. I had a standard speech prepared, but such has been the debate that I would like instead to reflect on the contributions we have heard so far. Some might be wondering why a Scot representing a Scottish constituency is here at all. At least some people present have emailed me to say, “Even though this debate is not about Scotland, we would very much appreciate hearing a Scottish voice.” What I bring to the debate is shared by everybody present: a concern to maintain community pharmacies because they are a vital part of all our communities.
When making his compelling case, the hon. Member for St Ives said that patients see pharmacists as the first port of call. They do indeed. My own wife, Barbara, has a condition known as post-polio syndrome, which means that she has to take a wide variety of medicines that often vary. It is essential for her that she is able to go along and talk to a pharmacist as her condition varies over time. If she always had to burden a GP when she needed such advice, that would put an unnecessary strain on local GP services.
Rebecca Harris
A lot of people who go to community pharmacies in my constituency such as Bharat Patel’s and Asif’s go there with problems that they would not wish to burden their GP with, but that are a burden to themselves, so it is a great relief for them to be able to talk things through with someone. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that sometimes people go to a pharmacist because they would be uncomfortable or embarrassed to go to their local, perhaps single-handed, GP? They might want to ask for alcohol advice or about something that they find embarrassing, or perhaps a young girl might want to ask for emergency contraceptive but not wish to see the receptionist, who is her mother’s friend whom she has known all her life.
Roger Mullin
I agree entirely with the hon. Lady’s point. Moving on a little, the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Kevin Barron) described very clearly the long-term funding consequences of the Government’s proposals. As he indicated, they are planning to insert £8 billion more into the NHS while at the same time seeking to cut £170 million from pharmacies. The use of market forces to cull pharmacies does not really make any sense. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) made a telling point that relates to the intervention that the hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) just made: he said that pharmacists can act as the eyes and ears of the vulnerable in our communities. That is the other side of the coin to the point she made about people who feel under stress or strain in their immediate circumstances very often seeing the pharmacist as their first port of call.
The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), in his typical style, with quiet presentation, pointed out that the proposals will affect every community, whether up in the highlands and islands or down in Ealing North. Indeed, he said that they will affect every community in terms of both the science and the magic that is involved. Everybody here is, I think, as one in our desire to develop pharmacies, yet, as he pointed out, the Treasury is seeking to put on the shackles for the sake of a £170 million saving. As I have previously spoken in Treasury debates, I made a note to point out that that saving would amount to less than half of what the Government could save if they simply closed the so-called Mayfair loophole. Pharmacists provide a service far beyond that supplied by many financial advisers in our society.
The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) discussed the need to reduce clusters. When he was talking, I immediately thought of the hon. Member for Ealing North, who would no doubt advise him that perhaps we would do better by going back to some old-fashioned central planning to do things more coherently, rather than using market forces. If we use only market forces, the people who are going to be served least well are those in the large rural communities, whether in Wales or many parts of England. The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) made an excellent case about the importance of such far-flung rural communities and the critical services provided by community pharmacies.
Finally, I was very taken by one of the statistics cited by the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) early in his speech. I have to say I was not aware that 1.8 million people visit pharmacies each day, not merely for the dispensing of drugs but to see someone from whom they can get advice and in whom they can place their trust. Everybody who has contributed to the debate has pointed out that pharmacists supply a service to our communities that goes far beyond that provided by what we used to call in the old days the local chemist. They are highly qualified people who can provide a range of expertise. As the hon. Member for St Ives pointed out, many have masters degrees in specialist areas. In all honesty, in some areas of medicine they can provide advice that goes beyond the expertise of a GP. To lose that in any way, particularly in the most vulnerable communities, would be a sad loss indeed. I am very aware of wanting to leave some time for the hon. Gentleman to say a few words at the end, so I simply congratulate him again on an excellent debate.