Defibrillators: Public Access

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Charles, and to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord), who made a really interesting speech. I like the idea of a defib dash. I do not know whether we have enough defibrillators in my constituency, but I am certainly going to go away and find out.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) on securing and leading this important debate and on her great speech. Fewer than one in 10 people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Tragically, that means, given that annually in the UK about 30,000 people experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, that only approximately 3,000 of them will survive. In Yorkshire each year, there are approximately 3,300 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, with a survival rate of only one in 13. Sadly, that means that more than 3,000 people in Yorkshire will not survive a cardiac arrest this year.

There are measures that can improve the chances of survival, including bystander willingness to begin CPR. I have seen that at first hand: my mum, on a number of occasions over the last few decades, has stopped, as a bystander, and she has saved more than one life. As a trained nurse, she had the confidence to do CPR. What is really encouraging is that when research has been done, ordinary members of the public—by “ordinary”, I mean without any medical training—are willing to get involved, but as I will come on to say, they do not always have the skills to do so. That sort of intervention can double or even quadruple the chances of survival.

I am pleased to say that Resuscitation Council UK found that people in Barnsley are more willing than some in other parts of the country to begin CPR if they witness someone having a cardiac arrest. Access to defibrillators and how quickly they are used can also be incredibly effective in improving the chances of survival after a cardiac arrest, with research finding that defibrillation within three to five minutes of collapse improves survival rates from around 50% to 70%. During the public engagement sessions leading up to this debate, the House of Commons research team found that more than half the people asked would feel confident to use a defibrillator without having had training. It is encouraging that 80% of people reported feeling confident to respond to an emergency situation where someone was suffering a cardiac arrest.

Although people are generally willing to help and get involved, they may not always be able to do so. Resuscitation Council UK found that defibrillators are disproportionately more present in affluent areas, where the incident rates of cardiac arrest are typically lower. Of course, no one would begrudge any area for having as many defibrillators available to them as possible, and I am sure that Members from across the House will join me in sending our thanks to those who have fundraised to source a defibrillator for their local community. I would like to take this opportunity to recognise the work of the Hoyland, Milton and Rockingham Ward Alliance in Barnsley, which has funded five new defibrillators for the area, three of which have been installed. That will literally be a lifeline to many in Barnsley East, and I know local people will be incredibly grateful to them.

Not everyone can rely on organisations to provide funding in that way. Less affluent areas face inequality in their cardiac arrest survival prospects, as those who live in more disadvantaged areas are more likely to suffer arrests but less likely to have access to a defibrillator. We need the Government to take urgent action to ensure that defibrillators are suitably distributed across the country, so that people are not at greater risk of dying from cardiac arrest just because of where they live. Last month, my office was pleased to support a parliamentary event by Resuscitation Council UK to highlight this and other issues associated with cardiac arrest survival and follow-up care. We were joined by cardiac arrest survivors and members of the council, who demonstrated how to administer CPR should we ever need to do so. I would like to take this opportunity to put on the record my thanks to them for an informative event.

Defibrillator access and awareness in local communities, particularly in areas such as Barnsley, will save lives, so I am pleased that we are having this debate today. I am keen to hear from the Minister what the Government are doing to improve public access so that as many lives as possible are saved.

Hospice Services: Support

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes) for securing this important debate and for his incredibly powerful speech; I pass on my condolences. I also pay tribute to Barnsley Hospice and Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice in South Yorkshire, which I want to focus on.

Six-year-old Daniel from Darfield in Barnsley has been receiving care at Bluebell Wood for mitochondrial disease and cerebral palsy. He struggles to sit, eat and stand, and his family simply do not know how long they have left, but they treasure every day despite facing many challenges. Daniel has received excellent care, and his family are grateful to Bluebell Wood for all that it does, but they want greater security for hospices and they want to speak directly to the Government to ask for it, because they do not know whether Daniel will be able to receive the end of life care that he might need at Bluebell Wood. I have raised this issue at Prime Minister’s questions and I was grateful for my discussion with the Minister when I met her a few weeks ago.

Last year, Bluebell Wood hospice was forced to close because of staffing pressures. It is now open again, but only to 90% of its capacity. When I visited a few weeks ago, the staff spoke about not only how they are of course there to provide end of life care, but how they do so much more. They provide respite care and support for parents, siblings and families. They try to provide fun and happiness, to make memories at what is an incredibly difficult and traumatic time. I saw that work at first hand. It was incredibly moving also to see at first hand the hospice’s end of life suite. The staff took me into what they call the cold room, which is where families will spend their final time together at the very end of the life and after passing. Often, it is where the larger family can say their goodbyes.

The staff told me that there is nothing they can do to prolong a child’s life at the worst moment in a family’s life, but what they can do is do everything they can to support families, which is often so important to the grieving process. That is the most powerful case for the provision of greater support and security for hospices—for all the different things we have spoken about today, including the continuation of the energy support grant, particularly for children’s hospices, and of course the provision of a longer-term and more secure model.

I conclude by thanking the amazing staff, medics and volunteers who continue to do all the work that they do at Bluebell Wood, at Barnsley Hospice and at hospices across the country, so that Daniel and all the children and young people in a similar situation receive the care they deserve when they need it.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes) for securing this debate on hospices, and I thank all hon. Members who have contributed. Both the number of colleagues in the room and the passion of so many contributions show the strength of feeling and level of support for hospices in all our communities.

We have heard from so many colleagues this morning: my hon. Friends the Members for Darlington (Peter Gibson), for Aberconwy (Robin Millar), for Bolton West (Chris Green), for Torbay (Kevin Foster), for North West Norfolk (James Wild) and for Worcester (Mr Walker), and the hon. Members for Blackburn (Kate Hollern), for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon), for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock), for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon). In addition, many other hon. Members have contributed by intervening. In the course of today’s debate, many fantastic local hospices have rightly been praised for what they do for our communities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh spoke about the Mountbatten hospice in his constituency and how it cared so wonderfully for his friend and colleague Sue Hall. Many hon. Members spoke about their personal experiences, which often involved family members, and the amazing ways that hospices have helped family members and themselves through difficult times. I, too, remember the amazing care that my granny received in her local hospice in Dorset when I was in my twenties. I still hold in my head the experience of visiting her there—the tranquillity of the hospice and the amazing care that she was clearly receiving, which made the last weeks of her life as bearable as possible. I remember the kindness and peace that I felt there in that hospice. I, too, have that personal experience and appreciation of what hospices do.

A theme of this debate has, rightly, been the importance of dying well—dying with dignity and dying with the right care in the place where a person wants to die, which is very often at home. Dying well depends on good end of life care, for which we in this country rightly have a good reputation. Most end of life care is provided through NHS services, but hospices are an important part of end of life and palliative care in our communities. As we know, hospices provide care in their facilities, but increasingly and very importantly they provide care to people in their own homes towards the end of their lives, and also support families through those difficult times and through bereavement.

[Stephanie Peacock]

The end of life care that I spoke about in my contribution, which is so important, remains closed at Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice; it is the one part of the hospice that has been unable to reopen. Will the Minister commit to doing everything that she can to support the hospice to reopen, so that it can continue to provide end of life care, and not just all the other services it provides to families that need them so much?

[Helen Whately]

As the hon. Member mentioned earlier, we have indeed met and spoken about the hospice to which she refers. I have also met with several other hon. Members. I am grateful to them for coming to me to talk about the specific difficult situations faced by some of the hospices serving their communities.

That brings me to exactly what I was coming to talk about: the financial pressures on hospices, which have been a strong theme of the debate. I know very well, not just from this debate but from conversations with hospices, about the financial challenges that hospices are facing. In fact, financial challenges are being faced by many organisations that provide care in our communities, whether NHS organisations or care homes, as the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) mentioned. In particular, there are the extra pressures of energy costs—such organisations often use substantial amounts of energy—and the higher costs of staff pay. We know that many hospices pay their staff in alignment with the NHS agenda for change pay scales.

An additional difficult context for hospices at the moment is fundraising. That was clearly hard during the pandemic, but since then many households have been affected by the higher cost of living and therefore have found it harder to contribute to fundraising efforts in their communities, including those organised by hospices. I know how hard that context is for our hospices.

On energy costs, many hospices have been able to benefit from the Government’s energy bill relief scheme, which ran to 31 March. Eligible organisations, including hospices, will continue to get baseline discount support for gas and electricity bills under the energy bills discount scheme, which is running from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024. In addition, last year NHS England released £1.5 billion of extra funding to integrated care boards in recognition of the extra costs arising from inflation in the services they commission. ICBs have been responsible for distributing that funding according to local need, including to palliative and end of life care providers in our communities, whether they are NHS organisations or hospices.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and her leadership on this issue. Many of the ideas that she has been putting forward are already in the plan that we set out to tackle youth vaping, including the creation of the “flying squad”, the ongoing call for evidence on youth vaping, and all the different things we could do to continue to drive it down.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

The non-surgical breast cancer service in South Yorkshire is facing a critical shortage of oncologists. The shortage is so severe that patients are being told to expect months between referral and appointment. What immediate steps are the Government taking to ensure that patients, no matter their postcode, see a specialist as soon as they need to do so?

[Steve Barclay]

As reflected in the fact that we met the faster diagnosis standard in February and March for the first time, we are investing more in our cancer services to meet the recognised increase in demand. That is why more patients are being treated sooner and survival rates are improving. I am happy to look at any variation at a local level because of workforce pressure, but the diagnostic centres and surgical hubs are all part of our response to the increase in cancer demand.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue, and to highlight the difference being made by the 89 community diagnostic centres that have already been rolled out and the importance of getting up to 160 centres as quickly as possible. He is right that such innovations, including CDCs, surgical hubs, telemedicine and, of course, using spare capacity in the private sector, are helping us to tackle the longest waits and reduce the covid backlogs, and I very much thank him for his support in that endeavour.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

There are almost 20,000 people on the waiting list for treatment at Barnsley Hospital, but at the beginning of this month, 98% of the hospital’s beds were occupied. How does the Government expect that hospital to solve the treatment backlog when it simply does not have the resources?

[Will Quince]

We are increasing capacity by introducing an additional 7,000 beds and the £500-million discharge fund. In addition to that, an extra £250 million was announced in January. Over and above that, alternative capacity is being created through the independent sector, we are engaging with patients on choice, and we are working with the most challenged trusts. Of course, I understand the impact that this has on patients, and we are working hard to address the backlog.

NHS Winter Pressures

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

As I said at the outset, today’s announcement is part of the wider recovery programme that we discussed with health leaders at No. 10 on Saturday. That will have a number of components, one of which is the urgent and emergency care recovery. Work is ongoing with Home Office colleagues on the visa component. My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point that a number of clinicians on the frontline have raised with me, and I am discussing it with my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

More than 5,000 operations have been cancelled at Barnsley Hospital in the last year. What are the Government doing to reassure those in Barnsley who are waiting in pain for delayed operations? Will they ensure that any new staff are deployed first to the areas that need them most?

[Steve Barclay]

I share the hon. Lady’s desire to reduce the backlog in the electives programme, which is why the Government have invested a further £8 billion. To ensure that it delivers value for money, the key focus is on building greater resilience into that elective programme through surgical hubs and the better use of community diagnostic centres, in particular by having a distinction between hot and cold sites.

Too often in the past, as winter pressures have surged, elective operations have been cancelled to free up bed capacity. Having the surgical hubs and the hot and cold sites builds greater resilience. I pay tribute to the work of the Getting It Right First Time team, and to Professor Tim Briggs and Jim Mackey, who are leading that programme. We saw the progress that was made in the summer and we are very focused on the next stage, which is 78-week waits. We are working very actively on that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

This is not my direct area of responsibility, but of course mental health does present challenges for A&Es and for hospitals more generally. We are investing an extra £2.3 billion every year in mental health, we have 16% more staff and we have an additional bursary to attract more nurses into mental health. But we do recognise the challenges, and the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) is working hard to address them.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

3. What recent steps his Department has taken to reduce waiting times for neurological diagnosis and treatment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

Reducing waiting times for diagnostics and treatment is a priority for this Government. The delivery plan for tackling the elective backlog sets out steps to recover and transform out-patient services across all specialisms, including neurology.

[Stephanie Peacock]

In March 2021, my constituent suffered a severe head injury. By the time they have their first neurology appointment in January 2023, they will have waited nearly two years for treatment. In the meantime, they have been unable to work, been rejected for disability benefits and are in severe pain. Does the Minister accept that this wait is unacceptable, and will she outline what support the Department is making available for those who are suffering while they wait for vital appointments?

[Maria Caulfield]

I thank the hon. Lady. I know she raised her constituent’s case in a Westminster Hall debate on 22 November and my understanding is that they now have an appointment for January, but there is absolutely a backlog from covid patients. We know that. That is why we are putting in over £8 billion in the next three years to deal with that backlog. That is in addition to the £2 billion we have already provided through the elective recovery fund. We have already virtually eliminated the two-year wait and we are now on track, by April, to eliminate waits of 18 months or more.

NHS Staffing Levels

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) for securing this incredibly important debate.

As we have heard in previous contributions, we are proud of our NHS—and rightly so—but it is clear that our NHS is in crisis. Understaffing piles pressure on the existing workforce, tipping them to breaking point. The national NHS vacancy rate sits at 9.7%—that is one in 17 vacancies unfulfilled for doctors and one in 10 for nurses. The pandemic was an unprecedented strain that created an employment backlog, but staff shortages were critical well before covid. These are not just statistics: vacancies are all too often the difference between life and death. The autumn statement pledged £3.3 billion to the NHS, which is of course welcome, but funding and wages are still below 2010 levels in real terms, with sky-rocketing inflation further exacerbating an already dire financial situation. We know that it takes years to recruit and train healthcare professionals.

I have been contacted by many constituents who are facing unacceptable waiting times for GP and dentistry appointments. As we have heard in the debate, this problem extends across the whole NHS, whether it be in respect of pharmacies, cancer or ambulance wait times. When we see delays with GPs and dentistry, that sometimes leads to further pressure on other NHS services that could have been prevented had problems been identified earlier.

The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) outlined some of the issues with dentistry, which were reflected in the constituency-wide survey that I did in Barnsley East, in response to which many of my constituents said they really struggled to get a dentist appointment. That is concerning when we consider that Barnsley has the fourth highest rate of tooth decay in the country. In Yorkshire and the Humber as a whole, 98% of dental practices cannot take new patients.

One constituent contacted me just last night about their very concerning and upsetting experience in hospital. They have been waiting almost a year for a neurology appointment after an initial injury in March 2021. They are in constant, excruciating pain due to a herniated disk and now have sustained a secondary injury. They are unable to work so have lost their job. Because of the current cost of living crisis, they are having to choose between heating and eating, as many across the country are. This constituent is unable to enjoy the things they once used to and is experiencing great distress and financial difficulty. They are unable to walk for more than 15 minutes at a time and cannot sit for sustained periods. They feel they have nowhere to turn, with no sign of an appointment any time soon, to find a solution to this pain. This is obviously a heart-breaking situation and one that people should not have to endure due to pressure and staff shortages.

There is not much more that NHS staff can do to give every patient the time they deserve. GPs are frequently seeing three times the safe number of patients, often taking up to 90 appointments a day. Some are reported as having taken 200 appointments a day. This results in warning signs for conditions such as dementia being missed. In South Yorkshire specifically, sickness absence is at 7.1%. NHS staff are becoming exhausted and getting sick themselves. How can they be expected to carry on in such pressurised working environments and meet the high standards that we are used to?

Almost 10,000 doctors left the NHS last year, with many citing conditions as their reason for leaving. Some 20,000 more are expected to leave in the next year. The NHS urgently needs more Government investment and not empty words. After 12 years of a Conservative Government, our NHS needs a Labour one. As has been outlined today, Labour’s fully costed plan would double the number of university medicine places available per year, provide 10,000 more nursing and midwifery clinical places each year, provide 5,000 more health visitors a year and double the number of district nurses qualifying each year.

In closing, I put on record my thanks to NHS staff. My mum worked in the NHS for 40 years as a midwife and a nurse. I know how hard she worked and I know, from talking to NHS professionals across Barnsley, how hard they work. I know that we all thank them for their service. The reality is that the NHS and this country simply cannot afford this Conservative Government any longer.

Urgent and Emergency Care

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I am very happy to ensure that that specific case, which is obviously concerning, is looked at. As my hon. Friend will know from my earlier remarks, we are boosting the number of 999 call handlers—those numbers are up and there are around 350 more call handlers than in September 2021—and we are also training more paramedics. Numbers are going up, but obviously demand has increased exponentially as well.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

A nurse in Barnsley East wrote to me about the incredibly traumatic death of her mother. When her mum suffered a brain haemorrhage, her dad called the emergency services twice. They told him to call back as they did not have an ambulance or a responder to help. An hour and 40 minutes later, the ambulance arrived but it was too late for her to receive any treatment, and she later passed away.

Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. Our emergency services are in crisis. They are understaffed and under-funded. What are the Government doing to prevent tragedies such as that from ever happening again?

[Steve Barclay]

We are putting in additional funding, whether that is the additional £1.5 billion put into GP capacity in 2020, the £450 million to upgrade A&E facilities across 120 trusts, the extra £150 million specifically put into the ambulance service, the £30 million put into the St John Ambulance contract over the summer, or the further £50 million that has gone into call handling to boost the 111 service. Significant additional funds are going in as part of the support for the significant pressure that we recognise there has been over the summer.

Women’s Health Strategy for England

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

How will this strategy address the postcode lottery associated with gynaecological wait times?

[Steve Barclay]

Again, it is partly by having an ambassador that will be tasked with advocating in that space, by having the data to give visibility to that, and also by working in partnership with commissioning groups, with the NHS, and with the royal colleges on training, that much greater focus will be brought to these issues.

Integration White Paper

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

These plans build on what we are proposing in our legislation. At the heart of the Bill are integrated care systems, which bring together at ICB level and ICP level the local authorities that are elected to represent their areas, local people—Healthwatch will have a key voice in this space—and of course the local NHS.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

The clinical commissioning group in Barnsley says that it is struggling with unprecedented capacity issues. With a record 6 million patients waiting for planned NHS treatment across the UK, can the Minister explain how we will tackle the crisis in waiting times through this White Paper?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady will have seen yesterday the announcement and publication of our plan to tackle waiting lists caused by the covid pandemic, the investment that underpins that, the approach to the workforce and how we will bring those waiting lists down. This White Paper builds on that; they are complementary and work together. This is about looking to the future to improve how our systems work together, but we set out a clear and comprehensive plan yesterday to do exactly what she speaks of.