Health Visitors (England)
Debate between Stephen Lloyd and Tim Loughton(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Tim Loughton
If the hon. Lady is patient, I will come on to the social impacts. I think the MMHA report came out in 2014 or 2015, so obviously things will have moved on, although the birth rate has slightly fallen in that time as well. These are substantial financial figures, but as she says, most important are the social impacts and the impact on the child.
On the physical impacts, our childhood obesity rates are among the worst in Europe, while breastfeeding rates in the United Kingdom are among the lowest in the world. We have rising emergency department attendances by children under the age of five, and infant mortality reductions have recently stalled. Just last week, we had the worrying figures about the dwindling vaccination rates in England in particular, with only 86.4% of children having received a full dose of the MMR vaccine. We have effectively lost our immune status, because the World Health Organisation vaccination target to protect a population from a disease is 95%.
The Children’s Commissioner estimates that, in total, 2.3 million children live with risk because of a vulnerable family background, but that, within that group, more than a third are effectively invisible and not known to services and therefore do not get any support. We are talking about an expensive and widespread problem.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (Ind)
I pay tribute to the remarkable work of health visitors in my constituency. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that cutting the health visitor service by 30% over the last few years has clearly made it even harder for the profession and for the families and mums that they take care of?
Tim Loughton
Again, I ask the hon. Gentleman to be patient, because I will come on to all that. I realise that he wants to put on the record his tribute to health visitors in Eastbourne, as do I—as someone who was born in Eastbourne and had wonderful health visitors, I am sure, albeit 57 years ago now.
The one thing that all these problems, and a lot more problems I have not mentioned, have in common is that they come under the remit of the health visitor, to some extent or other. The health visiting service provides an important safety net for infants and young children—as well as mums and dads—who are at particularly high risk of having their needs missed, as they are not visible in the same way as children who are accessing an early years setting or a school, for example.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Stephen Lloyd and Tim Loughton(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Tim Loughton
As a question, that was close, but no cigar. However, just last week the hon. Gentleman was referring to my hon. Friend the Minister as his friend, and he will appreciate more than many the immense amount of work that he has put in to ensure that the arrangements are absolutely right. Let us remember that it was the hon. Gentleman’s former friend, the right hon. Alan Milburn, who panned the former Connexions service as being patchy and inefficient. We want to ensure that we do not make those sorts of mistakes and that we get it right for our many young people in future.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
2. What assessment he has made of the effects of the decision not to include religious education in the English baccalaureate.