Oral Answers to Questions

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He has articulately and eloquently set out the improvements being made at Stafford County Hospital, and he has been a strong champion for those works. This is real, visible, positive change that will benefit both residents and patients in Newcastle-under-Lyme and the surrounding areas.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

My constituent Brian Murray lost his wife Roberta six years ago, following years of chronic health conditions after an infected blood transfusion. He wants to know: when will the Government enact all of the recommendations regarding compensation from the second report by Sir Brian Langstaff?

[Maria Caulfield]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We take this issue very seriously, and we have already made interim payments to those infected. The Minister for the Cabinet Office came to the Dispatch Box in April when Brian Langstaff’s review was published, and we are working night and day to respond to those recommendations and get that plan out as soon as possible. We recognise the impact on families, and on those infected and affected.

Randox Covid Contracts

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O'Hara]

I will come to the hon. Member in a moment.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

He can just make a speech.

[Brendan O'Hara]

That is a very good idea. Perhaps the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) would like to make a speech. The memo seen by The Times also states that the company feared that it did not “have enough extraction systems” and “was hoping yourselves” —the Government—

“could help us access extraction systems from universities, hospitals anywhere…Any we can get our hands on.”

Crucially, The Times further reported that this memo was written by an official in the Department of Health and Social Care after a phone call on 9 April between Lord Bethell, the Conservative Minister responsible for awarding testing contracts at the time, and Owen Paterson, the Conservative MP who was being handsomely paid by Randox to lobby on its behalf. It appears that the company employing a Conservative MP, which was fast- tracked and awarded a no-bid contract worth £133 million, was actually ill-equipped to provide the vital service it had promised to deliver. This absolutely stinks, and unless and until every record of what was communicated between Mr Paterson, Lord Bethell, Randox, Government officials and special advisers is made public, the stench of corruption will only increase.

Covid-19

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP) [V]]

It is a pleasure to follow the passionate contribution of the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom).

I am conscious that the debate this evening has been opened by a Health Minister and, I understand, will be concluded by the Paymaster General, and the case I want to raise is connected to the support offered by the Government for businesses, particularly the furlough scheme. I have been wanting to raise this case for some weeks now.

Staff mainly at two venues in Glasgow, Blue Dog and Ad Lib, have not had any furlough payments since October last year because there is an issue between the business and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs that has so far been unresolved. Across these two venues and others there are up to 200 people who have had no income at all—nothing—since October.

I have been in correspondence with the permanent secretary and chief executive at HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions to try to get the staff some state support, because at the minute the staff’s real-time information—their live tax information—shows them as though they were still being paid as normal when HMRC and the DWP know that that is not the case, and that means they are not eligible to receive universal credit.

So may I plead with the Minister or the Paymaster General to please look at this case and get it resolved, as 200 low-paid bar workers in Glasgow really need it resolved? On the question of who is at fault, whether the business owners or HMRC, there will be plenty to say in future; all I want to get across to Government tonight is that these staff members really need an intervention in their case.

It has got so bad that the staff of Blue Dog and Ad Lib in Glasgow have had to start crowdfunding from fellow bar workers in order to at least have some money to pay bills that keep on coming, and I want to end my remarks by repeating something that one of the staff put on his Facebook page this weekend. John Taay Russell had this to say:

“I…don’t even know what to do anymore. I’m fighting tooth and nail…mentally I am defeated…I find myself in a carousel of depression and self loathing,”

but

“Bills keep coming, Rent needs paid”.

So I am pleading with Ministers: please look at this case in detail; please get these individuals the financial support they are entitled to and so desperately, desperately need.

Child Migration Programmes (Child Abuse)

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy]

One of the things that is important to many former child migrants is that this never happens to children again. The story that the hon. Gentleman tells, of a Government cowed by the power and the patronage of those involved, is a story that quite honestly could be repeated today. We have seen it time and again throughout history. That is why it is so important that we get a full formal response to this report from the Government. The inquiry was set up to learn the lessons from history, to make sure this never happens again. I fear that we are not doing that. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be really helpful for the Minister to respond specifically to that point when she replies?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I absolutely agree and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

On compensation payments, both the Northern Ireland report and the IICSA report recommend compensation for those sent abroad on the child migration programmes, over and above the compensation they might receive for other wrongs and abuse suffered. The Northern Ireland report says that would be in recognition of

“the injustice they suffered as young children by being sent to a far away land and losing their sense of identity as a result”.

Similarly, the IICSA recommends a redress scheme for all surviving former child migrants, with each awarded the same sum in recognition that they were all

“exposed to the risk of sexual abuse”.

Because of the age of the surviving migrants—there are 2,000 or so alive today—the IICSA report rightly suggests that the scheme be established urgently, so that payments can be made within 12 months. None of that should interfere with or affect any other forms of ongoing support that are being provided.

This was a truly appalling episode in British history and it will be until we have resolved it. The Government must do what is right by the survivors and other children, and compensation should be paid urgently as per the recommendations of the inquiries.

Social Media and Young People's Mental Health

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Alan. I thank the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) for bringing the debate forward, and I will try to be brief.

I want to take part in the debate to tell the story of one of my constituents, Declan Duncan, an incredibly brave young man from Castlemilk in my constituency. His life was made a complete misery by the use of social media, and he wrote to me to tell me about some of the experiences he has been through. I have met him on a number of occasions and was moved to tears when he told his story in public at Castlemilk Youth Complex, which gave him enormous support. I pay tribute to the people there, particularly to the youth worker, Christopher Lang, who really helped Declan.

Declan was bullied throughout primary school and high school, starting off from the fact that, since birth, he has had a tracheostomy because of a collapsed windpipe. When he was in high school, he came out as gay at a very young age—something that I certainly would not have had the bravery to do when I was in high school. The bullies used social media, in addition to face-to-face bullying, which we would understand to be traditional bullying.

People made up fake profiles in Declan’s name using his photographs and said that he was doing all sorts of vulgar things that were completely false and untrue. They also set up petitions and shared them on Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of it, encouraging people to—to quote from one post—“run him out” of Castlemilk. There was even a concerted effort to get people to turn up to school one day with things such as tomatoes and eggs, and to run him out of school. All of that was organised on Facebook. Declan sent me some screengrabs of some of the stuff from the time, and people even complained that their posts had been deleted. His life was made a complete misery.

The Castlemilk Youth Complex told me about a phenomenon that is happening at the minute: there seems to be a website that is being used by people to create what is made to look like a genuine news article. People can type in anyone’s name, use any photograph they wish and claim that they have done anything, and it is then spread all around Facebook and Twitter. The youth complex has cases of particularly vulnerable individuals being targeted by these rancid people in the most vulgar fashion.

[Alex Chalk]

A lot of people hearing this horrific story, which the hon. Gentleman is articulating powerfully, will want to know what the social media platforms did to clamp down on those who were posting and perpetrating such vile abuse.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

That is a fine point, on which I will aim to end. Social media platforms need to do more but, in addition, teachers need to be better empowered. Although I respect that that specific matter is for our Government in Scotland, I think that the social media platforms need to engage better with educators to combat bullying in their schools.

Declan has since left high school. He is now studying social care at college and doing very well. The last time I met him, he was a happy young man at the gay pride event in Glasgow. Castlemilk Youth Complex will go on to support other young people who are being targeted in such a way. I hope that all of us here, other Members of Parliament, local councillors and teachers will work better with and get on to the social media companies, as the hon. Member for Cheltenham suggested, to ensure that all those other people like young Declan out there in our constituencies get better support, which they so badly need.

NHS Commissioning (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis)

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

We have not made a decision on commissioning yet. We have laid out a pathway. Let me be clear: I completely understand and accept the point about clinical effectiveness. The point I was making was that there are wider considerations about how we commission something in the context of a whole series of HIV prevention services. That is slightly different from clinical effectiveness, on which the PROUD study showed very good results. I am not saying that it is not clinically effective; we just have to understand more about how it sits in the context of everything else that we do, and we have to understand more about its cost-effectiveness. The modelling work that was undertaken indicated that PrEP can be cost-effective for some high-risk groups, but the period over which that cost-effectiveness pays back needs to be more broadly understood.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

I do not doubt the Minister’s commitment to this issue, but she has to understand how it looks to the outside world. This is a Government who brought forward legislation to ban poppers, for goodness’ sake, but it looks as though they have got their head in the sand over PrEP. Israel, Kenya, Canada, France and the United States all get it. Why are we so far behind?

[Jane Ellison]

The first point is a red herring, because I understand that the matter has been resolved. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s criticism. It is slightly disappointing, although I understand the reason for it in the context of this urgent question, that Members are forgetting that the UK has a world-leading position on HIV treatment in all the ways that I laid out in my response to the urgent question. Our movement towards the UNAIDS goals is very significant, so to say that the UK is somehow not a leader in HIV treatment and prevention is not right. We have clearly acknowledged that PrEP has a role to play, but we need to understand more about what that is.

Points of Order

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. With reference to her last point about allegedly factually incorrect information being disseminated to her constituents, I am bound to say to her that that is a matter of politics. Although I do not know the people of Great Grimsby, I dare say they can bear with stoicism and fortitude the proffering of views to them with which their locally elected Member of Parliament may disagree. That is not a matter for the Chair. [Interruption.] I do not think it is fishy. However, a visit was undertaken, admittedly not by Ministers, but by Members engaged in professional business, and the hon. Lady should therefore have been notified.

Given the context of the EU referendum campaign, I recognise that there will be Members—including doubtless the hon. Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Corby (Tom Pursglove)—who may well visit a great many constituencies in a concentrated period. Nevertheless, the convention is an important courtesy and should continue to apply. It is not very difficult or time consuming to comply with it, so I hope that colleagues on both sides of the House will do so from now on.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The issue we have just discussed in the urgent question on pre-exposure prophylaxis is one that I and many other Members consider to be of huge national importance. Despite the effect of the drug, the numbers of people involved and the great national interest, Parliament has not actually substantially debated the issue aside from that urgent question. As a new Member of the House—I confess that I am still trying to get my head around this place, although I suspect I never will—may I ask whether it would be in order to seek a debate on PrEP under Standing Order No. 24 and, if it would be in order, how one might go about that?

[Mr Speaker]

It is certainly open to the hon. Gentleman to seek such a debate—there is nothing improper about it—but I know that he would not seek advance agreement from me in respect of an application that has not yet been made, the terms of which therefore cannot be known to me and upon which it would therefore be wholly unreasonable to expect me to adjudicate. Apart from that, his point was all right.

HPV Vaccinations for MSM

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

It is good to see you in the Chair for the second sexual health debate of the day, Mr Hollobone, at which you have been present along with myself and other hon. Members. I congratulate the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on securing this debate. He started by saying that it is perhaps not always nice to discuss unsavoury issues. Just imagine the lives we could have saved if we had discussed unsavoury issues a lot more a long time ago. I genuinely welcome this debate, and indeed the other work he has done on matters related to gay and bisexual men’s sexual health, particularly PrEP, which we discussed in the House earlier today. He described this debate as an update request. I am afraid to tell the Minister I am going to go one further. I think we sometimes get too many updates and not enough action; it is action that we need to see.

We have had some incredibly thoughtful and well-researched contributions, including from, as usual, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). We have heard some excellent experience from the medical profession, and my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson) quoted the Terrence Higgins Trust, which has called the pilot scheme a “stalling tactic”.

I notice a pattern when it comes to these matters. There seems to be an attitude among the public that the Government—I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity on these issues; I genuinely mean that—do not appear to be taking LGBT sexual health as seriously as they should be. We have a situation, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) outlined, in which the Scottish Government have moved forward on this, the Welsh Government have moved forward on this, international partners have moved forward on this, but the largest constituent nation of the United Kingdom has decided to sit on its hands and go for an unnecessary pilot scheme. The message from sexual health charities and from the public is that that is just not good enough. I cannot understand, given the position we find ourselves in with this issue and with the PrEP issue, why we have not seen further progress.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire mentioned the important issue of stigma. We cannot go back to the days when stigma caused people not to have conversations, seek treatment or seek to have a healthier lifestyle. That would be disastrous for public health and for the public purse. There is an appetite across Europe and across the United Kingdom to move forward on this issue, which does not stop at any border. It is something that we all have to work together on. We want to see the UK Government get a bit of “gumption”, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire said, get off the fence, and start with some positive action on this issue and on the PrEP issue as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone, for giving me the opportunity to respond to the debate. I have to say at the outset that we are actually announcing good news in this debate. I accept that Members of this House wish to challenge me on a whole range of areas in which we might go further, but this is the announcement of a major pilot, and I will go on to talk about what we are actually doing. I really think that we should see this as an important step forward and an important part of delivering on LGBT health. I just wanted to say that at the outset, because it was a bit hard to get that from some of the contributions. I will talk a bit about the issue of action, which I have been challenged on.

Let me start, as I should, by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) not only on securing the debate, but on championing the issue so consistently and passionately. The point has been made that we should be talking about these issues more often—well, he has been talking about them consistently over many years and the persistence of parliamentary prioritisation is showing results. It is really good to see him in his place and I congratulate him on what he has done.

As hon. Members know, and as many people have mentioned, we are advised on all immunisation matters by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. Back in 2008, on the advice of the JCVI, an HPV vaccination programme for girls was introduced across the UK. It is worth reminding the House that the primary objective of that programme was to protect against cervical cancer. The latest data—just to remind people—shows that there are about 2,500 cervical cancer cases a year and up to 900 deaths from that terrible disease. To give some sense of comparison, there are around 300 anal cancer cases among all men in a year. Those are the origins of this programme.

The HPV vaccine has been given to more than 3 million teenage girls across the UK since the programme started, and coverage is actually among the highest in the world. Hon. Members have, again, made reference to international comparisons. I was recently in Geneva for the World Health Assembly, discussing HPV vaccination with a small group of other Health Ministers; our rates are the envy of much of the world, so we must accept that this is an important and world-leading programme. The number of young women with pre-cancerous lesions is falling, here and around the world, and we expect protection against cervical cancer to be long term, eventually saving hundreds of lives each year.

The vaccine has been subject to numerous safety reviews and I have gone over that in some detail in other debates. I will write to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), about the specific issues that he raised today, but I want to assure him about the EMA reviews and the WHO reviews, which are all publicly available.

Protecting girls against HPV has wider benefits and will result in fewer HPV infections and less disease in heterosexual males. However, I recognise, as the House has today, that men who have sex with men—MSM—receive little or no benefit from the programme for girls. It was the increasing evidence of the link between HPV and oral, throat, anal and penile cancers, alongside the incidence of genital warts, that led the JCVI to decide to consider the possibility of HPV vaccination for MSM, and to reconsider the case for HPV vaccination of boys. I will come to the issue of boys, which has been raised by several hon. Members, if there is time—I think and hope there will be. However, I want to focus most of my time on MSM, which is the subject of the debate.

I do not intend to include a lot of statistics in my speech, as my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green has set them out and described the context well. However, I want to point out, with regard to the detail behind the figures he quotes, that some of it is not directly relevant to an HPV/MSM programme, as the figures include both male and female cases and cases of cancer unrelated to HPV.

MSM are one of the groups at highest risk of sexually transmitted infections in the UK and the Government are already taking a number of steps to improve their health and wellbeing. Again, I reject any suggestion that this issue is not a priority. It is quite the opposite: there has been a focus in the last year or so on MSM health and on LGBT health—that is something that we had previously not even begun to do. That includes, for example, the first LGBT health conference run by Public Health England and a number of other things that we have done. I am happy to speak to the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) about that separately on another occasion.

The JCVI’s advice was that a targeted HPV vaccination should be introduced for MSM aged up to 45 who attend genito-urinary medicine and HIV clinics, if procurement of the vaccine and delivery of the programme is possible at a cost-effective price. Everything in that sentence is the JCVI’s advice. It is not just about the vaccine but about the delivery of the programme and the interrelationship between vaccination and attendance at GUM and HIV clinics, which is germane to the way that we are introducing this pilot.

In the JCVI’s formal advice to us, it acknowledged that commissioning and delivering such a programme would be complex and challenging. It made it clear that the Department of Health and Public Health England would need to work together, and with others, to consider the commissioning and delivery routes for the programme. Over the last few months that is exactly what we have been considering with stakeholders, and on several issues. Demand is one such issue, and we have had to consider whether the programme will result in a greater than expected increase in attendance by MSM at GUM clinics, and the impact of that on broader sexual health services.

We have also had to consider administration costs and what is a reasonable and realistic price to pay for administration of this vaccine in GUM and HIV clinics. Stakeholders raised that during the consultation on the original JCVI advice. How do we monitor the success of a three-dose programme when data collected in GUM clinics are anonymised and MSM could go to different GUM clinics for each dose? There are complexities in this programme that are not present in, for example, the school-based HPV programme for girls.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Briefly, can the Minister tell me why those complexities exist here in England but not, presumably, in Scotland and Wales?

[Jane Ellison]

They do exist in other nations. I am making a statement of fact of how the system operates and how people access sexual health clinics. I will come to the devolved Administrations.

We have decided that the best way to resolve these and other issues is to pilot the programme. My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green asked who the vaccine will be available to under the pilot. The JCVI recommended a targeted programme aimed at MSM already attending GUM and HIV clinics, so under the pilot, MSM will be offered the vaccine during their existing appointment if they are at a participating clinic. Public Health England is running the pilot, which should confirm whether such a programme can be delivered at a cost-effective price.

In terms of evaluation, which my hon. Friend also referred to, data collected by clinics will be used to monitor coverage of the HPV vaccine and the proportion of MSM completing the course of vaccine. The impact of the vaccine on HPV-related cancers will obviously take many years to emerge, but the impact on the diagnosis of genital warts will be a useful proxy for that and will be seen much sooner. I expect to be updated regularly on the pilot’s progress. My hon. Friend knows that I have taken a strong personal interest in this programme, and I will of course consider how best to share the information.

I understand that some stakeholders are disappointed that we are not rolling out the programme nationally immediately and some hon. Members here today have noted that Scotland and Wales have committed to implementing the JCVI’s advice in full. However, they have yet to confirm how or when they will start. Scotland has not started yet, and we are happy to share lessons from the pilot as it is no doubt considering how to move forward. Officials from the Department, Public Health England and the devolved Administrations meet regularly on this issue and will continue to do so to share experience and learning. Health is a devolved matter.

I confirm that Northern Ireland officials are on our project board, but they do not yet have a ministerial decision on how they will respond to the JCVI advice on MSM. Obviously there are issues to be raised with that devolved Administration.

The key thing to stress is that this is a large-scale pilot and I was somewhat disappointed by some of the stakeholders’ comments, particularly talk of stalling or of small pilots. This is a large-scale pilot that should eventually reach up to 40,000 MSM— more than 35% of those who attend GUM and HIV clinics annually. It will have a good geographical spread, including areas with the highest MSM populations, as well as rural areas with smaller MSM populations. That is relevant because, although there has been some piloting of vaccination in some clinics, it has been in a very limited geographical area and would not tell us enough about how this would work in practice in a national roll-out. The pilots will have a much broader spread. I can also confirm that the pilot will use the vaccine Gardasil-4 which was successful in the recent HPV procurement exercise.

I am pleased to announce that the pilot in England has already started. Two clinics went live in the pilot yesterday and others will come on board as soon as they are ready, hopefully over the next few months. There has been a positive and enthusiastic response from clinics invited to participate, and I am grateful to all those working on the ground to make this happen.

My hon. Friend asked how long the pilot will run. It will run during 2016-17 and decisions on next steps will be dependent on the progress and outcome of the pilot.