Covid-19 Vaccine Update

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s question, although I am slightly surprised because it is the United Kingdom’s armed forces and the United Kingdom’s vaccine that are being deployed, and I hope we can celebrate that. [Interruption.] I see the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) nodding across the Dispatch Box—and I think he is smiling underneath that mask as well.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con) [V]]

I join others in congratulating the Minister on the incredible, world-leading roll-out of the vaccine—I would have expected nothing less from my brilliant friend and colleague. May I reinforce the plea from my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) for a Medway vaccination centre, for all the reasons he gave? Perhaps it would be helpful if we could meet the Minister to discuss that in more detail. My PCNs are doing a phenomenal job in racing through the top four priority groups, but at present they do not have access to IT systems, such as Outcomes4Health and Foundry, that would enable them to analyse and plan properly. My understanding is that access was promised but might not have happened universally, so could the Minister reassure the House that this is being rectified urgently to support the next and larger phase of vaccine roll-out?

Vaccine Roll-out

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I will consider that request given the importance of the vaccine supply, which is critical for everybody else to get their vaccinations too.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con) [V]]

This morning Maidstone Hospital rather wonderfully did its 10,000th vaccination. Medway Maritime Hospital has done 5,000, Malling and Blackthorn primary care networks have pretty much completed the first priority groups, and Lordswood PCN, which is only two weeks old, is motoring along to deliver the vaccine to vulnerable groups in Chatham. This is all down the incredible work of all those involved, and I am sure the Secretary of State will join me in paying tribute to them. However, the one piece of feedback I repeatedly get across my constituency is the lack of consistency in supply, so will he reassure me that those who are delivering on target will not be penalised by their own success and that they will get the stock they need to continue to vaccinate priority groups on the list?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, of course, we have to make sure that the priority groups are all offered the vaccine everywhere in the country and are able to be vaccinated by 15 February. I totally agree with her about the great effort locally. Reaching 10,000 vaccinations is superb. I particularly want to thank Ritchie Chalmers, Cheryl Lee, John Weeks and the whole team at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. There have been very significant challenges in Kent over the past few months. Thankfully, the case rate appears to be coming down in Kent, which is very reassuring. We have to get this vaccine out as quickly as possible.

Covid-19 Update

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I want to re-emphasise that we need brief questions, because we have two very well subscribed debates this afternoon on coronavirus support and it is important that we get to those fairly promptly.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con) [V]]

Over the past few days, I and Kent colleagues have received a significant increase in the number of inquiries from constituents regarding testing arrangements in the county, which are leaving many frustrated by the online booking system and, ultimately, unable to arrange a test nearby. What steps is the Department taking to scale up testing and lab capacity in Kent, and could consideration be given to a more accessible and localised system to ensure that those in genuine need of a test are able to arrange one as close to their home as possible?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, of course. My hon. Friend makes the point well. We are putting more localised testing in and making sure that it is as accessible as possible. Of course, the challenge is to ensure that those tests get to the right people, prioritised appropriately, and I look forward to working with my hon. Friend to deliver that across Kent.

Health Protection (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 General Committees

[Jo Churchill]

On enforcement, the police have powers to take individuals into custody and return them to designated places. Just as we invoked Arrowe Park and Kents Hill Park, we have other facilities around the country to ensure that people can be encouraged to complete their period of quarantine to protect others. That is the point of these powers. It is not envisaged that this would be used for a mass quarantining situation.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I am sure that the Minister is coming to this point, but the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West asked a question that pricked up my ears, not just as a Member of Parliament but as the proud aunty of a police constable in Kent, about the advice officers will receive about maintaining their own wellbeing in the event of these powers being executed.

[Jo Churchill]

I am quite happy to write to my hon. Friend on the specifics, rather than give her something that is not correct, because I do not have the exact answers to hand and that is not really in the scope of the regulations. I hope she will forgive me.

[Tracey Crouch]

I will be happy to receive that correspondence, as I am sure will many colleagues, but it would be reassuring for Members of Parliament—as well as proud aunties—to know that such conversations are taking place with the Home Office and with police and crime commissioners, so that chief constables are getting out to their frontline police officers what protective measures they need to take when dealing with those who may need to be detained because of coronavirus.

[Jo Churchill]

I hear what my hon. Friend says and I assure her that conversations are under way with all elements of the public sector to ensure that people’s safety is paramount at all times: proud aunties, worried mums, brothers, sisters, all of them. She makes a serious point. We must have adequate information so that those whom we expect to do things feel safe. The same applies to the advice being given right through the health service. All those elements are extremely important.

However, I reiterate the point that this specific piece of legislation is to ensure that an individual can be encouraged to continue and fulfil their period in isolation if we are concerned that they might infect the broader population. The measure is for those single cases. It might not involve a police constable; it could just as likely be another individual if the powers are necessary. I stress that we have not used the regulations since they were laid on 10 February. They have been an excellent deterrent.

Coronavirus

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Member raises an important point and through the medium of the wedding dress makes a much broader point, which is that many things are made in China, especially drugs and pharmaceuticals and clothing, which means that the impact in China will have an impact here through the supply chain problems. I am working with the Treasury on the appropriate response. Containing the virus will obviously have health benefits, but it will have economic benefits, too.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) nicked my question about the number of cancelled sporting events around the world, which the Secretary of State will be aware of, but can he be clear about the advice to those who host or attend these events in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus? Can he confirm that, contrary to rumours on the internet, 111 call handlers are not advising people to go to their GP?

[Matt Hancock]

People should call 111 if they are concerned; they should not attend A&E or go to their GP, unless 111 has correctly told them to do that. The 111 call handlers are highly trained. There are GPs at the other end of the line to make sure people get the best advice. It is the place to go to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jo Churchill]

I agree with the hon. Member. I and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), who has responsibility for the mental health element of the portfolio, are working hand in glove on this. Often, it is the dual toxicity of addiction—be it substance or alcohol abuse—and mental ill health that drives health inequalities. We are targeting the matter and working together on access to make sure that we drive down these health inequalities.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

Many people with severe conditions such as agoraphobia face inequalities in accessing life-saving services such as cervical smear tests. What is my hon. Friend doing to ensure that these services can be administered outside a clinical setting, thus reducing health inequalities for those who, for whatever reason, are housebound?

[Jo Churchill]

No woman should be denied access to vital screening. I believe that my hon. Friend is referring to a particular matter in her constituency where it has been very difficult for somebody to access screening. I am happy to meet her to see how we can work through this. We are actually working on a home kit for cervical screening, which should help in time, but nobody should be denied access. We are committed to improving access for all women, and I will be happy to meet her to see what we can do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

Yes absolutely; I can give the hon. Gentleman that clear reassurance, and I thank him for his work as chair of the all-party group on deafness.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

The Minister will recall that in the loneliness strategy we showcased Action on Hearing Loss’s “Hear to Meet” befriending service, which connects those with hearing impairments to share experiences. Alongside the work that the Department is doing to provide good-quality hearing aids, what more is it doing to recognise that those with hearing loss, especially children, can be among the most lonely in society?

[Caroline Dinenage]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. She is absolutely right to highlight the fact that any form of disability can cause social isolation and loneliness, but hearing loss and deafness can do so almost more than anything else. I pay massive tribute to the incredible work that she did as Minister for sport and civil society to further this. I am a keen member of the inter-ministerial group on hearing loss, which does so much to further that aim and aspiration.

The National Health Service

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is quite right. I was trying to shorten my speech, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I missed out a paragraph. I should have said that the purpose of the Bill is to enable staff to speak openly and honestly about errors without fear of blame or liability. That is exactly the point that my hon. Friend made and to which he paid an awful lot of attention in the drafting and prelegislative scrutiny of the Bill.

Finally, let me turn to the proposals on mental health. This country has been on a journey, over a generation, towards recognising that mental health is as important as physical health. There have been contributions to this change in mindset from all sides of the political debate—from Labour Members; especially from the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), to whom I pay tribute; and very much from Government Members, too.

I would like to take a moment to say how much I value the enormous contribution that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have made to changing attitudes towards mental health on this journey. The Mental Health Act 1983 is nearly 40 years old and some of our law is still shaped by 19th century Acts and, indeed, their views of mental illness, and that is completely out of place in the 21st century.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I think that people across the House will be united in ensuring that we reform the Mental Health Act. May I encourage him, as part of the proposals to improve respect and dignity for those who are in treatment, to look at individual care plans to make sure that everyone who is discharged from some sort of residential treatment receives an individual care plan and has access to home visits, especially in those first 72 hours?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I will look precisely into the matter that my hon. Friend raises, because care plans should be the norm. Across the country, a high proportion of people now leave in-patient care with a care plan in place. If the proportion is not high enough in her area, I will look into it, write to her and make sure that she gets the full details.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I agree with the hon. Lady on both counts. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) was an excellent Public Health Minister, who did exemplary work and drove the agenda with great passion and determination, and he has behaved honourably in every sense.

On the point about cross-government working, the hon. Lady is completely right. The need to join up, breaking down the barriers of silos that sometimes exist between agencies, is vital. There is a huge amount of work under way in all of the areas she mentioned, and I am determined to see that work.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

On Friday, I met two clinical commissioning groups that cover my constituency specifically to discuss mental health and children’s health and wellbeing. While it is an extremely complex issue, does the Secretary of State agree with me that, with the perceived rigorous spending rules requiring health providers to spend only on pure health services, it will remain extremely challenging for them to work with other agencies to support methods, such as those to build resilience, that improve outcomes for children’s health?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this. The most forward-looking CCGs in the country are working with all sorts of partners—the voluntary sector, charities, local authorities—to deliver better services that make people healthier, even if they are not purely medicinal in the first instance. For instance, tennis lessons may sometimes help people, Mr Speaker, as may all sorts of other activities. This is all part of a broadening social-prescribing agenda to get people healthy, however that is best done.

Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults: Care Homes

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allin-Khan]

It is for the very reasons that my hon. Friend so beautifully articulates that I am using this platform to raise this issue. This is no longer about my father; this is about every single member of our society—the veterans who fought in our wars, the older people who worked so hard for us to enjoy the liberty that we have today. I am speaking about this for our families, friends, neighbours, loved ones and the people to whom we owe our lives.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I join colleagues from across the House in commending the hon. Lady for her incredibly brave speech. I am in awe of how she is articulating her case this evening. As a former co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on dementia, I am conscious of the fact that we are at the start of a ticking dementia timebomb and that more and more people will fall victim to this cruel, horrible disease in the coming years, making them far more vulnerable in their communities than ever before. Does she agree that now is the time to ensure that the right safeguarding measures are in place, both for today and for the future?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I thank the hon. Lady—I will call her my hon. Friend—who is tireless in fighting against loneliness and for people to have dignity in their communities, and she makes the most essential of points: we are at the start of a ticking timebomb.

While all this was going on, my father was admitted to hospital one afternoon for a routine issue. As we were undressing him, we found bruises all over his body. Did the Ensham House care staff phone to check on him? No. Did Optivo show any care? No. Instead, we were served an eviction notice, detailing a list of allegations against my father without any evidence. How heartless is it to receive an eviction notice while in hospital? What did Wandsworth Council do at this time? Nothing. What was London Care doing? In the space of just five months, London Care had five separate managers at Ensham House. This all started after the first incident with my father. One manager after another came and went, unfamiliar with my father’s safeguarding cases. Some were hostile, others made up incidents involving my father being difficult. Dementia is a degenerative illness, but it does not spiral downwards overnight. Prior to those incidents, as I previously mentioned, not a single issue regarding my father’s difficult behaviour had ever been reported.

In all meetings, it was agreed that the extra care setting was appropriate for my father as he still knew his way around the area, he had a level of independence and my very young daughters felt comfortable visiting him there. Why deny someone their last few months of independence? The extra care setting was deemed by the social services team and everyone involved to be entirely appropriate for him. However, each time we interacted with Ensham House care staff following the first incident in which we found my father beaten, and when we had not been called, we felt as though we were on trial, that we had somehow made up the fact that he was acting afraid, and our concerns were dismissed by a different manager every month.

We found multiple examples of my father’s medication not being written on the drug chart, with London Care saying that he had refused medication when we had seen him take it. We even found one manager had written a note in the staff communication book asking staff to write negative comments about my father in his care notes. The final nail in the coffin, and the point of no return, was when we found my father unconscious on the floor, with blood on the walls and the floor, and a carer’s set of keys left next to him. Following this, he spent one month in hospital.

Four months after that final event in October, there was nothing from Wandsworth Council addressing any of these concerns. The catalogue of disasters crescendoed last week, when the director of adult social services at Wandsworth Council, Liz Bruce—who had refused to look at photos of my father’s injuries, did not know how many open safeguarding complaints there were relating to my father, did not talk to anyone else who knew my dad and had never met him herself—declared that my father had sustained the injuries because “he had asked for it.” Despite police voicing their concerns in the meeting and saying that they cannot rule out abuse, despite her failure to investigate London Care fully and despite her clearly having no detailed knowledge of the case, she chose to use Optivo’s letter, which was full of unsubstantiated claims in the language of the Ensham House managers, as her proof. Well, I think we can all agree that this is a dangerous, highly unprofessional and highly unsatisfactory approach.

Of course it is easier to blame the patient and the family, anything other than looking inwards and accepting responsibility for the fact that the council is awarding care contracts to organisations that are, frankly, unsafe. Quoting CQC ratings in safeguarding communications, when it is well known that patients are fearful to talk, is frankly unacceptable. If this were happening to the UK’s children, the country would be in uproar, and rightly so. Someone living with dementia is just as dependent in their final years as children are in their first years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Dinenage]

It will be held for all parties to consider recommendations going forward and the hon. Lady will be able to attend. We look forward to hearing the outcome, and we will all be keeping a close eye on what transpires.

[Tracey Crouch]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is slightly shocking to us all and in particular the family member of the victim in question, who has not been told by the council that this meeting is taking place? In many respects, that is part of the issue raised by the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan): the family of the victim have not been included in any of these discussions or any of this process in the first place.

[Caroline Dinenage]

That is a very fair point and I am very keen that family members should be involved in the next stage of this meeting going forward. I will be keeping a very close eye on whether that does happen.

In the last few moments available, I want to talk about some of the things we have been doing to protect vulnerable people and some of the actions people can take if, heaven forbid, they find themselves in a similar situation. The Competition and Markets Authority published its care homes market study in 2017, shining a light on some instances of very poor and unacceptable consumer practices in the care homes sector. We accepted all its recommendations and have been putting forward a package of measures to address this. The CMA has also recently published guidance that it provides to care homes on how to meet their consumer law obligations. That has been a key milestone for the sector, and I am encouraged by the commitment some providers have already made to challenge some unfair practices.

Individuals and their families always have a right to complain about the care in a care home or about a domiciliary home care provider. Care homes must make it easy to complain and deal with the complaint quickly and fairly. Any care home that does not meet its obligations is in breach of consumer law, as well as many other things, and could face enforcement action by bodies such as trading standards or the CMA. The CQC encourages the public to share their experience through an online feedback mechanism.

Of course, it is only worth having a complaints system if people know about it and how to access it, which is why, through a joint sector initiative called Quality Matters, we are taking action to improve access to complaints systems and improve the feedback culture in the sector. That is an ongoing piece of work involving the local government and social care ombudsman—to which complaints and concerns about adult social care should be raised—and Healthwatch.

We are committed to preventing and reducing the risk of harm to adults in vulnerable situations. We have made it clear that there is statutory guidance to support the Care Act 2014, and we expect local authorities to ensure that the services they commission are safe and of high quality. We also expect those providing the service, local authorities and the CQC to take very swift action if there are any allegations of abuse, neglect or poor care.

Under section 42 of the 2014 Act, local authorities have a duty to carry out safeguarding enquiries. To aid them in that, they have the power to request information from a provider’s business. The CQC monitors how well providers are giving that information. As part of its inspection regime, the CQC also has to check whether there are effective systems to help to keep adults safe from abuse. The CQC has a duty to act promptly whenever safeguarding issues are discovered during inspections. As the hon. Member for Tooting said, abuse is ultimately a police matter, and if it is suspected, the police must carry out an investigation to determine whether offences have been committed.

We have introduced the new wilful neglect offence specifically to help to eradicate the abuse of people who depend on care services. We have also introduced tougher inspections of care services by the CQC. Thanks in part to this strengthened regime, we have seen a steady improvement in the quality of services, with 83% of adult social care settings now rated as good or outstanding by the CQC. Obviously, every single incident like the one the hon. Lady described and every single concern raised by worried family members makes us want to redouble our efforts to raise the quality. We have been supporting the CQC to understand how it can better hold providers to account where there is any failure.

Let me end by highlighting the hon. Lady’s enormous dedication, representing not only her constituency but the whole country. Whether someone is looking after their own father, mother, husband, wife, son or daughter, we all expect the care provided to be caring and of good quality. We must work and redouble our efforts to ensure that where failure happens, it must be stamped out and cannot be allowed to continue.