Welfare of Doctors

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Peter Prinsley]

I will speak of general practice shortly. My son is an A&E doctor here in London, and I am therefore one of three generations of doctors who have served the NHS continuously since it began; the welfare of doctors is personal for me. This Government have already done much for doctors, who are on the frontline and not the picket line for the first time in several years, but burnout, fatigue and stress are still very real problems that threaten to undermine the efficacy of our NHS.

Today’s new doctors graduate into the profession with debts of nearly £100,000. They immediately enter a lottery to be appointed to their first jobs as pre-registration doctors, sometimes ending up miles away from family and friends in places they have never visited before. Now that reminds me of another job that I just started. Young doctors are left immediately responsible for life-and-death decisions, sometimes with insufficient support. They are left scrabbling at the very last minute for somewhere to live—the on-call accommodation that my generation remembers has disappeared—and I have known several of them to sleep in their cars.

It has not escaped my notice that the new name for junior doctors is “resident doctors”. Resident doctors? That is the very last thing they are. If they are lucky, there is a place for them to rest, but many a time I have arrived to find a young doctor fast asleep from exhaustion at an office desk.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

Given the desperate need for more doctors in the NHS, does my hon. Friend agree that we need to be looking after doctors’ welfare to encourage more people to enter the medical profession?

[Peter Prinsley]

I agree with my hon. Friend, as he will see.

There are odd shifts, night duties without hot food, and days and weeks that go by without an opportunity to meet supervising consultants. Short clinical attachments mean that the relationships previously created with senior mentors are rare. Just last week, I received an email from a surgeon who was my consultant in 1986. He had noticed in a surgical journal that I had become an MP, and I remembered him as the brilliant surgeon that he was. These are the relationships that make people feel as if they belong within a wider profession, but I doubt whether the young trainees of today would have the chance to make such lasting connections.

There is little security of employment, because doctors are obliged to apply every year or two for another post, probably in another place. The doctors’ mess used to be a place where young doctors could find a sort of surrogate family in an unfamiliar place, but that is now sadly a thing of the past. According to research from the British Medical Association, fewer than 10% of UK trusts or health boards offer hot food after 11 o’clock at night.

The demands of the job affect relationships. Many young doctors are in relationships with fellow doctors, but lucky indeed are the couple who can work and live in the same place, or even contemplate raising a young family together. Sadly, relationship difficulties and breakdowns are commonplace. Holidays must be taken at odd times, and rotas are inflexible. Doctors are left unable to take a day off to attend a wife’s graduation, a sister’s wedding or even their own wedding—all true.

Progression in a chosen career depends on a multitude of competitive interviews and hugely costly professional exams. There is no security of employment. In a survey called “Fight Fatigue” conducted by the Royal College of Anaesthetists, 50% of respondents said that they had had an accident or a near miss when driving home after a night shift—I recall fatalities like this in my own hospital; 84% were too tired to drive home after a night shift; and only 64% had access to any rest facilities. What would we say if the same were true of airline pilots, to whom anaesthetists are sometimes compared?

Hospice and Palliative Care

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

Let me first pay tribute to the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) for bringing this debate to the House.

Hospices such as Compton Care in my constituency provide invaluable palliative care, not only in terms of pain and symptom control but in providing psychological, social and spiritual support, support for people who wish to die at home, and rehabilitation, financial advice and support for family members, including bereavement support. However, the funding that hospices receive from ICBs across the country is inconsistent, and often does not reflect the cost of the services that they provide. As has already been mentioned, only a third of hospice funding comes from the Government, with the rest coming from charitable donations. As of May last year, at least a fifth of UK hospices had either cut their services in the previous year or were planning to do so.

When hospices cut services the need for care is still there, but it has to be met by the NHS. If they are given the long-term support they need, that can ease the pressure on the NHS. Sector leaders estimate that the need for palliative care in the UK will increase by 25% over the next 25 years. However, I welcome the £100 million that the Government have provided, which will improve buildings, equipment, accommodation and digital upgrades, as well as the £26 million revenue funding for children and young people’s hospices that will be provided in 2025-26.

There has been a lot of discussion about assisted dying this evening and when we discussed the assisted dying Bill, there was a lot of discussion about palliative care. Now we have an opportunity to take action, and we need to seize it to improve palliative care. If the assisted dying Bill does become law, we need to make sure that people in the future do not have to make a decision between assisted dying and palliative care.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, but hospices face a range of pressures. The capital expenditure injection that we have provided will help them in the round. Clearly, anything that helps a hospice with its budget in the round, be it capital or revenue, will help the hospice.

We are supporting the hospice sector through a £100 million capital funding boost for adult and children’s hospices, to ensure that they have the best physical environment for care. There is also £26 million in revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices. The £100 million in capital funding will deliver much-needed improvements—from refurbishments to overhauling IT systems and better facilities for patients and visitors—during the remainder of 2024-25 and throughout 2025-26. The investment will help hospices to improve their buildings, equipment and accommodation, so that patients continue to receive the best care possible.

Hospices for children and young people will receive a further £26 million in revenue funding for ’25-26 through what was known until recently as the children’s hospice grant. That investment demonstrates the Government’s recognition of the importance of integrating services to improve the treatment that patients receive. Furthermore, through our plans for neighbourhood health centres, we will drive the shift of care from hospitals to the community, which will bring together palliative care services, including hospices and community care services, so that people have the best access to treatment through joined-up services.

[Warinder Juss]

Money is not always the only solution, so will my hon. Friend confirm how the commission on palliative care that the Government announced last month will improve end of life care?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The Government announced a commission on the future of adult social care. A separate commission was announced by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) on palliative care. We will certainly monitor the findings of that commission very closely.

We will set out details of the funding allocation and distribution mechanisms for both funding streams in the coming weeks.

Hospice Funding

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

What beggars belief is that person after person—man after man—on the Opposition Benches still feels able to get up and defend their record in government. Not once have we heard that they agree with Lord Darzi’s diagnosis, or that they welcome the extra investment that the Chancellor found by choosing to support the health sector in the Budget. I am afraid that, until they reach that conclusion, they are destined to be on the Opposition Benches for a very long time.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

Merry Christmas to you and your team, Mr Speaker.

Compton Care hospice in my constituency provides specialist palliative and bereavement care, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Having previously discussed the lack of funding with the hospice, I am sure that it will welcome the extra funding that has been announced today. Will the Minister please join me in thanking Compton Care hospice and its incredible staff for the care that they will continue to provide throughout the Christmas period?

[Karin Smyth]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments, and I am very pleased to thank Compton Care hospice for all its work. He is right to highlight that the care is 365 days a year, around the clock.

Income Tax (Charge)

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

The Chancellor’s Budget last week finally ended the Conservative party’s austerity. It is a Budget that fixes the foundations to deliver real change, by fixing the NHS, cutting hospital waiting lists, reforming public services and rebuilding our country.

As the Chancellor said, this Budget is about “investment, investment, investment”. This Labour Government are investing over £25.5 billion over two years in the NHS. That will cut waiting times, so that patients do not have to wait longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment; provide 40,000 extra appointments; put in place new surgical hubs and diagnostic scanners, building capacity for more than 30,000 additional procedures and over 1.25 million diagnostic tests; and provide new radiotherapy machines to improve cancer treatment.

We are investing in NHS technology and digital, to run essential services and to drive NHS productivity improvements, freeing up staff time. We are providing a dedicated capital fund to deliver upgrades to GP surgeries, boosting productivity and enabling the delivery of more appointments.

We are investing £26 million to open new mental health crisis centres. At last, we have a Government who are committed to tackling the root causes of mental health problems and to supporting people to remain in work and to return to work.

We are supporting social care through at least £600 million of new grant funding to be able to increase local Government spending, alongside an £86 million increase to the disabled facilities grant to support more adaptations to homes for those with social care needs, thereby reducing hospitalisations and prolonging independence.

This Government are cutting down barriers to opportunity for all by increasing the core schools budget by £2.3 billion, supporting the recruitment of 6,500 teachers in key subjects and tackling retention issues, to prepare our children for life, work and the future.

We are providing a £1 billion increase to improve SEND provision and to improve outcomes and an additional £300 million for further education to ensure that young people are learning and developing the skills they need to succeed in the modern labour market, which will help the City of Wolverhampton college in my constituency. We are increasing investment in children’s social care reform, and it is great to see a real-terms funding increase for local government spending.

We are taking all of these decisions, while also taking tough decisions on spending and welfare, eliminating fraud and error in the welfare system—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I call Baggy Shanker.

Oral Answers to Questions

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

17. What assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of patient access to primary care services.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

20. What assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of patient access to primary care services.

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

As identified in Lord Darzi’s review, primary care is broken. Satisfaction with GP services has fallen from a peak of 80% in 2009 to just 35% last year—a truly damning indictment of 14 years of Tory failure. We will rebuild general practice. We have invested £82 million to recruit 1,000 new GPs, we have launched our red tape challenge, and we are committed to improving continuity of care and ending the 8 am scramble. On primary care more broadly, we are committed to boosting the role of community pharmacies, enabling patients to be treated for certain conditions by their local pharmacists, without the need to see a GP.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

We are absolutely committed to the challenge of cutting red tape and reducing the administrative burden for staff to help patients get the care that they need. An important element of our plan will be streamlining access to registration in order to move it online, and we are working at pace to make online registration available in all practices. I am very happy to come back to my hon. Friend on the constituency issue that she raises.

[Warinder Juss]

Lord Darzi’s report on the NHS states that people are struggling to see their GPs. Prevention is better than cure, and interventions to protect health tend to be far less costly than dealing with the consequences of illness, both financially and in terms of outcomes. Early and quick access to primary care is therefore crucial. I accept that it is not always necessary to see a GP—an appointment with a nurse may suffice—but what steps are being taken to ensure that patients in my Wolverhampton West constituency have quick, easy and direct access to GP surgeries?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I note that Wolverhampton West has seen a decrease of 28 full-time equivalent GPs since 2018, which of course massively exacerbates the issues to which my hon. Friend refers. We will introduce a modern booking system to end the 8 am scramble and make it easier for patients to contact their GP. In particular, we are committed to increasing the use of the NHS app to view patient records and order repeat prescriptions. All of that will take pressure off the booking system.