Access to Primary Healthcare

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Helen Morgan

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan]

No, I will make some progress.

People do much better if they have access to continuity of care, but 8,000 more GPs are needed to deliver the rights that we laid out in our manifesto. We do not shy away from the fact that that is an ambitious objective, and we accept that it cannot be achieved through training and recruitment alone: we need to retain and incentivise our existing workforce. As I said earlier, seeing people in their communities avoids hospital admissions and saves money. Unfortunately, although the Conservatives promised us 6,000 more GPs in 2019, we ended up with 500 fewer. That is why people are so frustrated. According to the findings of research carried out by the House of Commons Library, GP funding has fallen by £350 million in real terms since 2019. As a result, not only are people struggling to gain access to basic care in their communities, but there is a postcode lottery when it comes to availability of that care.

In the area where I live, which is covered by NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, the number of fully qualified GPs fell from 280 in 2016 to 242 in 2023, despite an increased and increasingly ageing population with a much higher level of demand, while 43% of patients are waiting more than 28 days for non-urgent appointments. The Darzi report showed that the number of people waiting for long periods for appointments is rising throughout the country: it is a national issue. We know that from our own doorstep conversations.

Members might ask me, “Where are you going to get 8,000 more GPs from? That is a big number.” Apart from training new ones, we should value greatly our experienced ones. A recruitment and training programme is one idea, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) pointed out, using the dentists we have trained properly is extremely important, but we also need to focus on retention and incentivising our existing GPs, to ensure that we hold on to valuable experience and valuable patient continuity.

Let me move on from GPs to local pharmacies. Pharmacy First was a great idea of the previous Government —I am willing to give them credit—but pharmacists are under huge strain. According to the Darzi report, some 1,200 have closed since 2017, and spending under the community contract has fallen. Tomorrow I am going to visit Green End pharmacy in Whitchurch, in my constituency, which wrote to me:

“As an independent pharmacy, we’re unable to keep on absorbing costs with losses on dispensing.”

The pharmacy is struggling because it is making losses on the drugs that it gives out on prescription. Given that it is a small, independent pharmacy, it does not have a massive shop from which to make profits to subside that work.

In 2023, Community Pharmacy England warned of

“systemic pharmacy funding cuts of at least 25% in real terms since 2015.”

That has led to a postcode lottery of access, and to many pharmacies being unable to have a full-time pharmacist and relying on locums, which has led to a really poor and insecure level of service. That is impacting on people who just need to go and pick up their prescription and get on with their day.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

The NHS is devolved in Scotland, but the UK Government have responsibility for continuity of supply of medications. I have constituents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder who have been waiting for up to a year to secure that continuity of supply. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to see more action from the Government, who should be proactive in that regard?

[Helen Morgan]

That is a really important point. A lot of people in my constituency have contacted me for help with drugs—for example, to deal with ADHD. People need to be able to access important medication readily.

We must not forget the dentistry element of primary care. A generation of children are at risk of poor oral health because of the mess in which dentistry has been left by the previous Government. Tooth decay is the biggest cause of children being admitted to hospital, with over 100,000 admitted since 2018. That is totally unacceptable. Some 4.4. million children have not been seen by an NHS dentist in the last year, according to the House of Commons Library.

Dentistry is really important for children—they have to keep their teeth for the rest of their lives—but this issue affects adults too. My constituent Ron Kelly, who is 62, is disabled and lives in Market Drayton. Members who have been around a while might know that it is not easy to catch a bus to anywhere from Market Drayton. He has not been able to find a dentist since 2019, and my caseworkers have rung every NHS dentist in our constituency. None of them is taking on new patients, so even if he was able to use the bus, he would not be able to find an NHS dentist in North Shropshire at the moment.

Office for National Statistics data released last week shows that, in the midlands, 99% of people who do not have an NHS dentist, and who are trying to find an appointment, cannot access one—99%! It is just unbelievable in a modern country in the 21st century.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Helen Morgan

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Let me begin by declaring an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Authority.

Overall, this was a disappointing Budget for North Shropshire and for rural communities across the country. Instead of allocating levelling-up funding on the basis of need, councils will once again be forced to spend thousands in consultant and officer time, competing against each other for small pots of money which, ultimately, they may not win. Surely it is time to assess the needs of each area objectively and invest accordingly. Personally, I would not consider a marginal seat to be an indication of need, but Wednesday’s statement shamelessly funnelled funding into marginal seats, largely ignoring the urgent need in rural Britain for investment in public transport and key infrastructure.

I would welcome clarity from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on the proposals for local enterprise partnerships. The LEP in the Marches covers a number of local authority areas, and has been a driver of public and private sector investment. How will its activities be effectively absorbed across a number of different overstretched councils?

The rest of the Budget was largely taking with one hand and giving away with the other. Money to repair potholes is welcome, but the entire national potholes budget would probably not be enough to repair the badly neglected roads of Shropshire, while the active travel fund, which might have brought real benefits to all areas, has been cut. The £63 million to keep swimming pools open is welcome, but it involves another largely competitive bidding process for capital investment and energy efficiency measures. Community Leisure UK still predicts that many pools will be unable to reopen without additional funding to help with the soaring energy bills that forced them to close in the first place.

The Chancellor claimed that 100% capital allowances for businesses investing in plant and machinery would offset their corporation tax rise, but those businesses have to have the cash to invest and they need to be turning a profit to offset those capital allowances against. Rural businesses in North Shropshire have told me that the astronomical cost of energy means that they are struggling to stay afloat, not turning a comfortable profit or generating cash to invest.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

A very easy way to help small businesses to grow is to do something about the VAT tax threshold, which has not increased in line with inflation since 2017. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is preventing businesses from growing further and that the Government could have done that instead of stealth-taxing small businesses?

[Helen Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I agree.

Duty on draught beer has been cut, and that is obviously welcome for the pubs that sit at the heart of the communities in our towns and villages, but many small businesses were locked into gas and electricity contracts last year in a period of soaring prices as a result of the terrible invasion of Ukraine. Just this morning, I was contacted by a popular village pub to say that it was facing closure—despite always being too busy to fit me in for a table. It is facing a fourfold increase in its energy costs, but this Budget has cut the support that it is going to be offered, even while wholesale prices fall and it costs the Government less.

We all want to get people back into work, but there has been a real-terms cut to the public health budget, with nothing more for adult and children’s social care at a time when illness and caring responsibilities have placed enormous pressure on the workforce across every sector. Staff shortages underpin the crises in social care, the health service and the wider rural economy, and we feel them strongly in North Shropshire. In summary, this is a missed opportunity for North Shropshire and for rural communities across Britain.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Helen Morgan

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

8. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of his Department’s levelling-up agenda on the cost of living for people in rural areas.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

22. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of his Department’s levelling-up agenda on the cost of living for people in rural areas.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Dehenna Davison)]

Levelling up is all about improving opportunities and living standards in all parts of the country, but we know that some cost pressures, including transport and energy, can be even greater in rural areas than in urban areas. That is why, in this year’s provisional local government finance settlement, we have proposed maintaining the £85-million rural services delivery grant. As we are concerned about the impact of the cost of living, the recent autumn statement also protected the most vulnerable by uprating benefits and pensions with inflation, strengthening the energy price guarantee, and providing cost of living payments to those most in need.

National Insurance Contributions (Increase of Thresholds) Bill

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Helen Morgan

2nd reading
Thursday 24th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain]

The purpose of the VAT cut is to increase the economy and increase productivity, and therefore see increased tax receipts, which would cover it.

Instead of raising taxes on working people, the Government could implement a windfall tax on the super-profits of oil and gas companies. I say “super-profits” because this is about the additional profits that those companies are making as a result of the increase in energy prices, and it is not the same as the policy proposed by Labour. However, this Government are allowing those companies to make and keep those massive gains. That is true to form; we have seen them give banks a £7 billion tax cut and we know about the high levels of wastage that we have seen, for example, in relation to personal protective equipment. A measure such as this would help support our most vulnerable families.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the proposed changes to the national insurance thresholds are disappointing, because they just do not go far enough to help people cope with the shocking scale of this cost of living crisis? A disabled family in my constituency do not pay national insurance so they do not get any benefit from the proposed cut; one member is too ill to work and his wife has to stay at home to care for him, so they get nothing from this, but they are struggling to heat their house and pay their food bills. This does not do anything for them. For those who are in work, the NI rate is still increasing by 10% and so they will not benefit enough to be able to heat their homes. Does she also agree that those who live off-grid and heat their homes with heating oil are not protected by anything that happened yesterday?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Interventions have to be quite short.