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.

Early Parenthood: Supporting Fathers

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered supporting fathers in early parenthood.

As always, Mr Davies, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I hope you will forgive me if I make any minor procedural errors; it has been a while since I have been on the Back Benches of the Westminster Hall Chamber, rather than closer to the wise counsel of the Chair.

I begin with two quick disclaimers. First, although my debate is about supporting fathers in early parenthood, I am extremely conscious that there is still much to do to combat inequality during maternity. I am an avid follower of Maternity Action and support many of its campaigns, some of which I know are making good progress. Secondly, this debate is not meant as a dismissal of the wonderful mums out there who are single or in same-sex couples. It is not about mums versus dads, nor am I pontificating only about married parents—not least because that would make me a hypocrite. I simply want to speak up for the many brilliant dads out there who, in an evolving society, are doing an incredible job of bringing up children. I want to highlight some of the real challenges that they too face.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way so early in her speech. She is making a fantastic return to Westminster Hall from the dizzying heights; she is a principled person and we on the Opposition Benches all love her.

The hon. Lady mentions challenges. Is she aware of Dads House, which does all sorts of things to represent single dads? There are 400,000 single-parent families headed up by dads, which is 13.7% of all single-parent families. Dads House has its own food bank and does buddying, breakfast clubs and football—a sport that is close to the hon. Lady’s heart. Would she be interested in meeting members of the group? In fact, everyone in this House has a good opportunity to meet them, because after Prime Minister’s questions on 20 March they are coming to Speaker’s House for a reception with the all-party parliamentary group on single parent families—and all hon. Members are invited. The group does great work.

[Tracey Crouch]

I would love to come. Single parents play an incredibly important role, but for various reasons they are often maligned. Meeting single dads who are doing their very best, in whatever circumstances they find themselves bringing up their children, is an incredibly important part of that conversation. I would be delighted to come to the event on 20 March.

I want to address three points: perinatal support, loneliness in new dads, and shared parental leave. The first comes wholly under the Department of Health and Social Care; the second does partially; the third might not, but is important to the debate because it relates to the overall wellbeing of our children.

In December, the Centre for Social Justice published a really interesting report, “Testing Times: Supporting fathers during the perinatal period and early parenthood”. It looked in detail at written evidence submitted to the Select Committee on Health and Social Care inquiry into the first 1,000 days of life by the Fatherhood Institute, which described support for fathers as “toothless” and noted criticisms that within health services,

“well-meaning…father-inclusive policy-making…has been more ‘rhetoric than reality’”.

On the back of those comments, the CSJ did some additional polling. It found that seven in 10 new fathers

“were made to feel like a ‘spare part’”,

six in 10 said that they had

“had no conversations at all with a midwife about their role”,

and nearly half said that they had

“received little or no advice at all…on their role as a dad.”

However, it also found that

“more than 9 in 10 are present ‘at the scans and the birth’”

and that there is

“strong correlation between active father engagement and improved childhood outcomes.”

That is a recurring theme in a really interesting book on equal parenting co-authored by one of our own lobby journalists, James Millar. It includes several quotations from the 2015 UN-backed report, “State of the World’s Fathers”, about how engagement in the first year of a baby’s life is good for the dad as well as the baby. Substantial and high-quality father involvement can encourage a child’s positive social interaction and lead to higher cognitive development scores.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing a debate on this important issue. It is hardly surprising that so many dads feel left out when the NHS guidance refers to them not as fathers or dads but as “birthing partners”. Perinatal depression in mums is linked to depression in teenagers: there is a 99% likelihood that a 16-year-old suffering from depression had a mother with perinatal mental health problems, including depression. What is overlooked is that 20% of fathers also experience perinatal mental health problems, which has a big influence on their parenting skills and on their engagement with and attachment to their own children. We need to do more about that.

[Tracey Crouch]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. I saw those statistics while researching my speech; perhaps the Minister’s reply will describe her Department’s work on post-natal depression for mums and dads. I do not have time to cover everything, but I agree that language is incredibly important. I appreciate that the term “birthing partners” is used in order not to cause offence, because our society and how we bring up children are very different now, but it is important that we think about the language and make our communication with fathers as inclusive as possible.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Was she struck, as I was, by the statistic cited in the CSJ report that

“95 per cent of births in the UK are to couples…with 85 per cent of these parents living together”?

Far more needs to be done to encourage and support the family and the community at that stage, to help improve life chances.

[Tracey Crouch]

I did see that interesting statistic. I do not want to get into the details of family make-up in a modern society, because I do not want us to inadvertently criticise those who are not in such relationships—it is important that we respect different family make-ups. The point that I wish to raise today is about fathers and the role that they play.

The excellent book on equal parenting co-authored by James Millar notes the “State of the World’s Fathers” report’s finding that

“fathers who report close, non-violent connections with their children live longer, have fewer mental or physical health problems…and report being happier than fathers who do not report this connection”.

Given the well-understood positive outcomes of fathers’ engagement in their children’s development, it is only right that we should have the infrastructure and systems in place to support them. As the CSJ report states, we need to collect more data at the point of birth to get a better understanding of participation by fathers, but also identify “cold spots” for investment in supporting father engagement.

We definitely need to be a bit more dad-friendly in our language and correspondence about children’s healthcare. I agree with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that a “dad check” would be a valuable way for our health services to ensure that resources are open and accessible to new fathers. I also agree with the recommendation that NHS England should roll out schemes that increase support to fathers. That support should include either creating a new fatherhood fund or making the maternity challenge fund a general parental support fund and putting in additional investment.

The CSJ makes commendable recommendations for the Department of Health and Social Care to improve inspection frameworks, develop a dad test for the perinatal period and extend the reach of digital communications for new fathers. Those all seem sensible ideas; I accept that resources are always a challenge, but the long-term health and wellbeing outcomes must surely justify their consideration.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her well-informed discussion of this important issue. She may be aware of my constituent Mark Williams, who has been a campaigner for the best part of a decade on fathers’ mental health after childbirth. He has been fundamental in pushing the campaign in all nations of the UK, including in the English NHS. He tells me frequently that—as the hon. Lady says—in the services that follow a baby’s birth the father is almost forgotten.

Mark had a breakdown—I know he will not mind my saying that on the Floor of this Chamber. It took him years to understand what was wrong, but now he champions the issue. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need more fathers like Mark to stand up and say that this is a problem? As she will be aware from her former role as a Minister, loneliness and mental health are an issue, and it is worse in men because we do not like talking about it. We need more people like Mark to speak up about what they face after having children.

[Tracey Crouch]

I could not agree more. It is almost as if the hon. Gentleman has seen my speech, because I am about to start talking about loneliness in new fathers. We need to talk more about men’s mental health and to look at the triggers for poor mental health. It is a well-established consideration for mothers—health visitors and other members of the health services regularly ask about the mother’s mental health after a birth. It is not necessarily the same for men’s mental health. Quite often—although as I far as I can remember, it was not the case when my son was born, nearly three years ago—mothers are asked questions by health visitors that relate to the father of the child, rather than the father being asked directly, even when they might be in the same room.

[Chris Elmore]

Does the hon. Lady agree that there needs to be far more training in midwifery or mental health services on focusing on the father’s mental health as well—not just asking the mother about her partner, but creating a structure from very basic training that recognises that fathers are a person, too, in this context? They need the questions put directly. Often husbands and partners will simply not tell their partner how they are feeling or how they are responding to the birth of their child, so the partner might think that everything is fine, and it is all missed. That is the important point.

[Tracey Crouch]

One reason why I wanted to hold this debate is that I feel it is hard for male colleagues to raise the subject. As a mother, I know that if my other half had come to me and said, “I am feeling a bit down,” I would have said, “But you didn’t give birth to the child!” For many years, we have forgotten that it is very much about a partnership. There are many issues that mothers still face—there are still huge issues around discrimination in maternity and everything else—but that must not mean that we forget the issues that fathers face, and that is why this is an important debate.

I completely understand why male colleagues might not have felt comfortable in raising this issue, because they may well feel that they would be accused of forgetting all the other issues around maternity discrimination. I feel very honoured to be raising it on behalf of all the dads out there. Perhaps I can talk about it with more ease.

The constituent of the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) is doing a brilliant job in raising the issue of men’s mental health, post-baby. It is important that we do that. If that equates to having more training, that is what must happen, although I am always loth to say that our hard-working health professionals need any more training than they already get. They have a very important job to do, and by and large they are all doing it brilliantly.

One aspect of parenthood that can impact on wellbeing is loneliness. When Jo Cox stood in the Chamber and spoke of her own challenges with loneliness, including the example of becoming a mother, she widened discussion on the subject. I, too, had my own brushes with maternity-leave loneliness. While the rest of the world here was discussing the referendum campaigns, I was on maternity leave. I dealt with that by going to the supermarket every day, just for a chat.

For new fathers, it can be harder. When my other half took his three months shared parenting leave, he felt isolated from baby groups, as many were either branded “mother and baby” or were predominantly made up of mums, making him feel less inclined to go in. There are excellent apps connecting mums, such as Mush, which we profiled in the loneliness strategy, as did the CSJ in its report, but there are hardly any dad apps set up to connect full-time fathers. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with his digital background, may be interested in upscaling that from a health perspective.

The loneliness strategy, which I was privileged to publish on behalf of the Government in October 2018, specifically, on my request, used an infographic of a dad pushing a baby to highlight becoming a parent as a trigger for loneliness while at the same time reflecting that it is not a gender issue. The more we all acknowledge loneliness as an issue, the quicker we will reduce the stigma and instead create connections that help to combat it. I was pleased that the Department of Health and Social Care was a core partner in the delivery of the strategy.

The CSJ noted that children's centres are a key part of delivering opportunities for dads to connect, and that many were not doing so, despite its being a legal requirement. I know that children’s centres are a politically contentious issue because of funding and I would hate the debate to be bogged down by that, but the centres in my constituency, some of which have restructured, could play an enormously important role in creating support networks for dads. It is a shame that because of funding pressures, gaps in services are occurring.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The problem with the children’s centres—a fantastic asset—at the moment is that they are closed most of the time when dads can access them, particularly at weekends. Some of the best children’s centres are those that open at weekends, have football teams that dads and their children can come along to, and have computer-reading facilities latched on to that. It is a way of getting dads into the children’s centres. The centres need to be used much more at weekends and outside of working times when many fathers cannot access them.

[Tracey Crouch]

I agree with my hon. Friend, but it is very important that we do not fall into the trap of talking about dads as weekend parents. The point of the debate is to discuss how society has evolved; there is a lot more equal parenting. I completely understand his point. I shall come on to talk about shared parenting. The take-up of shared parenting is so low that many fathers can play that meaningful role in parenting only at weekends, so we would want those services to be open. Children’s centres have an incredibly important role, which is not just about creating a connection, but also about, for example, trying to break the cycle in domestic abuse. They play a fundamental role. I know that the Stefanou Foundation is doing some excellent work in supporting such initiatives.

I accept that my own experience is based on good fortune, and that it could easily be criticised as coming from a comfortably-off middle-class professional, but we need to do so much more on shared parenting than we do at the moment. We lag very far behind other countries on shared parenting, particularly Scandinavian countries.

What I see from my other half taking shared parenting is a very special bond between him and our son. Sadly, there are still a significant number of men who are ineligible for parental leave, and for those that are eligible there is a financial disincentive to take it. The Fawcett Society found that nearly seven in 10 people believed that men who took time off work to look after a baby should be entitled to the same pay and amount of leave as women. In Germany, fathers on leave are paid two thirds of their salary and in Sweden it is 80% of their income. Here it is £145 per week. We managed because I am paid well, but an average or low-income family would inevitably struggle, so while many might want to, it is unsurprising that take-up of parental leave is so low.

I know that much work is being undertaken to improve the situation. I thought the speeches in our debate on proxy voting on Monday evening encouraging male colleagues to take shared parenting leave were really helpful, and we could set an example in this place. I commented earlier on the wider societal and health benefits of a father’s meaningful engagement in the upbringing of a child. To me, doing more to improve our shared parenting policies is a no-brainer.

There is so much more I could have spoken about this morning, including the emerging organisations that help support fathers, such as workingdads.co.uk, which seeks employment with flexible, child-friendly hours, and the really funny social media accounts, such as Man vs. Baby, which might make light of some of the challenges that fathers face but also highlights that they exist in the first place. Ultimately, if we accept that meaningful fatherly engagement with their children is good for the health and wellbeing not just of the child but of the dad, making sure that we provide the infrastructure to support them, from neonatal to perinatal and beyond, is simply common sense, fair and equal—good economics but also really good politics.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. We have six speakers, which with my maths makes about six minutes each. I would like to introduce an advisory limit of six minutes. As with the EU referendum, it is not mandatory, but I strongly advise it. I invite Paul Masterton to start.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, 100%. That is exactly what is in the plan, and I am delighted to have such support. This is precisely the direction in which we need to go in integrating care to ensure that patients are served better, whoever is the ultimate funder of the service.

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

In the event of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, access to a defibrillator can make the difference between life and death. Although there are tens of thousands of defibs across the United Kingdom, the majority are not known to the ambulance service, so will the Minister join me in welcoming the British Heart Foundation’s efforts to map the location of all defibs so that ambulance services can direct people to their nearest heart restarter in an emergency and, hopefully, we can save more lives?

[Steve Brine]

Yes, I will. We work closely with partners such as the BHF to harness new technology. Ultimately, this is about using data—big data—to ensure that patients benefit, and that is at the heart of the health service.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Commons Chamber

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

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of joining volunteer leader John Goodwin and others on a health walk around Capstone park in my constituency—one of a number of health walks supported by Medway Council. Will the Secretary of State join me in encouraging more GPs to prescribe walking as a gentle, low-impact form of exercise that is suitable for all ages and abilities?

[Matt Hancock]

With enthusiasm, I endorse the call from my hon. Friend, who did so much work on this at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, both before I was in that Department and when I was Secretary of State there. She made the case brilliantly, and she continues to do so. She is absolutely right.