Cass Review

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

The reason why I am able to be so robust on this issue is that I believe in it; on that, I may be different from others. The challenge that the right hon. Gentleman rightly puts forward is that we have to ensure that NHS England acts as an organisation, but also at the individual and local levels, to implement the reforms that the report recommends. I want to be fair to clinicians, medical professionals, managers and others who very much support the review. I want to support them in taking up the recommendations. What individual clinicians may or may not have done in the past will be a matter for both NHS England and the regulators going forward. The moral and professional expectation is that in future, clinicians, medical professionals and all of us will respect the evidence and the recommendations of this important report.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

I would like to put on the record my thanks to Dr Hilary Cass for her thoughtful and comprehensive review. Does my right hon. Friend agree that those of us across this House who, for the past few years, have been calling for a pause on the ban on conversion therapy while we wait for Cass, because of concerns not with the L, G or B, but the T element of the ban on LGBT conversion therapy, have been completely vindicated in that call?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend sincerely for her help in raising these difficult questions and for doing so, as she has just demonstrated, in a thoughtful and careful manner. I know that she shares my concern that the children and young people at the heart of this should be our focus. We need to build the system around them, rather than them being slotted into the system, as has happened in the past.

On conversion therapy—again, I am being very mindful of the sensitivities of this—we are committed to supporting all victims of conversion practices, but we want to avoid any unintended consequences and ensure that the draft Bill takes account of the independent Cass review. That is why my Cabinet counterpart, the Minister for Women and Equalities, is leading the work in this area. We are very much considering this complex issue as part of our approach to this sensitive and important matter.

Menopause

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and to follow the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor). I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing the debate, on her brilliant private Member’s Bill that went through last year, and on setting up the incredibly important menopause taskforce with the Minister. I am looking forward to Menopause Monday next week, and I shall look for the invitation in my inbox. I have just checked my diary and shall try to clear it so that I can come along. The work that the hon. Lady is doing is incredibly important, because she is shining a light on something that has been swept under the carpet for a long time.

I feel lucky that I had a mother who was open and who answered the incredible number of curious questions that I had as a teenager. She is 30 years older than me, so I was 18 when she was 48, and I am nearly 48. I remember her going off to the doctor and being diagnosed with depression. This is such a perennial story, and I cannot believe that, 30 years later, we still have women being diagnosed with depression instead of perimenopause, which is what she was going through. She did not get on with the antidepressants, so she stopped taking them and went back to her old doctor—she had moved area—who prescribed her HRT. She did not get on with that either, but that was probably due to my mother’s sensitivity to changes. Throughout my life, I have not been able to cope with hormones from certain forms of birth control and such things. I have never really wanted to use them or got on with them, and I think a lot of people are sensitive to them. Because my mother did not have a very good experience with HRT, I thought, “When I get to that time of my life, I’m just going to be tough and see it through,” like we all have to do.

I loved the hon. Lady’s comment about HRT being a posh woman’s thing. It probably is, to some extent. She is absolutely right to talk about the postcode lotteries. However, the majority of women—they are busy and getting on with their lives, because they are working or have children at various different ages—put themselves last. We do not put ourselves first, and it often takes something quite significant for us to seek the medical help that we need, as we all lead busy lives.

I first experienced menopausal symptoms last summer —it was a bit before my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), and before the debate last October. During the summer I thought, “Have I got long covid again?” I had had covid in March 2020 and had nine months of long covid, which involved complete and utter exhaustion. I got over it and got my lung function back again, and I thought, “Why am I so tired? Why am I exhausted all the time?” Like the hon. Member for Edmonton, I thought, “Is it just this job?”

I was curious to hear my right hon. Friend talk about the HR director saying, “I don’t want anybody to know I’ve got this.” I can promise Members that, as an MP, I rely on the fact that people realise that I work hard for my constituents seven days a week. Why would I want to tell them that I am absolutely exhausted, that I am struggling to sleep at night, that I am having hot flushes, and that it takes me about five attempts to get up in the morning? That is what it was like with long covid.

The point I want to make to the Minister is that about 2 million people in the country are currently suffering from long covid. It is really important for women who are over the age of 40 and who are suffering from long covid to double-check and make sure that they are not also having to deal with perimenopause or the menopause. There could be an easy solution for them, such as taking HRT. The symptoms include brain fog and not being able to find the right words, which is a serious problem in a job like this. When your brain stops working and you are in the middle of a speech, you think, “I know what the answer is. Why can’t I find it? What’s going on?” It is due to perimenopause, and there is a good solution for it.

I decided in August last year—thankfully, we were on recess—that I could not wait any longer. I needed to go and see a doctor, and I did the research. I am lucky: I am able to spend time googling. I am looking up things all the time, and I found Dr Alex Standring at the Surrey Park Clinic, who had put together a whole load of informative videos about symptoms and what women were going through. I got in touch with her and managed to get myself a prescription, and the change was immediate. Almost within two weeks, I felt like a different person.

I came into this place thinking, “I don’t want to be boxed in talking about women’s issues. I’ve got to talk about the economy, defence, justice and big meaty things”, but we have to speak our truth and talk about what we are going through. As women, we have powerful voices in this place. We ask women to stand for Parliament, and it is quite often at this time in their life that they are ready to make that sort of contribution, yet they might come in and find themselves suffering with perimenopausal symptoms, and then probably from impostor syndrome—“What am I doing here? I don’t belong here. I can’t do this job.” We absolutely can do this job, and we need more women to come into this place. We have hit the prime of our life. Quite often, women have had their children—or they may not have had children, but they are at a point in their career when they should absolutely be humming. It is such a shame to see so many women step back from what they can potentially be in the workplace and in everything they are doing because these awful symptoms of perimenopause and menopause come along. Many role models have been mentioned, and I just wanted to say that Sophie, Countess of Wessex, is also doing a brilliant job in raising awareness.

My colleagues have already mentioned asks of Government in their speeches, so I will not repeat them, but it is important that we keep talking about this issue and raising awareness. I am pleased that steps seem to be being taken on a more regular basis, due to the one- woman campaign machine that is the hon. Member for Swansea East, as well as the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North, keeping these things at the forefront of everyone’s mind. I thank all Members present for their indulgence, because it is important that we are able to tell our stories and talk about what we have experienced. I also thank the Minister for her tireless work behind the scenes; it is not always easy.

Health and Social Care

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that it is not him who is looking a little old or worn around the edges. I understand the point he makes, and he and I have met about this particular issue, which goes back to what counts against capital allocations in terms of accounting. He tempts me to change Treasury rules; I fear that could be career-limiting, as I am not a Treasury Minister, but I will continue to talk to him and work with him to see whether we can find a way to allow the project to proceed.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

I am reassured to see that applications to study nursing and midwifery have risen by 21% this year alone. Having recently joined my midwives on their March with Midwives up the high street in Guildford, I know that midwives urgently need their numbers boosted. Will my hon. Friend confirm that we remain on track to deliver 50,000 more nurses by the end of this Parliament, as we promised in our manifesto?

[Edward Argar]

I can confirm that my hon. Friend is absolutely right in her assessment of the progress that we are making.

Menopause (Support and Services) Bill

Angela Richardson Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

It is always a privilege to be in this Chamber to support the work of the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). It is just over a week since we last debated the menopause in the Chamber, and I always say that in Parliament we should pick not just our battles but our allies. It is a pleasure to campaign, to hold a revolution and to be a warrior alongside her.

The reality is that all women will go through the menopause, but not all women will suffer symptoms. Only about 80% suffer symptoms and HRT—a brilliant, wonderful solution to some of those symptoms—does not work for everyone, and the same type of HRT does not work for every woman. That is why it is often a case of trial and error, going through many prescriptions to find the form of HRT that works for each woman and resolves their symptoms. We have to address the costs because women will be bearing the burden of prescription after prescription until they find the solution for them.

We have heard a little this morning about education, but no one has yet paid tribute to the brilliant work of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), who made sure that, as part of personal, social, health and economic education, girls are not just taught about periods, not getting pregnant and contraception but are taught about what might happen when those periods stop. Of course, it is not just a matter for girls. Their male classmates and colleagues, their fathers and brothers, also need to be part of this discussion.

As we have heard repeatedly, there is too little knowledge in schools and in the workplace. I regard this place as a workplace and, until very recently, it was heavily male- dominated, but we are clawing it back, sometimes just one seat at a time. I pay tribute to the work of one of the foremost menopause warriors, Anne Milton, the predecessor of my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson). As Deputy Chief Whip, Anne Milton played the crucial pastoral, human resources role of helping many of us with conversations on all sorts of weird and wonderful health issues. It helped that she was previously a nurse, but she was an evangelist for HRT. When I spoke to her about it yesterday, she said, “Just go and get yourself a prescription, because this will solve those hot flushes at night and the fact you wake up in a puddle of sweat.” I still tried to say, “No, I’m sure that’s just my insistence on sleeping under a 13.5 tog duvet.” Apparently not.

I vividly remember being brutally asked by GB News, “What are your menopause symptoms?” I recoiled a little from the question, which I thought was a bit rude. And then I thought, no, I have to talk about it. I regard it as my duty to talk about it so that younger women know, whether it is brain fog, anxiety, hot flushes or night sweats, this is all normal and it can be addressed.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

I had that conversation with my predecessor, the right hon. Anne Milton, quite a few years ago, and she completely changed my mind about HRT. My mother and aunt had to go through this 30 years before me—I am now 47—and they had difficult reactions to HRT. My aunt died from cancer that, anecdotally, was blamed on HRT.

It was Anne Milton who said to me, in a frank conversation, “This is what women need to live good lives.” I pay tribute to her for having the courage to have that conversation with me, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for the courage she shows in talking about it, too.

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend has made the point—lead good lives—and that is what we want to do, whether it is at home or at work.

Something in particular has struck me during Menopause Awareness Month. I have spoken to many employers about the menopause workplace pledge, and have talked to members of organisations in the City of London about what they can do to support women. According to a survey carried out by the Fawcett Society, 50% of women working in financial services were not taking on additional responsibilities because they were worried about their menopause symptoms, while 25% were considering leaving work. Women at the height of their careers are potentially losing them, and not providing those brilliant female role models to which we all need to aspire in order to progress in our careers.

I make no criticism of my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), the current Deputy Chief Whip, but I issue a plea to all those in the Whips Office: make sure you have good, strong women in there who can provide advice when it is needed. I pay tribute to Claire Hattrick, who lives in Hampshire and runs the clipboardclaire.com website, providing impartial, informed advice for women when they are going through the menopause. Many of us simply do not know what the symptoms are. We do not understand them, and we do not know where to turn. Claire and many like her across the country provide that advice, free of charge and independently, giving us all hope that the symptoms can be dealt with.

Bills such as this mean that we will debate the issue on the Floor of the House as well as in the wider country. It is about having the conversations, about making sure that we understand, and, most of all, about joining the hon. Member for Swansea East and ensuring that we are all warriors and allies, and that we are going to bring about change.

Baby Loss Awareness Week

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

What an honour it is to follow my good friend, the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland). I pay tribute to him for his openness and honesty today. I think we need more of that in this House. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) for securing the debate and bravely sharing again her story about Lily, and for her tireless work on the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss. Sometimes we end up in these things, but it is what we make of them that counts. In her speech, and in her answers to interventions, it was clear that she really knows her stuff. So I commend her. I also thank my constituents who wrote to me last year after my contribution to the debate and this year asking me to be here today.

This is an opportunity for us to talk about our shared humanity and our shared stories right across the whole Chamber. It is something that affects us all. I have always found that being open in discussing a sensitive subject is a good thing. It encourages others to open up and talk about things. However, as I was preparing for the debate today, I knew why I do not talk about these things sometimes. There is a real physical reaction to bringing those memories back to the forefront of your mind. Your eyes prick with tears, it becomes difficult to swallow and you wonder if you are going to be able to get the words out and speak. We have seen, in contributions across the Chamber, that we are all in that position. Even as I was writing my speech today and writing notes, I could feel that physical reaction to things that happened a long, long time ago.

As I was looking up statistics, as we do in this place, I realised that I am a statistic on a piece of paper—quite an awkward thing to be sometimes. I want to focus my comments on the mental health side of baby loss. On stillbirth and mental health, Tommy’s, a great charity and resource, has stated that women who have suffered stillbirth or neonatal death are more likely to have anxiety and depression afterwards. One study in the US of 800 women showed that women who had stillbirth were twice as likely to have depression, compared with those who had live births. That effect had actually increased when they were studied again two years later, showing that stillbirth has a long-term effect on mental health. Another study of 609 women who had experienced stillbirth or neonatal death showed that women who had loss were four times more likely to have depression and seven times more likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder. In my speech last year, I talked about flashbacks. They catch you by surprise and come at the most unexpected times. Something will trigger one, bringing those physical sensations right to the forefront.

I wanted to talk a little about my story. I have schoolfriends who had to give birth to babies who no longer had a heartbeat and, on the anniversary each year, watch the photos go up on Facebook. It is wonderful that they are able to celebrate—that is probably the wrong word—to recognise that child and that their friends share that with them, even though it is very difficult to look at those photos. I had a very good schoolfriend who, like my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth, at 20 weeks found out in a scan that the amniotic fluid was disappearing and that her baby was being crushed slowly in the womb. She had to make the decision to terminate the pregnancy because the baby would never have survived. Because she was such a good friend, I lived that with her.

Last year, I talked about the three miscarriages I had in a row. Life was wonderful and fine and we managed to have our first child. I am one of those people who is very lucky in that I am incredibly fertile—I am sure my husband wishes I was not quite so fertile—and we were able to fall pregnant very easily. I talked about the fact that we had contracted a horrible SARS-like illness back in 2003 and that, in the following year, I had three back-to-back miscarriages. I think it says something about my character that I was so driven to have another baby that I would have a miscarriage and then two weeks later in the cycle I would ovulate and fall pregnant. That happened three times in a row, so I suffered the loss of a baby and then was pregnant again two weeks later. That happened three times. When we fell pregnant with our second child—he was my rainbow baby—I had been pregnant for 18 months. I think there were a lot of missed opportunities to pick up on the fact that I was having mental health problems, both perinatal and postnatal. Towards the latter stages of my pregnancy with him, I was absolutely desperate to give birth. I almost could not cope with being pregnant any more. It was very difficult looking after a toddler as well.

After I gave birth the second time, the same thing happened to me as the first time: I had retained placenta, I haemorrhaged and I had to be returned to hospital to have blood transfusions and IV antibiotics. The first time, I had my baby with me; the second time I didn’t have my baby with me, because I couldn’t—I just had to get better, and I needed to leave him to be looked after by my mum. As many in this House know, my second baby is on the autism spectrum.

[Nickie Aiken]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is so important to understand the mental health issues that can surround pregnancies and can occur soon after birth? We need a better understanding of that.

[Angela Richardson]

I could not agree more. By the time I had got to my third baby, they realised that they needed to do more to make sure that postnatally I was in a much better position. In the debate last year, I talked about one of the babies I lost, in the second trimester; I asked for a test to be done, but the hospital did not do it. They just sent the foetus to the incinerator, and they had to apologise for it. I was left wondering for a long time what I had done wrong.

With my son, who is on the autism spectrum, I had post-natal depression and I did not take him to hospital with me. I spent years feeling guilty, because that is what happens to us as mums: we feel guilty for everything and we spend years making things up to our children. That is one of the things that I think we really need to address in looking after the mental health of mums, because it impacts not just on our children, but on their siblings, on our husbands and on family members who are not even in the same country as us.

[Lia Nici]

I commend my hon. Friend for talking so openly about her experiences. We talk about statistics and about how one in four pregnancies do not end in the way that we would like, but when we talk and when we look at items in the media, there is constant pressure on women—specifically women, although there is pressure on men as well. We are expected to be superwomen, we are expected to be super-mums and we are expected to be perfect, when actually we are all fallible human beings and we all need help.

We need to make sure that we talk about it. When I told friends that I had lost babies, I was shocked that it had affected virtually everybody—I would be surprised if it is not well over 90% of people who have experienced this. We need to talk openly with each other, make sure that we look after parents as well as children, before pregnancy but also after pregnancy, and make sure that it is not something that is shameful. Quite often, women will not talk about trying for babies, because they are worried about what their employer will do or say and it is a very private thing anyway.

It is also about the time afterwards. This is probably the one taboo left that we really do not talk about, because we feel like failures. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to continue to fight for this and make sure that people do not feel that they are a failure when things do not always go right?

[Angela Richardson]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and for giving me a bit of time to compose myself. I agree with her.

My hon. Friend commented about our having to be superwomen and have everything together. I did not get the help that I needed because I spent so long trying to be tough. It was months and months after I had given birth to my second baby before I even went to see a doctor, but I know that the midwife who was visiting me after I had given birth was concerned because she had been with me after my first delivery as well. I think she knew that I was not quite right. That is what I mean about missed opportunities: there were lots of points where people could have picked things up and I would not have got to quite the state that I was in.

What I want to do is encourage people who are watching today. Sands is a wonderful stillbirth and neonatal death charity. Its website has such a host of information that people can use to get the support that they need.

Last year, I said to those who have suffered baby loss: please be patient with yourself and be kind to yourself. It is really hard to do—if you are driven, like I am, with the relentless desire to have a family, it is really difficult to stop. I was given very good advice to give my body and mind time to rest and recover, and I did not listen. I say to anybody out there who is listening today: please listen to my story. I hope that it will give you some insight and some food for thought.

I thank everybody who has participated today. I do hope that the Minister will take away those thoughts and comments about how we can better support women and their families with mental health.

Covid-19 Update

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

This year, we have already planned to spend an additional £34 billion on both the NHS and care homes, helping to pay for additional measures such as infection controls and some additional staffing costs. We keep that under constant review.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

I echo the comments my constituency neighbour and the Chair of the Health Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) made in raising concerns about mental health. I am dealing at the moment with a constituent who has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, but there were no beds in Surrey and she has had to be moved to Kent. Would my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State look at increasing capacity in the most severe cases so that families do not have to undertake such a journey in what is already a difficult set of circumstances for them?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that. It is a very difficult situation, as of course I think everyone in this House understands. It is one of the reasons we are increasing capacity—there is new funding and support—and it remains a priority.

Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Bill

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Friday 10th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I disagree. How long does the hon. Gentleman think the inquiry into the handling of the pandemic is going to take? I suspect that it will take two, three or four years. I am talking about people who are suffering in hospital or at home now because they did the right thing in getting themselves vaccinated but have had adverse reactions as a result. He may think that he is making a clever political point by talking about the delay in starting a mammoth public inquiry, but this matter does not need a public inquiry into the causes of covid; it needs a judge-led inquiry into how we should best and most fairly compensate those who have suffered the adverse consequences of doing the right thing.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking about the independent review that he wants actioned and the timescale for that. Does he not agree that over that period of time, the evidence that we need actually to ascertain vaccine damage will probably be found and that those payments will be made?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I do not agree. There is no evidence yet that the Government are really getting to grips with this issue. As I have said with reference to the yellow reporting card system, we know that there is causation between vaccinations and damage caused by those vaccines, yet the Government seem to be denying that in a lot of their literature.

If we can establish and agree that, as a result of people being vaccinated, some are suffering adverse consequences, severe injury or even death, the issues around causation are probably secondary. In those circumstances, the best solution would be to provide a no-fault compensation scheme, meaning that people would not have to prove fault and would automatically qualify for compensation. Ironically, that is the condition which the Government have signed through the international COVAX scheme. Under the World Health Organisation COVAX scheme, the Government have to agree—and are indeed paying into the scheme—to indemnify any claims made for vaccine damage arising from the deployment of the vaccines. If it is good enough for the third world and the COVAX scheme, why are we not doing something similar in our own country for our own people? That is why I am quite passionate about this; not only do I know people who have been adversely affected, but it is fundamental that if we are going to encourage more people to be vaccinated, they should be given the assurance that if they do the right thing, they will receive compensation.

I am glad that the purpose of private Members’ Bills is not always to ensure that they get on the statute book but to give us an opportunity to raise a subject in debate. Because I am still on my feet, when this Bill comes back to be debated later—

Covid-19: Contracts and Public Inquiry

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this Opposition day debate, and I will address the motion—which I am not sure has anything to do with Scottish independence, which is what we heard about in the last speech. It calls on the Government to immediately commence the covid-19 public inquiry.

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

The hon. Member says that the motion has nothing to do with Scottish independence, so why did the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Cabinet Office put forward a contract that specifically looked for Scottish views on independence? What was the purpose of that, if not to understand independence?

[Angela Richardson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but as I said, I am going to speak to the motion that his party has tabled today for discussion.

The Prime Minister has already confirmed that an independent inquiry into the handling of the pandemic is expected to begin in the spring of 2022. This inquiry will be on a statutory basis, with full powers under the Inquiries Act 2005, including the ability to compel the production of all relevant materials and take oral evidence under public oath. Every part of the state pulled together to tackle this virus, and as we recover as one United Kingdom, we must learn the lessons together in the same spirit. That is why the Government will consult the devolved Administrations before finalising the scope and details of the arrangements of this inquiry.

Given the scale of the inquiry and the resources required to carry it out, from identifying and disclosing all relevant information to giving that oral evidence, launching an inquiry would place a significant burden on our NHS and scientific advisers at a time when focus must still be on the fight against the virus. We are still rolling out the vaccine project; we have booster jabs to get into arms in the autumn; we will have winter pressures on the NHS; and, as we have discussed in recent days, we are rightly focused on addressing all of those missed appointments for other health concerns. Our deputy chief medical officer has said that an inquiry now would be an unnecessary extra burden that would distract the NHS from the vaccine roll-out:

“Personally, would an inquiry be an unwelcome distraction for me personally, at the moment, when I’m very focussed on the vaccine programme and the vaccine programme we might need in the autumn? Who knows, I think it would be an extra burden that wasn’t necessary.”

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does that really not just make the point that what the inquiry needs to do is learn lessons so that we can move forward and be better prepared next time, rather than just scoring cheap political points?

[Angela Richardson]

I agree with my right hon. Friend: as always, he makes an excellent point.

We have acted at pace to protect our NHS and save lives, by delivering more than 11 billion items of personal protective equipment to our key workers and helping to protect all those working on the frontline in our fight against the virus. From the onset of the pandemic, we have acted at pace to secure the PPE that we all need. We purchased over 32 billion items for the whole of the UK, three quarters of which will now be provided by British manufacturers—that is massive upscaling at speed—and we have distributed over 11.7 billion items of PPE across England since February 2020.

We have talked about the success of the vaccine roll- out, but what was amazing was securing those 507 million doses of the eight most promising vaccines through our vaccine taskforce for every corner of our Union. We can be incredibly proud not only of that but of the investment in the COVAX project.

[Dave Doogan]

Let me share with the hon. Lady my appreciation that the vaccine roll-out has been a tremendous success. I am not certain that any of my colleagues said that it was not a tremendous success. Does she agree, however, that it is the one thing that this Government got right in the whole pandemic, and that a vaccine never brought anybody back from the dead?

[Angela Richardson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I think he is being a little bit too narrow in his focus by saying that we only got one thing right. The way we invested in that scheme was replicated across many areas. We rightly hold that up as the absolute beacon of success, but there are many other areas where we used similar sorts of processes and where we had successes. We need to keep that in mind. Our diagnostic capacity has been excellent at identifying new strains, and we have to discuss that as well.

[James Cartlidge]

Is it not true that our brilliant scientists also developed groundbreaking treatments such as dexamethasone that, in the long run, will be the most crucial to ensuring that those who are seriously ill recover?

[Angela Richardson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Those therapeutics have made a huge difference to people who are unfortunately hospitalised. In my local hospital, the Royal Surrey, the doctor who led the covid ward was seconded from treating cancer, and he has learned many things by being involved in running that ward that will be beneficial not only for the pandemic but for anything coming down the line.

The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) is no longer in his place, but in his speech he gave several examples of companies that had no previous experience in the production of something but had turned their hand to helping us to source things that we needed for the pandemic. I would ask the right hon. Member, if he were in his place, what he would say to all the whisky distilleries in Scotland that turned their hand to making hand sanitiser. What message is he giving to them today? I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the gin distilleries in my constituency and neighbouring constituencies that got in touch with me. They had made hand sanitiser and wanted a contact to speak to at my local hospital so that they could gift that hand sanitiser to it.

The Opposition would like us to take a trip down memory lane. Well, I am quite happy to do that. I was newly elected in December 2019, and I still have my training wheels on. I think a lot of us still feel like that. I had barely given my maiden speech before we were locked down and put into this situation. When you start as a new MP, you build your team from scratch. It is not there already waiting for you. At the most difficult time, I had about 1,500 emails a day coming into my inbox, and there were three of us dealing with them. We were trying to triage them and help as many people as we could. At the same time, I was receiving emails from people I had never met. I am an immigrant, and I went to a state school, so I am not connected in the way that the Opposition like to suggest about Conservative Members. It is a complete farce to talk like that, especially about a lot of those who have come in in the new intake—

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Discrimination!

[Angela Richardson]

It is. But I was receiving those emails and I knew it was my duty and responsibility, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) has said, to pass on every single one of them, because I did not know which one would make a difference. That was not up to me; my job was to pass them on. I did not know most of those people from Adam, but I knew I had a responsibility to do that. I did not know about the eight-step process that civil servants were looking at for awarding contracts. I did not know whether any of them would be successful, but I hoped they would be. I hoped that many of the companies and individuals who put forward good ideas would have some success, because that is what we needed to tackle the pandemic.

We are at risk today of politicising this and going back into the Westminster bubble. We are at risk of not acknowledging the true heroes of the pandemic. Not us politicians, as we were just doing our job, but the businesses, schools and individuals in my constituency that suddenly came up with an idea or turned their hands to something. They were so proud of creating PPE for our local hospital, and they did an amazing job. We must remember, as we look back over the pandemic and as we consider our lessons learned, the trust spirit of communities coming together. I would wager that not just in constituencies in England, but in all four corners of the nation—in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—there were people in the community who were making a difference. We have so much more in common than that which divides us, and that is how I would like to finish my speech.

Covid-Secure Borders

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in today’s debate. I will start by paying tribute to UK Border Force, NHS Test and Trace, ministerial colleagues and officials in the Departments for Health and Social Care and for Transport, and the Civil Aviation Authority, and by saying a huge thank you to airline and airport workers, many of whom live in my constituency of Guildford and work at the nearby Heathrow and Gatwick Airports. They have all worked incredibly hard in their roles to keep our borders secure while, crucially, making sure that the importation of vital food and medicines, important to our citizens, was not disrupted.

It is also important that we thank all our constituents who have followed all the measures laid down by the Government when they needed to travel. They are not all going on a jolly or on holiday; a lot of them, including colleagues of ours, have had to travel to deal with serious issues in their personal and family lives, such as bereavements, and on their return they have done a great job of complying with every measure the Government have set out.

The enormous success of our vaccine roll-out is the route out of lockdown, and I welcome the short delay in moving to step 4, as that will give us the opportunity to double jab those in their 40s and to give every adult at least one jab. I encourage everyone to take up the offer of a jab when it is made, even if their age group has already been called and they have not got round to it, because so far the vaccines are proving to be highly effective against each of the variants, including the most prevalent delta variant, and hopefully will be against emerging variants, such as the echo variant mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood).

The motion before the House starts:

“That this House believes that there must be a clear, simply understood and proper hotel quarantine scheme in operation at the UK border to minimise the risk of introduction of new variants into the UK”.

It is clear. My constituents understand it. My daughter, who has been working abroad this year—I know I do not look old enough to have an adult daughter, Madam Deputy Speaker—understands it as well. She is to return in three weeks, and this morning I was talking to her about all the tests that she has to undergo if she is to return here and then reintegrate into society, and to ensure that she does not put anyone else at risk. This is something the vast majority of our constituents do.

Having spent the first 24 years of my life in New Zealand and Australia, I have been watching closely to see what they have been doing because I have family and friends there. I care deeply about this country and my constituents, and about my friends. I have seen that, even with the tightest security on the borders, virus still gets in—it just takes one case and the virus spreads. We ought to be careful about making international comparisons because not everywhere has been able to deal with the virus very effectively and we do have secure borders.

Protecting public health is our priority as we reopen international travel safely. We will maintain 100% health checks at the border to protect our constituents. We have some of the most stringent border measures in the world. Border Force will check every passenger who arrives at the border to ensure that they have complied with the health measures, take the mandatory 10-day quarantine for those arriving from amber countries and have a managed facility for those from red countries. Our red, amber and green travel list is reviewed every three weeks. If we take out the amber, it is not really a traffic light any more, is it? But we will not hesitate to act sooner if the data suggests that that is necessary. At each stage where we have had the emergence of variants and have had to act quickly, we have taken decisive action to update the list.

Today, Labour is playing political games again. Last year, Labour was flip-flopping all over the place. When we decided to shut our borders, the shadow Transport Secretary, the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), called it a “knee-jerk action” and

“the introduction of a 14-day, blunt-tool quarantine with almost no notice”.—[Official Report, 10 September 2020; Vol. 679, c. 850.]

I do not think anything we do would please Labour, but what are we doing? We are securing our borders, vaccinating our citizens, gifting vaccines to the world and recovering our economy so that we can build back better from the pandemic. We have a plan for jobs; Labour’s motion today would cost aviation jobs. While Labour is playing political games, this Government are getting on with the job of ensuring that we recover from the virus.

Covid-19 Update

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

This session is supposed to finish in three minutes’ time, but we have 12 more questioners. I would like to be able to get everybody in, and a fair number are in the Chamber. I am sure that everyone will be co-operative in keeping their questions very short, and I ask the Secretary of State to be equally brief with his responses.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con) [V]]

Following the important announcement last week, I know that many expectant mothers in Guildford and around the country will welcome the certainty that they can safely come forward for a vaccine when it is offered. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that he will continue to take every precaution to ensure that pregnant women have the support that they need to make an informed decision about what is right for them and their health?

[Matt Hancock]

Absolutely. This decision was taken on the basis of the best possible science and significant amounts of data from pregnant women who have already been vaccinated, so people can have the confidence to come forward and get the advice that they need for their specific circumstances and then get the protection of the jab.