Hormone Pregnancy Tests

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am grateful to the hon. Lady, but I am afraid, although she is highlighting an immensely important matter, and one that she has highlighted before, she has not asked a question—[Interruption.] Order. She has reached her limit and that is it. I have told her, as I have other Members. I have lost count of the number of times Members have been told that if they have an urgent question, they can begin with a few observations—a sentence or two—in response to the Minister, and then questions must follow, but that is not what has happened. I have the highest respect for the hon. Gentleman’s knowledge of and commitment to this subject, but she cannot speak for two minutes and then indicate, “I’m about to get to my questions.” Sorry, I say to her—[Interruption.] Order. No, sorry, but you have had your time. It is up to Members to stick to the limits, so other colleagues will now have to pursue this matter. I genuinely thank her for what she has said, but Members really must observe procedures. If I may say so, there has never been a more enthusiastic friend of the House than me in the granting of urgent questions, but Members must then follow the procedure. That is the situation. I call Anna Soubry.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I beg the right hon. Lady’s pardon. First, let us hear the Minister respond to the statement made by the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi). It was an important statement; it just did not contain a question.

[Steve Brine]

You are, indeed, a friend of the House, Mr Speaker.

I have the utmost respect for the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), with whom I have served on Select Committees, and I will try to help her out. I have seen some of her public criticisms in the past 24 hours. I know that she has been very consistent about this, but I am not just reading notes put before me; I am citing evidence from an expert working group. It really would come to something if Members suddenly started to second-guess expert, scientific and medical evidence. I am not just quoting what is before me. The review’s conclusions do not take away—I do not pretend for one minute that they do—from the very real suffering experienced by these families. This was a comprehensive, independent, scientific review of all the available evidence carried out by the best experts in a broad range of specialisms. Ministers are confident in the report and the review process, and the focus now must be on implementing the recommendations.

[Anna Soubry]

On Friday, two constituents came to my surgery to speak to me about exactly this. The mother had taken one of these pills and her daughter was born with deformities. This is not the Minister’s report—he is just giving his explanation and doing his job—but may I suggest that we have a proper Back-Bench debate in which we can exercise all these issues? With great respect to the working group, and having had some experience as a former public health Minister and knowing about contaminated blood, I am afraid to say that I smell something like a very large rat in all of this. I think that there have been cover-ups.

[Steve Brine]

I thank my right hon. Friend—one of my predecessors in this role—for her question. I appreciate that she will have met constituents who have been affected by this in her surgeries and that that must have been very difficult. The report’s conclusions do not detract from the suffering experienced by the families, and we recognise that the families may find those conclusions hard to accept. Birth defects occur naturally in up to four in every 100 babies, and the existence of a birth defect in a baby exposed to a medicine during pregnancy does not necessarily mean that it was caused by the medicine.

As for the question of any future parliamentary discussion of this subject, I suspect—in fact, I know—that my right hon. Friend is more than capable of seeking such opportunities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

5. What plans he has for the implementation of the NHS’s five year forward view for mental health.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

14. What plans he has for the implementation of the NHS’s Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I thank my hon. Friend for her work in this area. Yes, I can give her that assurance. It is welcome that local authorities and clinical commissioning groups are considering innovative approaches concentrating on wellbeing, as well as acute services, and eco-therapy is part of that agenda.

[Anna Soubry]

I am sure that you, Mr Speaker, and the rest of the House will send their condolences to the family and friends of Rebecca Nevin, a constituent of mine who died aged 32 after many years of poor mental health and an addiction to alcohol. Her father, Stephen, like many parents of adult sufferers of poor mental health, felt largely excluded by health professionals. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need health systems and workers who maintain patient confidentiality while recognising and acting on the genuine concerns of parents of adults?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I am sure that we are all very sorry to hear of the death of my right hon. Friend’s constituent, and we send our condolences to her family. It is extremely difficult to balance patients’ right to confidentiality with the needs and requests of their families, and we will study any recommendations that emerge from the coroner’s investigation.

Baby Loss Awareness Week

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Philip Dunne)]

Before I start the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, let me say that I am delighted that you were able to pay tribute to all of our Doorkeepers and, in particular, to Trevor, on his last day here.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Baby Loss Awareness Week.

I am personally very pleased that this debate is being held in Government time, having participated in last year’s debate on baby loss. It was one of the most moving experiences I have had in this Chamber, as Members from both sides of the House gave expression to their own experiences. That helps to send a signal outside this place of the significance that we accord this, not just within the Department of Health and the NHS; Members of this House sympathise with the many members of the public who go through such experiences. It does this House a good service when Members who feel able to do so place on the record their own experiences. It is right and important that we continue to raise awareness of the devastating impact of baby loss.

I wish to restate at the outset this Government’s commitment to providing high-quality bereavement care and to reduce the numbers of babies who are lost too soon through miscarriage, stillbirth or other causes such as sudden infant death syndrome. I pay tribute to all those who are sharing their personal experiences this week. In particular, I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) and for Colchester (Will Quince), who are in the Chamber today, and all members of the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss, which they co-chair, for achieving so much in raising awareness during this past year.

I wish to update the House on some of the initiatives that the Government and the NHS have put in place since last year’s debate to improve safety, reduce stillbirths and other adverse maternity outcomes and improve bereavement care. I believe that all hon. Members support the ambition of the Secretary of State to halve the rates of stillbirth, neonatal and maternal deaths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth by 2030, and to achieve a 20% reduction in rates by 2020.

Shortly after the debate last October, the Secretary of State launched the safer maternity care action plan, which set out additional support for the maternity and neonatal services working to achieve that ambition. The plan set out a range of initiatives on five themes. First, there is a focus on leadership, with the establishment of local, regional and national maternity safety champions to promote professional cultures, teamwork and continuous improvement. Every trust with maternity services has pledged to appoint a maternity safety champion, and 88 out of the 134 trusts that provide maternity services now have named leads.

Secondly, there is a focus on learning and best practice. This includes the Saving Babies’ Lives care bundle to reduce stillbirths, which was launched by NHS England in March 2016. Saving Babies’ Lives brings together four elements of care that are recognised as evidence-based and/or best practice: reducing smoking in pregnancy; risk assessment and surveillance for foetal growth restriction; raising awareness of reduced foetal movement; and effective foetal monitoring during labour. The Department has also funded Sands and Best Beginnings to develop and promote the “Our Chance” campaign to give parents knowledge and confidence to maximise their chances of healthy outcomes.

Thirdly, there has been a focus on multi-disciplinary teams with an £8.1 million maternity safety training fund, which is designed to ensure that staff have the skills and confidence they need to deliver world-leading safe care. All 134 trusts with maternity units have now received funding and are implementing training packages. Many of those are being delivered by the charity Baby Lifeline, which I met this morning to learn some of the benefits that this training is bringing to improving safety, reducing error, and helping patient outcomes.

I visited Leeds teaching hospital a couple of weeks ago and heard from midwives about their multi-disciplinary training programme “Deliver me safely” in which they and doctors undergo training together in the recognition that human factors can contribute to harm in maternity systems. These simulations focus on situational awareness and team interactions, challenging some cultural hierarchical attitudes, which I am afraid can be prevalent in parts of the NHS, and encouraging everybody to speak up if they have safety concerns.

Lastly, there has been a focus on innovation, with the launch of a maternity safety innovation fund of £250,000, which has supported 25 local maternity services to create and pilot new ideas, and of the national maternal and neonatal health safety collaborative to build local capability in quality improvement and to provide structured support for local teams. One example of this is the safer films project at the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, which is developing staff training films, using headcam devices to show interactions with clinicians from the mother’s perspective. The patient’s view of the drills undertaken around her allows clinicians to look back at the impact that their activity, including how they communicate with women and their partners, has on the patient.

Just last month, the Secretary of State hosted a roundtable with 25 key partners across the health system to discuss evidence and current NHS clinical practice on supporting women to have safe births. There has been an enthusiastic response to the Secretary of State’s ambition, with a range of initiatives developed by national and local NHS organisations, royal colleges and charities. We will continue to work with our partners to align these initiatives with the work of the maternity safety action plan. I am happy to report that we are on track to achieve our 2020 ambition. The stillbirth rate in England has fallen from 5.1 per 1,000 births in 2010 to 4.4 in 2015. The neonatal mortality rate was 2.6 deaths per 1,000 births in 2015, down 10% from 2.9 in 2010.

I would like to touch briefly on the importance of learning from when things go wrong in clinical care. Many parents I have spoken to have made it clear they want maternity and neonatal services to learn from the deaths of their babies so that other families do not have to go through the experience of losing a much-loved and wanted child if that can be prevented. Recent publications from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and MBRRACE-UK—Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK—found that some local reviews of stillbirths and neonatal deaths were of poor quality. Input from parents or independent experts is not routinely sought, and there is insufficient information to understand the quality of care provided.

To improve the quality of those reviews and to learn from them, the Department of Health, together with the Health Departments in Scotland and Wales, has funded the development of a national standardised perinatal mortality review tool to support systematic, multidisciplinary reviews of the circumstances and care leading up to every stillbirth and neonatal death. The tool, which will be available at the end of this year, will also support clinicians to talk with parents about the care review and how they can contribute to the process.

Last month, I laid the draft health service safety investigations Bill in Parliament. This Bill will take forward the work of the current independent healthcare safety investigation branch, which came into operation last April. Under the proposals, HSIB will have far-reaching access so that it can investigate serious safety incidents or risks to patient safety; help to develop national standards on investigations; and provide guidance and training to improve investigative practice across the health service.

Earlier this year, we also consulted on proposals to introduce a system of consistent and independent investigations for all instances of severe avoidable birth injury, along with access to ongoing support and compensation for eligible babies through an administrative scheme. The public consultation into a rapid resolution and redress scheme for severe avoidable birth injury concluded at the end of May, receiving more than 200 responses. We are currently in the process of listening to people’s views, and we aim to publish a formal response soon.

Turning to bereavement care, a clear message that we heard last year, particularly from my hon. Friends the Members for Eddisbury and for Colchester and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), who I am pleased to see with us this evening, was about the need for a bereavement care pathway to ensure that all families experiencing baby loss receive the highest quality of care, no matter where they live.

Since last year’s debate, the Department has funded Sands to deliver a national bereavement care pathway. I am delighted that 11 wave 1 pilot sites were announced yesterday. I know from the experience of my friends and colleagues that care in bereavement is best described as patchy. In some cases, I could use a less flattering adjective. There is no doubt that we need to do more to raise the training of staff and the facilities available to look after families who go through a bereavement in a hospital setting, and indeed to provide care and support to those who suffer loss outside a hospital setting. That is an important initiative.

Earlier this year, Sands, NHS England and the London maternity clinical network published a new maternity bereavement experience measure. That tool aims sensitively to enable parents whose baby has died to feed back about the care they received. It also aims to support services to learn from the experiences of bereaved parents and identify where local improvements may be needed.

Sands is also working on a project for NHS England on the role of the bereavement midwife. The project will make recommendations for the remit of the role of the bereavement midwife and give guidance on the support structures required around the role.

Since 2010, the Government have invested £35 million in the NHS to improve birthing environments, including better bereavement rooms and quiet spaces at nearly 40 hospitals to support bereaved families. Whenever I visit maternity units, I ask to see the bereavement suite. I am always impressed by the quality of the suites, by the feedback from families and staff alike and by how the commitment of many families who have gone through such terrible loss has often led to them raising funds to help to create better bereavement facilities in hospitals.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I commend the Minister for his excellent speech. I am sure that he will join me in congratulating Forever Stars, which is exactly the sort of charity that he has described. It was started by two of my constituents, who sadly lost their baby, Emily, who was stillborn. They have raised about £200,000 for two suites. A third is on the way, and they are now fundraising for counselling services for the siblings of babies who have not survived.

[Mr Dunne]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend and thank her for drawing that to the House’s attention. That is one of the most significant examples of fundraising for such suites that I have come across. I pay tribute to the family involved and to the efforts to raise funds for the counselling of siblings, who go through a traumatic experience as well.

I conclude by reiterating that the Government are fully committed to reducing the number of babies who die during pregnancy or in the neonatal period, and to providing support for bereaved families.

NHS Pay

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

May I make a little progress?

The hon. Member for Croydon South said that pay does not affect retention and recruitment, but the Opposition say that the pay cap is at the heart of the retention and recruitment crisis. Earlier this year, NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts, warned that low pay is causing staff to leave the NHS to stack shelves in supermarkets. Chris Hopson said:

“Years of pay restraint and stressful working conditions are taking their toll. Pay is becoming uncompetitive. Significant numbers of trusts say lower paid staff are leaving to stack shelves in supermarkets rather than carry on working in the NHS.”

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that anybody listening to his speech would take away from it a story of gloom and doom about our NHS? While there are difficulties and challenges, every day millions of people overwhelmingly enjoy one of the finest health services anywhere in the world, and I and many others are sick and tired of Labour talking it down.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The right hon. Lady says that we are talking the NHS down. We are not talking it down; this Tory Government are running it down. She seemed concerned about public sector pay in the NHS a few months ago when she tweeted:

“The important retention & recruitment of public sector workers is about working conditions (esp in NHS) as well as pay”.

If she stands by that tweet, she should join us in the Lobby this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I must take the time to declare an interest: I am a junior doctor at St George’s hospital in Tooting.

When the Conservative Government began their programme of ideological austerity, they imposed the pay cap to secure our nation’s finances. It quite simply has not worked. We were told that the Government could not increase public sector pay beyond 1% because to do so would harm our financial security, but capping public sector pay has harmed us. It has put stress fractures in the foundations of our society—our public services. After seven years of austerity, this Government have borrowed more than all other Labour Governments in history combined. The Government have not paid off the budget deficit, and they lack any credible economic direction. Instead, they are attempting to drive our economy off the Brexit cliff like a lemming.

A decade on from a global financial crisis and seven years after the Government’s austerity programme began, our nurses, refuse collectors and teaching assistants are still paying the price. The stability of our society—the foundation on which we live our lives—depends on these vital services, from healthcare to our security, our children’s education and our local government. Since 2010, our nurses have suffered a real-terms pay cut of 14%. A hospital porter is £7,000 worse off, and a midwife has been left £18,000 short. These real-terms pay cuts have hit so hard that some of those who choose to stay in the profession are forced to use food banks, take on a second job and rack up personal debt, all because public sector pay rises have consistently failed to keep up with the rising cost of living.

The bravery of our emergency service personnel has been highlighted in recent months, following some truly tragic events, but when the media spotlight goes away they perform the very same duties, at the same risk and with the same courage. The Government absolutely do not value the people who put their lives on the line every single day to save ours.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, but I think she should take back what she has just said. Whatever divides us when it comes to pay and financing, the one thing that cannot be said about any hon. or right hon. Member of this House, whichever party they may support, is that they do not care about the workers in the NHS. We certainly do, and we value and respect them.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention, but I have to say that a future Labour Government will not just talk the talk; we will walk the walk. A Labour Government will be on the side of ordinary people—those serving on Britain’s frontline. It is not right that in 2017 Britain, those at the top of our civil service can receive golden handshakes, taking home more than a quarter of a million pounds a year, while those on the frontline are stuck on the breadline.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I was going to say that it was a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), but I truly struggle to do so. If we are to do our job as politicians, the first thing that we must do is drop the rhetoric, drop the slogans and stop the insults. They do not help, they do not achieve anything, and they are insulting. Let me tell the hon. Gentleman, and other Opposition Members, that some of us on this side of the House are getting a little sick and tired of, one, the way that the Labour party continues to run down our NHS, and two, the perpetuation of the stereotype that we do not use it, and, indeed, that we do not have families. In fact, our families have long roots in the NHS.

I am very proud of four generations of Soubrys all of whom are working, or have worked, in the NHS. My niece is training to be a paramedic, and I am sure that my mentioning that in Parliament in the presence of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will advance her career. Of course it will not! Her mother, my sister-in-law, works in a GP’s surgery, and my brother Charlie works at the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham. My mother was a radiographer all her working life; she proudly worked in the NHS for 40 years, finally retiring, long after she should have done, at Doncaster Royal Infirmary. Her mother-in-law—my grandmother—was a nurse, as was my great aunt. I am therefore one of many Members on this side of the House with long, firm roots in the NHS. We get it, we love it, we have a passion for it, and that is why we continue to support it and fund it.

What the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton just does not understand, like, sadly, so many of his colleagues, is that the way we achieve the great public services we all agree we want is to have a good, firm, sound economy, and we achieve that through the sort of sensible Conservative policies that we on these Benches have advocated, and have achieved—or we wreck it and destroy that strong economy with the sort of socialism that strangles our economy now being advocated by Labour’s current Front-Bench. The choice for the British people is absolutely clear: if they want a strong NHS delivering those fantastic services, they should support the Conservative party, because it us who deliver the economy to pay for those services.

I also take grave exception to anybody telling me that I follow the party line; I can think of a few on the Conservative Benches who would take grave issue with that. I make it very clear that there are undoubtedly problems and huge challenges, and all is not well within our great NHS, but, please, we must not talk it down in the way we have done.

By way of example, a very dear friend of mine died only the other week; he had a terminal illness. Even in her deepest grief, my friend, Dick Benson’s widow, when she called to tell me of his demise, told me of the remarkable care that he had had thanks to the GP in Nottingham who had provided his end-of-life care support. That is just one example of the hundreds of thousands of people who are receiving world-class treatment every day, thanks to our NHS.

As I have said, however, all is not well. Too many of our NHS workers are working overly long shifts with short breaks. I know of consultant friends of mine having to pay for their lanyards when they are broken at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, and there are many other examples.

Finally, let me give an outstanding example from my clinical commissioning group, Nottingham West. It has said that six of the 12 GP surgeries are outstanding. There is much more to be done, but make no mistake: the way we achieve a great NHS and make it even better is to have the strong economy that only the Conservatives can deliver.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Lady has burnished her reselection credentials among the Corbynistas in Momentum as Labour approaches its party conference, and she will be grateful for that.

There is another great elephant that needs to be put out of its misery. It has been perpetuated by socialists down the decades, usually at public meetings and the like, that my party wants to privatise the national health service. Let me say in all candour that the Labour party misses the fundamental fact that the Conservatives have been in government for longer than Labour during the existence of the NHS. We have had majorities in three figures and two figures and we have had minorities, so if it was a deep-rooted Tory secret that we wanted to privatise the NHS, having privatised everything else we would have jolly well done it by now. We have no intention of doing so. I was born in an NHS hospital, as were my three daughters.

[Anna Soubry]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that the biggest increase in NHS privatisation—5%—occurred under a Labour Government? The Conservatives’ record is 1%.

[Simon Hoare]

My right hon. Friend is correct, but the Labour party does not like truth spoken unto opposition. Let us hope that we never have to speak truth unto Labour in power, because that would be even worse.

There is a false debate where GPs and pharmacists are in essence private businesses delivering healthcare and advice to our constituents free at the point of use. I think the mindset in the national debate has moved on beyond the cosy intellectual rigour of north Islington, and most people are just keen to enjoy a quality service that is delivered by motivated people in a safe and secure environment. That is at the heart of our policies.

There is clearly fluidity and movement on the pay cap, which is welcome. I used the word “cruelty” a moment ago. When its economy came under pressure, Ireland coped with the management of its health budget by making a vast number of health service workers unemployed. That is one way of dealing with it, but it is not the right way. We have done it the right way, and we are grateful for the forbearance of those at the sharp end. It has not been done out of cruelty or out of intellectual or ideological purity; it has been done out of financial and economic necessity.

As our economy grows, so will the pay packets of those working in our vital public services. I know it is boring, and I know it is an inconvenient truth for the Opposition, but without a strong economy, without people in work, without business confidence and without people paying taxes, it would be an absolute sham to continue funding unsustainable pay increases and the like through borrowing, because that would just lead to cuts and further ruin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Anna Soubry]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Dowd]

No, I will not.

I know that NHS workers take that view because I have spoken to them.

[Anna Soubry]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for an hon. Member to point randomly across the Chamber and insult another Member, without even having the courtesy to name them and thereby give them the right of reply?

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Dowd]

I say again that I know for a fact that NHS workers take the view that this debate is not just about them but about the public sector generally.In proxy terms, this debate is about all public sector workers. Many of the arguments about the health sector apply to other parts of the public sector as well.

[Anna Soubry]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Dowd]

No, I will not.

This debate has come at a stark time for our public sector workers. We have had the hardest summer that many of us can remember—our emergency workers and other public sector workers have faced the horror of terror attacks and the outrage of Grenfell.

[Anna Soubry]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Dowd]

No, I will not.

As the country suffered, those workers stepped forward. Will we step forward for them? Labour says, yes, it will. We know what those workers provide for our communities and for our country. What do we provide for them—or, rather, what do the Tories provide for them? First, they provide huge amounts of patronising claptrap—we have seen loads of that today—backslapping and warm words. Those workers do not need our tributes; they need our action. The Tories tell them how much they are valued and what a great job they do. The Prime Minister tells us virtually on a daily basis how wonderful our public services are—it usually happens after a national emergency in which people are murdered, maimed or, in the case of Grenfell, asphyxiated or burned to death. Yes, in the week of the Grenfell public inquiry, it is as stark as that, so let us not shilly-shally around this issue.

Those public sector workers are the people we turn to when no one else is available. They are the people who save lives, help to bring life into the world and are there when we leave the world. While they gave their all for us over these hard months, they knew that the Conservative Government remained committed to capping their pay and to continuing with the real-terms pay cut they have faced since 2010. Ever since the election, they have faced mixed messages about their pay from the Conservatives.

Contaminated Blood

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is the first time that I have had the honour to be in the Chamber when you are sitting in your rightful place in the Chair.

My involvement in the contaminated blood scandal was as, I think, the second Minister for public health the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) had occasion—I nearly said the great misfortune—to come to see. She brought to that meeting all the vim and vigour with which she has pursued this campaign over seven long years. It has taken seven years for justice to be brought about, and that is too long.

I think I am right in saying that when the hon. Lady came to see me, her biggest concern was the burning injustice. To me, something inherent in the matter just felt wrong. I could not put my finger on it, but I was convinced that something was not right. The attitude of some of the people I encountered strengthened that feeling. They wanted to sweep the matter under the carpet, so that they no longer had to deal with it, and move on to other ways of helping the unfortunate victims.

There are two elements to all this. The first great injustice is the terrible scandal itself, which happened decades ago and which Governments—of all three colours, including the coalition Government—failed to grasp as I and others in government wanted them to.

The second great injustice concerns money. I pay full tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who absolutely got it, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton). After the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North asked her question of the Prime Minister last week, my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford and I sat here together. I will not repeat everything that we said to each other, but it boiled down to, “For goodness’ sake”—or words to that effect—“let’s just get on and get this done properly.” We were talking not just about a public inquiry, but, most importantly, about the money. I also pay tribute to Jane Ellison, the previous Minister for public health, because I know that she got this as well.

To get a public inquiry, it was necessary to submit to the Government all the extra material that has been forthcoming in recent times, as further evidence of the need for such an inquiry. No matter how much Ministers and hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House care about something and see why it should be done, political will is required to make it happen. I pay handsome tribute to the Prime Minister for not messing about. I know that she will have been supported by wise words from the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), and from the Secretary of State, who made the case to her. She has grabbed it by the horns, done the right thing and given us a public inquiry.

I want to go further and talk about the second grave injustice. I was reminded of correspondence that I have had with constituents whose son is a haemophiliac. As if being the parents of a haemophiliac was not hard enough, he was diagnosed at the age of nine with AIDS and hep C. He has faced real challenges in his life, which has been blighted by plain prejudice—I have heard horrible stories about the bullying he encountered at school—because of the triple combination from which he suffers. Now he is married, he is the father of a child and he owns his own home. His parents, who have suffered not just injustice but the real difficulty of watching their son suffer, are such wonderful people. They give you every faith in people’s goodness. They have no grievances against anybody; they just want a proper financial package.

The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) talked about the fact that victims receive an ex gratia payment rather than compensation. I remember those schemes, and I was horrified to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) that they have not been sorted out. I beg the Government to scrap them, and, in blunt, simple terms, to give these people the money that they deserve and need: do not give them that money as ex gratia payments; do not make them scrabble around to find bits of paper that they have to take with them, cap in hand, to ask for money. As if they have not suffered enough, how demeaning is it for them to have to go and, as they see it, beg for bits of money?

I urge the Government to get a load of money—these things are possible; we know that it can be done—of the sum that is required. I know that it is not quite so simple, but the next thing to do is to look not at liability, but at quantum, as we lawyers call it. How much would each individual, or their widow or survivor, be entitled to if liability was not an issue? Then, I ask the Government to do the right thing. I do believe that they can find the money. I know that many in government, including the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, absolutely got this. For whatever reason, his term in office was not the right time to do something, but he understood the human side, as did many of us.

It is now time to sort out the second grave injustice—the money. Get the money together, put it in a pot, decide quantum and give these people everything that they deserve and need. Then, finally, the last grave injustice and national scandal will have been sorted out and solved. Of that, we will all be able to be proud.

Mental Health and NHS Performance

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I agree with the hon. Lady that there are serious funding pressures in social care. We need a long-term solution to this, and we are doing important work on that. The precept is part of the solution. The local government settlement has been adjusted to take account of the different spending powers, or revenue-raising powers, of wealthier counties and wealthier local authority areas compared with other areas. We have to take into account the equality issue, and she is absolutely right to do that. However, if she is saying, “Have we solved the whole problem?”, the answer is no—there is more work to do.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I welcome the statement by my right hon. Friend. May I pay huge tribute to everybody working at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, especially in A&E, and especially over the nine days between Christmas and 2 January? Admissions almost doubled. At one point in the Queen’s medical centre A&E department there were 180 people seeking treatment—that is a record. There were 395 more admissions than discharges in that nine-day period. I pay huge tribute to everybody who is working in our NHS. Can my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that he will continue to work with our hospital trusts, like NUHT, as they bring forward plans to change schemes —it is not just simply about money—and do everything that he can to support them in these unprecedented times?

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to do that. I echo my right hon. Friend’s praise for the staff at NUHT, which was particularly pressured over Christmas. They have made particular efforts to improve patient safety and quality of care over recent years. She is absolutely right, and of course I will continue to work closely with her trust and others.

National Health Service Funding

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

What world is the Secretary of State living in? Half a million patients have waited for four hours or more in A&E in the past three months—the worst performance for this time of year for more than a decade—and he says it is nonsense. Some 350,000 of our constituents are waiting longer than the promised time for elective treatment—some have been waiting more than a year—and he says it is nonsense. Delayed discharges from hospitals are at record levels, and he says it is nonsense. The number of people waiting for 12 hours or more on trolleys has increased by over 700% since 2011-12.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House why it is that, after 12 minutes, he has yet to praise all our hard-working doctors, nurses and other health professionals? Why is he constantly talking down our great NHS, including the hospitals in Leicester?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I praise the hard-working staff in the NHS every day of the week, but I rather suspect that staff in the NHS will have more sympathy with the position I am outlining than with the right hon. Lady’s position, not least when, according to surveys, 88% of NHS staff think that the NHS is under the most pressure they can remember, and 77% think that there is less access to resources, putting the quality of patient care and clinical standards at risk. That, I say to her, is what NHS staff are saying.

Leaving the EU: NHS Funding

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

It is outrageous that Ministers were unable to give my hon. Friend those figures. Ministers themselves exacerbated the knock-on impact on the economy of the depreciation of the pound. It depreciated in value by 6% before October, and then by a further 15% because of uncertainty around our trading arrangements that was triggered by comments made by the International Trade Secretary that differed from those of the Chancellor to the Treasury Committee and in other forums. The knock-on effect is not, however, just on household budgets. As the cost of things increases, of course the NHS will take a big hit. Public services in general will be affected if growth reduces and Exchequer receipts fall.

Ministers’ claimed increases in NHS funding, which the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), might mention, are actually being funded by reductions in other areas of health spending that fall outside NHS England’s budget. Reductions in spending on social care are having a serious impact on the NHS, and that is translating into increased accident and emergency attendances, emergency admissions and delays to people leaving hospital. I have talked about what Select Committees, Ministers and Members of Parliament are saying, but we have also heard from third parties. The King’s Fund, the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation are clear that current Government spending plans through to 2019-20 will not be enough to maintain standards of care, to meet rising demand from patients and to deliver the transformation in services outlined in the NHS five year forward view.

I and more than 40 Members from different parties, including all my hon. Friends in the Chamber for the debate, have written to the Chancellor asking that when he presents his first autumn statement on 23 November, he sets out how he will put the Government on a path to increasing national NHS spending by that promised £350 million extra a week once we have left the EU. To be clear, that additional funding must be over and above the amount currently planned to be spent on the NHS. The British Medical Association has made the same demand.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the Government have to honour a promise made by others to the tune of £350 million a week extra for the NHS? My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) and other notable leavers have now conceded that the actual figure was £120 million. Would it not be unfair to say that the Government have to deliver that pledge, given that they never made any such promise to the British people?

[Mr Umunna]

I am grateful for the right hon. Lady’s intervention; I shall come on to those precise points shortly. I note, however, the public statements she herself made when she was a member of the Government. She criticised the way in which her fellow Ministers were going around making these big promises, perhaps on her behalf.

[Anna Soubry]

We must be very clear about this. During the referendum, we campaigned individually, not as Ministers on behalf of the Government. The hon. Gentleman is right that some Ministers campaigned for leave and made this promise—and indeed many other promises that I do not think they will be able to deliver—but there is a distinction to be made between the promises of the Government and those of people who now happen to be in government. It is really the leave campaign that must be held to account, not the Government.

[Mr Umunna]

The right hon. Lady pre-empts what I am about to say; I shall come on to that precise point.

To be clear, I want the Minister, on behalf of his Department, to give the same commitment that we are asking the Treasury to make, and to outline how his Department will make good on this pledge. I shall explain why this is a pledge that the Government should deliver. The Minister might give a number of reasons, perhaps echoing the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), to explain why the promise given by his ministerial colleagues during the referendum should not be treated as such. I will deal with each of the main possible reasons in turn.

First, there are those who claim that this was not a pledge at all. Nigel Farage, the interim leader of the UK Independence party, said that it was one of the mistakes that he thought the leave campaign made. The current Transport Secretary, who was also a member of the Government at the time of the referendum, has said that Vote Leave’s specific proposal was, in fact, to spend £100 million a week of the £350 million for the NHS that was originally hoped for, commenting that that would be an “aspiration” to be met. Let me tell the Transport Secretary that the poster that the Vote Leave supporters all stood next to did not say that this was an “aspiration”; it was a pledge—pure and simple. There was no qualification on the poster or on the big red bus. This statement was made, and the people who made it should be held to account for it.

Secondly, many leave campaigners deny ever using the £350 million figure. One of them said:

“I always referred to Britain’s net contribution of nearly £10 billion—some £200 million a week…rather than £350 million.”—[Official Report, 5 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 20WH.]

It is true—my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) touched on this—that the Office for National Statistics said that the £350 million figure was misleading, but the head of the Vote Leave campaign said:

“the £350 million figure is correct and we stand by it.”

Vote Leave, whose banner Government Ministers campaigned under, carried on citing the figure, as my hon. Friend said, and those Ministers must now be held to account.

NHS Funding

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Actually, what Mr Stevens said—I was there—was that social care and, indeed, public health provision needed to be maintained. We are increasing the social care budget by £3.5 billion over this Parliament. Although I accept that difficult cuts are being made to the public health budget, we are doing other things that do not cost money to make sure that we continue to improve this country’s excellent record on public health.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

We all want a well-funded NHS. I congratulate the Secretary of State on making sure that we now have record spending in England. Last night, the A&E department of the Queen’s medical centre was tweeting that it effectively could not cope. We all of course congratulate and thank the hard-working staff in A&E, but the problem was demand. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the NHS can do much more to improve the way it signposts people? It was urging people to go to the urgent care centre, which does stitching and mends broken bones, all of which was news for many people in Greater Nottingham.

[Mr Hunt]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. That, of course, is why all parts of the NHS in England are embarking on the sustainability and transformation programme, which is designed to do precisely what my right hon. Friend says—to find smart ways to reduce demand. That will include, for example, better use of pharmacies, better use of GPs, more mental health provision—[Interruption.] Opposition Members are shouting, but why were they not prepared to put the money into the NHS to help us implement these plans? There would be no sustainability and transformation plans on the thin gruel that they promised for the NHS at the last election.

Community Pharmacy in 2016-17 and Beyond

Anna Soubry Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 20th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

This year we invested a further £5 billion in the NHS, three times the rate of inflation. In June the OECD noted we are now above average in terms of NHS and social care spend in the OECD. However much we spend, it is right we look to do it as efficiently and effectively as possible, to modernise this service and make it better for patients, and that is what we are doing.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

The Minister knows my views: I do not think this 4% cut is a wise move. But I do note—and it is important that everybody reports this accurately—that that money is going to stay within the NHS, so it is not a cut. Can the Minister assure us about any incentives for pharmacies in the delivery of public health measures, notably preventive measures?

[David Mowat]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that comment and reassure her that for the first time we will be allowing pharmacists to access a quality fund, which means that the average pharmacy could earn up to £6,000 or £7,000 over and above what it gets just for dispensing. The fund will include specific measures around public health.