Business of the House

Barbara Keeley Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am sorry to hear about the situation in my hon. Friend’s constituency and thank him for raising it today; I will flag it with the Department of Health and Social Care. Clearly, the NHS is under great pressure because of backlogs from the pandemic. Patient education is important, and the whole local health team has a responsibility and can help people, but a large part of that is time with a general practitioner, and we need to ensure that those services are accessible by the local population.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

We have just had an urgent question on the abusive treatment of patients at a mental health in-patient unit. Since the scandal of Winterbourne View 11 years ago, we have had a series of reviews, targets and broken promises from the Government. What is so appalling is that, despite these abuses having been known about for more than a decade, nothing has changed to stop them happening. I understand that the Leader of the House cares about this issue and has had meetings with Ministers about it in the past, so can we now have a debate in Government time on how we might work finally to end the abuse, particularly for the 2,000 autistic people and people with learning disabilities who should be living in homes, not hospitals?

[Penny Mordaunt]

As the hon. Lady kindly says, I am personally very concerned about that issue—I know that all Members across the House are. It would be an excellent topic for a debate. In addition to the reports that Sir Stephen Bubb has produced on the issue, he has produced a plan of social capital available to enable the transition into more appropriate care services. I hope all hon. Members will agree—I hear my colleague on the Front Bench, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) agreeing—that this issue must be resolved.