Income tax (charge)

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady will know that the four categories I have just referred to are the four categories we explicitly referred to in the manifesto on which we were elected. As she knows, if she wants to write to me, I am always happy to receive and respond to letters from her on that issue.

The last measure I want to point to may have escaped notice last week, but it is an incredibly important part of putting the “service” into national health service. Too many people with autism or a learning disability are being treated as in-patients in mental health hospitals instead of being helped to live in their communities. In our manifesto, we committed to making it easier for them to be discharged from hospital. This Budget makes good on that commitment. It creates a new learning disability and autism community discharge grant that will be available to local authorities in England. That is new money and all local areas will receive a share of that funding.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. On that point concerning people with autism and learning disabilities in assessment and treatment units, can he advise on the arrangements that are being made during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure that those people currently in in-patient provision will not suffer additional isolation and further breaches of their human rights as a consequence of restrictions that might be put in place?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady makes an important point, which is that throughout this challenge that we face as a country, we must ensure that everyone is treated with dignity and receives the care and support that they deserve. I was about to say that I know my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will have heard what she said, but given he is in Cobra, he might not. I will ensure that he does. I will mention the matter to him, and in the context of the future tranches of guidance that will be coming forward in future days, the hon. Lady may want to raise the issue with him specifically later.

Modern buildings, more staff, an NHS that continues to truly serve its patients and a national response to coronavirus—that is what the Budget delivers. We can tackle this emergency while putting in place the long-term improvements that NHS clinicians are asking us for. We can fight the war against coronavirus as a united country, but we can also build the peace. We will stop at nothing to protect life and to protect and invest in our NHS. I commend the Budget to the House.

Coronavirus

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

King’s College Hospital in my constituency has the highest level of debt of any hospital trust in the country. It also has a new 60-bed intensive care unit, which has been much delayed in its opening. Can the Secretary of State confirm what additional resources will be made available to King’s to ensure that those beds can open—fully staffed and fully equipped—as soon as possible, and to ensure that this challenged NHS trust has all the resources necessary to deal with the additional needs presented by coronavirus?

[Matt Hancock]

I am very happy to look into that specific example.

Social Care

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

In June this year, it will be 10 years since the Dilnot commission began its work to look at long-term funding of the care system. That anniversary also marks 10 years of Tory austerity and 10 years of abject failure on social care, during which time the cuts to local council budgets, combined with the growth of our older population and an increase in the number of working-age adults living with support needs has created a full-blown crisis in our social care system. It is a crisis that is being lived out day-to-day by the 1.5 million people who are eligible for support but not receiving any and by the families fighting for the support that their loved ones need. It is an utter disgrace that people with learning disabilities and autistic people are trapped in hospitals and care staff face intolerable pressure for too little pay. Careworkers are low-paid, but they are not low-skilled. The crisis in our care systems will be deepened by the loss of highly- skilled workers from overseas as a consequence of the entirely misplaced points-based immigration system the Government have just announced.

I was a member of the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government in the last Parliament, and it was striking that the number of councils, of all political persuasions, including Tory-run county councils such as Kent and Somerset, describing a crisis in their ability to deliver on meeting the social care needs of their local communities with the resources they had available kept growing with every call for evidence the Committee put out. Faced with this crisis, affecting millions of families every day, the Tory manifesto simply promised cross-party talks. We have had a decade of cross- party and independent work on this issue, by Select Committees in the Commons and Lords, by Sir Andrew Dilnot, by many different all-party groups and by the Local Government Association. The challenge of social care is quantifiable and quantified: £3.5 billion just to meet current needs; and more to deliver a system that can guarantee dignity for everyone who needs support. The menu of options to provide this funding is also known. The Government cannot keep prevaricating. Now is the time to bite the bullet and act to solve the crisis.

As co-chair of the all-party group on adult social care, I attended a meeting yesterday with about 150 stake- holders from the social care sector: social workers; carers; and people receiving care, who are experts by experience. We heard about many examples of good practice in care. There are carers going above and beyond the call of duty every single day to deliver excellent person-centred care, but we also heard about the intolerable pressures. Where social workers are assessing someone in the certain knowledge that the funding is not there to deliver the support they need, that is an unacceptable and unsustainable compromise of their professional practice, yet it happens every day. The care sector is desperate to get beyond the conversation on funding to a discussion about the detail of a care system that can deliver dignity and the highest quality of life for everyone who needs support; and how we make co-design and co-production the basis of all social care delivery, recognising that people who need care and support are as diverse as the wider population at large.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is giving an excellent speech. She is putting forward a proposition for a co-produced model of care that is integrated with health, housing, and community care and services. Does she agree that substantial progress has been made in the past four years on that in Scotland? I say that in all honesty; it is far from perfect yet, but we are on the road to a far more inclusive, cohesive system. Does she agree that the Government might want to discuss this with the Scottish Government to see what lessons can be learned?

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I agree that in many parts of the country, including Scotland, there are examples of good practice from which the Government can learn.

We need a system that recognises the individuality and diversity of people who need care. We need one that recognises that mental health support needs are completely different from physical needs, and that everyone who needs support will have a different version of what a good day looks like for them. We cannot get to that conversation until the funding is there to deliver such a system and until the workers in the care sector are properly paid, with access to training and career progression. The Government are playing a completely cynical game with social care, offering council tax increases, which hit the poorest hardest and raise only a fraction of the funding needed, and offering in this Parliament less than a third of the funding required just to meet current needs—and just for one year only.

In the meantime, delayed discharges from hospitals are going up, care homes are continuing to close and care companies are continuing to hand back contracts to councils. Millions of people are left with care that does not fully meet their needs or are having to fight to receive any care at all. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is taking the Government to court over the failure to properly house autistic people and people with learning disabilities. This is unprecedented and it is a disgrace. All of this places intolerable pressure on the relationships that keep the care sector going, the value of which is never captured on the public sector balance sheet. The Secretary of State spoke today with bravado about the current situation, but with no emotional intelligence about the day-to-day reality of the broken system that his Government are meting out or the urgency with which this crisis must be fixed. He will not give confidence to those who rely on the system every single day, and to those who work hard to deliver care, with the approach he is currently taking.

NHS Funding Bill

Helen Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

King’s College Hospital in my constituency has the largest level of debt of any hospital trust in the country. That debt has come about because of the policies of the coalition Government and then the Conservative Government over the past 10 years, yet there is no investment for King’s in the Secretary of State’s list of hospitals receiving capital investment, and no proposal to write off the unsustainable level of debt. What message am I to take back to the hard-working, life-saving staff at King’s College Hospital who are currently struggling in impossible financial circumstances?

[Matt Hancock]

If the hon. Lady votes for this Bill, increased resources will be going into the NHS, including into King’s—mark my words!

Health and Social Care

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I congratulate all the Members who have made their excellent maiden speeches in the House today?

Across the country there is a clear and urgent need to reform the social care system. A vast unsustainable gap exists between the current funding levels and the reality on the ground. Local authorities, including Tory-run councils such as Somerset, are stretched to breaking point, facing impossible daily decisions to cut care packages or raise the threshold for qualification for support. The Local Government Association estimates that the shortfall between funding and need in social care is £1.5 billion in the current financial year, with that set to grow to £3.5 billion by 2024-25.

The Government funding announcement on social care is playing a very disingenuous game with the public across the country who rely on social care. An announcement that falls far short of meeting the current funding gap is simply not remotely close to a solution to the long-problems of social care. The failures of this Government on social care can be seen in the inbox of every Member of this House. I see it in the case of my constituent who is being made ill by the anxiety provoked by the care home bills she has received for her mother’s care, in the distress of dementia patients forced to sell their homes and in the anguish of the sibling of an autistic man who is living in supported accommodation where the staff are too busy, poorly paid and undertrained to safely manage the behaviour of other residents. When we talk about social care, we are talking about individual lives—about my constituents, and millions like them, whose present day-to-day is intolerable.

The Tories offer nothing but prevarication and delay. During the previous Parliament, the Government delayed publishing the social care Green Paper eight times, and they went into the general election offering only a vague commitment to cross-party talks. Yet extensive cross-party work has already been done by Andrew Dilnot and Select Committees in both Houses. The menu of options available to deliver a social care system in which everyone who needs support can live with dignity is clear: there is a broad consensus that care should be free at the point of need and there is a clear understanding that additional taxation must be raised to fund it. There is simply no excuse for the disgraceful delay in bringing forward detailed proposals. The message it sends is that the Tories just do not care about the daily misery that so many people are experiencing right now because social care is broken.

Finally, the Government must address the scandal of their utter failure to deliver the transforming care programme. Winterbourne View should never have happened, but once that disgraceful scandal had come to light, it should never, ever have happened again. Yet, on this Secretary of State’s watch, horrific abuses took place at Whorlton Hall and the NHS continues to pay for patients to be placed in the private hospital at St Andrew’s in Northampton, which was recently failed again by the Care Quality Commission. Autistic people and people with learning disabilities should be able to live with dignity in homes, not hospitals—in regulated community provision, supported by well-trained, properly paid staff.

The Government have a decade of failure on social care under their belt. They simply cannot be trusted. We will hold them to account on behalf of our most vulnerable constituents, who desperately need a radically different approach.

Health Infrastructure Plan

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 30th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am pleased that two of the trio who have fought so hard for my hon. Friend’s local hospitals and services have had the opportunity to contribute. He is absolutely right to say that while the Labour party talks the talk, when we look at its track record in government, we see that all too often it absolutely failed to deliver by scrapping services or saddling trusts with debt.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

The finances at King’s College Hospital were destabilised in 2011, when the Lib Dem-Tory coalition forced King’s to take on two additional hospitals following the failure of another hospital trust. King’s is now struggling with the greatest financial challenge of any hospital trust in the UK. It is desperately in need of capital investment to enable it to meet local needs. Will the Minister explain to this House and, more importantly, to the hard-working staff at King’s—whose life-saving and life-enhancing work every single day is so important in our area and across London, where their work was critical in responding to the Grenfell Tower tragedy and to the Westminster bridge and London bridge terror attacks—why there is not a single penny for King’s College Hospital in today’s announcement?

[Edward Argar]

While I recognise and pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her championing, as one would expect, of her constituents and local hospital, I am sure she will none the less welcome this Government’s massive investment in our NHS. I hear what she says about her own local hospital, and she is right to highlight the work done by the staff, who do amazing work day in, day out, particularly in the aftermath of some incredibly challenging disasters. I would be very happy to meet and talk to her in more detail about the finances of her hospital and trust since 2011, if she feels that would be useful.

Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I know about my hon. Friend’s, sadly, personal experience with this horrible disease and pay tribute to her for speaking up because it is not easy. She is right to raise another frontier that we must cross, and I am fully open to research bids in this area to work not just on brain cancer but on brain cancer that is a secondary cancer, because that is a very important area to get right, too.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I welcome the announcement today and the progress made over the past year since Tessa so sadly passed away. I also welcome the announcement as someone who lost both my paternal grandparents to brain cancer. I want to pay tribute in particular to Tessa’s daughter, Jess Mills, who has worked with unswerving determination and energy to drive forward progress in Tessa’s name over the past year. May I say on behalf of my constituents in Dulwich and West Norwood, who Tessa represented for 23 years, how proud we are of her powerful legacy on brain cancer and the difference her work will make for thousands of people for generations to come? Throughout the whole of Tessa’s 23 years in Parliament, she was a tireless champion of King’s College hospital, which is currently in a very challenged financial position. May I encourage the Secretary of State in continuing his commitment to £33.9 billion of additional funding to look at how this national support may also be marshalled to secure Tessa’s legacy at local level?

[Matt Hancock]

Baroness Jowell’s successor in her parliamentary seat speaks very powerfully and the hon. Lady is right to highlight the role of King’s in this research. King’s has been developing this treatment for years, and as a result of its work, it can now be rolled out nationally. It is a hospital that, as the hon. Lady says, needs to address some of its local challenges, but we should not take away from some of the globally cutting-edge work that it does and the positive impact it has: potentially 2,000 people alive each year who would otherwise die. That is testament to the importance of this research.

Services for People with Autism

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood). I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) for all her work over the past decade, and I send my best wishes to her and her family at this difficult time. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) on starting this debate in her absence.

My interest in autism comes from the many constituents who have had cause to contact me. Some have autism or have a child or family member with autism and have faced a battle to secure the support and access to services they need. Too often, autistic people and their families face significant battles over a long period and across a range of public services, including education, health, housing and the welfare and benefits system. I have supported many families who have had to battle for assessment and diagnosis. Even when they succeed in getting a diagnosis, they often do not receive additional support. I have helped constituents with autism who are struggling to access the benefits they need, because DWP assessment processes are simply not fit for purpose for people with autism. Most heartbreakingly of all, I have supported constituents whose loved ones are in institutions, long-term hospital care or, as in one case, supported housing where their needs are not being met and where they have in fact suffered abuse and neglect.

Autism is not a learning disability and it is not an illness; it is a form of neurodiversity. I commend the work within my own party by Neurodivergent Labour, which is working to ensure policy commitments to create a society that works for everyone living with autism and other forms of neurodiversity. Autistic people often have very special gifts and talents, like the young man who spent time doing work experience in my office after his GCSEs last summer and who completed the most brilliant analysis of crime statistics in my constituency I have ever seen.

My experience is that autistic people are too often being let down across many public services, because schools are often not well enough equipped to meet their needs, because health services are not arranged to be accessible and because there is insufficient supported housing in small community settings, so far too many children and adults with autism are still in long-term hospital accommodation.

We must call out the impact of austerity on school provision for children with autism. Teaching assistants have a vital role in providing additional support in the classroom for children with autism, in helping to shape curriculum content to meet their needs and in helping to explain and mediate to manage their anxiety. Schools that are being forced under this Government to make teaching assistants redundant will run a greater risk of failing their students with autism.

Understanding that challenging behaviour in people with autism is often a symptom of anxiety not a sign of misbehaviour and that the route to addressing it lies in de-escalating and managing fear and anxiety rather than in greater discipline would be transformative in the classroom and prevent many exclusions. The Government have introduced new training in autism awareness for trainee teachers, but there is a huge knowledge gap in the existing workforce that needs to be addressed with properly resourced training for teachers and support staff.

Austerity is also contributing to increased difficulty with diagnosis and in accessing support post diagnosis. Many local authorities are being forced to raise the threshold for support because, across both child and adult social services, they are struggling to discharge even their basic statutory responsibilities. We need additional resources to be put into diagnosis and post-diagnosis support.

It has long been reported that there is a very significant under-diagnosis of autism in women and girls, and there is now emerging evidence that, for far too many women and girls, an autism diagnosis happens only after they have been admitted to hospital due to severe mental illness, whether an eating disorder, depression or an attempt to take their own life. This is simply unacceptable. What practical action is the Minister taking to address under-diagnosis in women and girls and to stop a lack of support on living well with autism resulting in an unnecessary deterioration in mental health?

It is astonishing that, eight years on from Winterbourne View and with “Transforming Care” due to end imminently, we are still living with the scandal of people with autism, a learning disability or both living in long-term hospital accommodation, where far too many of them are still subject to human rights abuses, including prone restraint and neglect.

This Government have failed to implement “Transforming Care”—there is no denying it and no escaping it. Private psychiatric hospitals, which are no place for any young person with autism to live, have been allowed to expand at huge cost to the public purse, while there has been paltry investment in delivering community-based supported housing in which we know people with autism can thrive. Will the Minister commit to renewed funding to deliver “Transforming Care” today?

Finally, my constituents Isabelle and Robin Garnett, whose son Matthew I have mentioned many times in this Chamber following his detention at St Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton under the Mental Health Act 1983, where he suffered appallingly, have launched a new campaign this week. #HumanToo is a campaign to give visibility to people living with autism in our community and against the abuse and neglect that far too many have suffered. Such a campaign should not be needed, but, shamefully, it is. I ask the Minister to support this campaign, not just with words but with meaningful action to ensure that every person living with autism has access to the support, services and understanding they need to live well and to fulfil their talents and potential in our communities.

Assessment and Treatment Units: Vulnerable People

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

Yes. I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. I think that the setting she describes that her constituent was in has now been shut, but the point is well made, and actually it is not just about keeping people safe; it is about treating them with dignity and respect, and providing care that is compassionate.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Several months ago, the Minister met my constituent Isabelle Garnett, whose son Matthew became seriously unwell as a consequence of the treatment he received at St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton, where Bethany is also receiving such appalling treatment. Matthew’s parents were so worried about his health in St Andrew’s that they thought he would die there. He suffered a broken arm, bruises and other injuries and lost a catastrophic amount of weight.

Matthew is now, thankfully, thriving in a community setting, at significantly less cost than the £12,000 a week that the NHS was spending on completely inappropriate care at St Andrew’s. St Andrew’s is not a fit for purpose location for young people with autism and learning disability. Despite the testimony of Isabelle and many parents like her, why have hospitals like St Andrew’s been allowed to expand, while there has been no expansion of the type of entirely appropriate community provision that is needed?

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Lady brought Matthew’s mum to meet me and I was very disturbed by the photographs she showed me of how poorly he looked when he was in the St Andrew’s setting, and how much happier and so much better he looks now that he is in the right kind of community provision. It speaks volumes about exactly what we are trying to achieve—to get people out of such settings into the right kind of community provision. That is what this is about, but people can only be moved out of settings like St Andrew’s—which is a place that does require improvement—about which the Care Quality Commission is concerned, when the right provision is available in the community. That is why we are putting the money through NHS England into local provision.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend knows my personal strength of feeling about tackling the scourge of fixed odds betting terminals. The links between gambling addiction and mental health issues—and indeed, directly to suicide—are clear in the evidence, and we must address them.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

My constituent David contacted me after his 18-year-old son became severely mentally unwell and needed emergency treatment. His son spent four days in A&E at the local hospital because no in-patient beds were available. This is not a one-off case: on a daily basis, mentally unwell people are being failed by our health service. When will the Secretary of State take meaningful action to fund mental health services properly and stop this scandal?

[Matt Hancock]

I am glad that, like me, the hon. Lady cares so much about getting this right. The long-term plan, which we are writing with the NHS, for how we will spend the £20 billion funding increase is where we can get these details right. Access to mental health services was not even measured before. The first step was to put the measurement in place, and now we can act on that measurement with the huge increase in funding coming to the NHS.