Social Care

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

With the greatest respect, I do not know whether the hon. Lady heard what I said just a few moments ago, but I answered very directly what the shadow Health Minister said. Do I recognise the scale and seriousness of the issues? Yes, I do, and I am coming on to explain what I think the solutions are. The point I am making is, yes, the budget—the amount spent on social care—was cut in the last Parliament, as a result of the very difficult economic situation we faced after the financial crisis in 2008, but it is starting to go up again in this Parliament. We need to look at what we can do to try to turn that into a sustainable improvement in the care received by all our constituents.

A crucial point was missing from the shadow Health Minister’s opening speech. There was a suggestion that the issues in social care are essentially caused entirely by decisions made by central Government. We need to salute the efforts made by councils of all colours to deal with the pressures in social care, because those are very tough. Middlesbrough Council, for example, increased its social care budget by 11%—it is the most improved council in England. My own council, Surrey, which is an affluent area, but has a large number of elderly people to look after, has battled enormous odds to expand provision.

However, the fact is that there is enormous variation in the way local authorities have responded to these challenges. If we look at the impact on the NHS, and at the delayed transfers of care that are attributable to social care, we can see that the best councils, such as Peterborough, Rutland, Newcastle and Torbay, have virtually no delays in hospital discharges attributable to social care. That can be compared with Birmingham, Manchester, Reading and Southampton where there are between 14 and 21 days of delayed transfers attributable to social care per 10,000 of population every working day. That is a difference of 20 times between the best and the worst councils, and we cannot say that there is a 20-times difference in funding between the best and the worst councils.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Members have alluded to the fact that local authority budgets are under the hammer at the moment. More importantly—I have raised this with the Secretary of State before—one of the big problems is having the social workers to get people a care package when they leave hospital to go home, and that creates bed blocking, so we are in a vicious circle. The last Labour Government looked at an offer from the then Conservative Opposition to get together and have a properly funded national care service. Why have we not looked at that?

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that the presence of social workers in hospitals is vital in discharging people, but I think he will be quite shocked to know that 50% of all the delayed transfers of care in the entire NHS happen in just 20 local authority areas. There are many places that are doing these things well, even in the current challenging financial circumstances, but there are others that, frankly, could do a lot better.

Overall, what we see is a picture where the best councils have expanded funding and provision. For example, last year, Windsor and Maidenhead increased its spend by 6.4%, and the number of people accessing long-term care is up by 8%. That was a Conservative council, but the Labour council in Doncaster also chose to increase its social care budget by 10%—nearly £8 million—and it is looking after nearly 7% more people.

This is not just about funding; it is also about the speed of health and social care integration and about local leadership. Where such leadership exists, important changes are happening even now. For example, in Cheshire East, dedicated workers are supporting people with early-stage dementia, saving more than £4,000 a year per client in social care costs while improving the service for patients. Milton Keynes is another good example: its innovative pilots have cut delayed days attributable to social care by nearly three quarters.

Others, regrettably, have chosen to cut funding and provision. There are many reasons for that, but the one thing that is difficult to explain to the public is why, at times of such challenge, local authority reserves have increased by nearly £10 billion since 2010. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South made a fair point when she said that there has never been greater financial or operational pressure on all councils. Like the NHS, there is huge pressure, but unlike the NHS, it has not been possible to protect their budget since 2010.

What is the way forward in this very difficult situation? I think that it is a combination of the right financial decisions locally and recognition by local authorities and the NHS that they are part of the same team. That is why, as has been said, the sustainability and transformation plan process is so important.

It is easy to knock a process whereby local areas come together to have yet more meetings, which we are pretty good at doing in the NHS and social care system, and it is also easy to characterise those meetings as secret, but the fact is that people do not want to publish their plans until they are ready, and they will all be published by the end of this year. Many Members on both sides of the House criticised the Health and Social Care Act 2012 because they felt that it did not do enough to promote integrated care, but now we have a process to do that. That is massively important for the social care system, as this is the first time that local authorities are properly involved in NHS planning. Indeed, four of the STPs—namely those for Greater Manchester, Norfolk and Waveney, Nottinghamshire, and Birmingham and Solihull—are headed by local authority leads. On Monday, the head of operations at NHS England told me that there was not one STP meeting that he had been to where a local council was not represented. At the moment, it is a planning process and it needs to be delivered, but planning needs to happen collaboratively. It is a significant change for the NHS and social care system, but it is finally happening.

Capita Contract (Coventry)

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I will just make one or two observations because my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) has covered the subject very well. Like him, I have received representations. Since the last reorganisation of the NHS, problems such as this seem to be coming to light. There is a pattern. There was the problem with Concentrix and benefits, which of course is nothing to do with the NHS. We had debates about that a couple of weeks ago. Now this problem with Capita and primary care support is emerging.

When the Government look at such companies, they should look at a schedule of terms and conditions for the service they are going to deliver, the people they are going to employ and their qualifications, and whether people will be employed on zero-hours contracts. I have heard all sorts of stories about companies that subcontract out to smaller companies. That is where the problems start to arise.

There was a ruling a couple of weeks ago on taxis after a case was brought by a trade union. It may well mean that there will be a problem with zero-hour contracts, holiday pay and so on. The Government should look at that when they award contracts.

Like my hon. Friend, I have had GPs in Coventry complain to me about the inadequacy of the services, delays across the board and records being lost. Even the British Medical Association has accused Capita of failures. These delays are making it impossible for GPs’ surgeries in my constituency and across the country to do their job properly. For example, a surgery in my constituency faced delays in receiving patients’ notes. As my hon. Friend has mentioned, that can go on for a long time, and if someone is terminally ill, the situation can be life-threatening. Doctors sometimes have to meet patients without records or knowledge of their medical history, so they have to rely on the patient to provide their history. Patients at the end of the day are not doctors; they can only express in layman’s terms what they think is wrong with them. They need qualified doctors.

[Colleen Fletcher]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the difficulties experienced by GP practices are being compounded by the inability of Primary Care Support England service centres to deal with inquiries about ongoing problems either by phone or email? Staff from one practice in Coventry said that any response to emails was unusual, long-awaited and often failed to address the question posed. This type of comment is echoed time and again by exasperated practice staff across the city.

[Mr Cunningham]

My hon. Friend puts it very adequately. I and all my colleagues behind me have all experienced that and the Minister as a constituency MP may well have experienced something like that because it is widespread.

At the end of the day, GPs are having to bear the brunt of the failings of Capita. It is unacceptable that a private company can bid for an NHS contract without the infrastructure in place to deliver. I have already explained to the Minister what that means. Will she allow GPs to be given additional support and help to cope with overstretched services? As I said, a lot of this came about with the last reorganisation of the health service. When people provide a service that is funded on the basis of a policy of cuts, they can expect people to take shortcuts. The patient is important, the GPs are important, but the employment rights of those people who are subcontractors or sub-subcontractors should be upheld.

The Minister should really look into this. I detect a pattern of Government contracting out of services and problems developing with those services. I have already mentioned the problems with the benefit service. Sometimes services are contracted out because Ministers do not want to be answerable at the Dispatch Box. We have had that in the past. The Minister says, “I am not responsible.” We try to get through to the company that is providing the service for the public; we cannot get through to them and the Government pass the buck. I had that last Christmas with Concentrix, but that is another debate. I will end my comments there.

Community Pharmacies

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whitford]

Scotland actually has both. We do have pharmacists who are in a consulting room within a practice, and our Government have put £85 million into taking on an additional 140 pharmacists who work in primary care with GPs. We are not, as has been done in the past, saying, “Everyone on drug A must change to drug B because it is cheaper,” without giving any thought to how that affects the patient. We are consulting patients, who are often on 10 or 15 medications, all of which interact and have different side effects, and then rationalising that and giving the patient advice. We are therefore providing a clinical service rather than just a changeover service.

Our community pharmacy system has been running for 10 years, so it is quite mature. Patients register with a pharmacist in the same way as they register with a GP. The aim is for all people to be registered with whomever they consider their local pharmacist to be, as that means that they can access minor ailment treatment. It also means that people who are on chronic medication have a chronic medication service, with their prescription sent electronically to the pharmacy, which then keeps track of when it is due and therefore ensures that patients do not run out of medication. The pharmacies also provide an acute medication service for people who have not signed up to the other service but suddenly find they have no tablets, as they had not thought to re-order them with their GP. If they are regulars at the pharmacy, a single round of drugs can be prescribed for them there so that they do not have a gap in their treatment. The important thing is that our vision is to have all our pharmacists as prescribers by 2023, and to have our public registered with pharmacists by 2020.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady makes two important points: this move is cuts-led, rather than well planned; and just as communities rely on their doctor, they rely on the facilities at their pharmacy. That is particularly true of elderly people and those with disabilities, who may have to travel miles, depending on where the pharmacy is.

[Dr Whitford]

It is crucial that the service covers all areas, including those that are deprived and those that do not have good public transport. Distance is not everything; this is also about how people travel that distance. In many places, the distance involved might not be that great, but there simply may not be a bus going in the required direction.

Coeliac Disease and Prescriptions

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jones]

I agree, and I shall refer to certain demographics—pensioners being one—that are particularly affected by these proposals.

Some 40% of CCGs in England are now choosing to restrict or remove support for patients with coeliac disease, which is leading to increasing health inequalities and, basically, a postcode lottery for NHS care, depending on where someone is diagnosed. The CCG’s rationale for going down that route seems to be justified on cost grounds alone. Indeed, Coeliac UK has made a number of freedom of information requests to try to get more details on why CCGs are changing their policies.

I will take a moment to read an example of a response to Coeliac UK’s FOI request, which came from North East Essex CCG, where sweeping assumptions have been made that are completely devoid of any systematic research. That CCG stated:

“We appreciate that there is a large cost-differential between supermarket value brands and GF [gluten-free], but many people within the CCG buy their bread from bakers or do not buy the supermarket value brands and the cost differential is therefore much reduced.”

That type of anecdotal evidence, used by CCGs to justify their decisions about patient care, is in direct conflict with a paper produced in September last year entitled “Cost and availability of gluten-free food in the UK: in store and online”. It said:

“There is good availability of gluten-free food in regular and quality supermarkets as well as online, but it remains significantly more expensive. Budget supermarkets which tend to be frequented by patients from lower socioeconomic classes stocked no GF foods. This poor availability and added cost is likely to impact on adherence in deprived groups.”

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. The issue does not apply only to elderly people. I have had a number of young people write to me about this, who are very concerned that they may not be able to get gluten-free foods on prescription any more. Has he looked at the possible costs for people who are at the lower end of the earnings scale?

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. There is evidence—including from my own family—that gluten intolerance and coeliac disease run in families. If a young family includes several children with this condition, the cost could be significant.

Baby Loss

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point.

We know that information needs to be targeted at high-risk groups: messages about smoking during pregnancy, risks associated with obesity, and, of course, the importance of not sharing a bed with your baby, and of putting the baby back to sleep. The success of the Back to Sleep campaign, supported by the Lullaby Trust, has shown what can be achieved in reducing sudden infant death. We now need similar information campaigns in relation to stillbirth, Count the Kicks and reduced foetal movement. I welcome the additional steps being taken by the Department of Health—along with the major charities—to highlight avoidable risks, but it is vital for such messages to be targeted at the most at-risk groups in order to have the biggest impact.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady has done a great service in raising this issue today. I have had letters about it, and I know that many others have as well. What she is saying is very informative to people such as me, who have not had this experience. What struck me particularly was her observation that one individual had had five or six miscarriages before anything actually happened about it. I found that very enlightening, as, I am sure, did many people outside the House.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I think it is shocking. Miscarriage is one of the silent subjects. Other Members will probably speak about it, or will have had their own experiences.

The second key principle involves commissioning. We know that the knowledge and learning are out there. There are some inspirational NHS trusts, consultants, midwives and chaplains who have established best practice in hospitals. Greater Manchester, Lancashire and South Cumbria Strategic Clinical Networks has developed a stillbirth-specific integrated pathway. Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has introduced butterfly signs on maternity room doors to alert staff when parents have lost a baby, and has adapted its literature to ensure that they receive relevant information and advice. Abigail’s Footsteps offers equipment such as cold cots to hospitals.

The work that is being done by many charities and dedicated healthcare professionals needs to be shared within the NHS to address gaps in the service when parents are effectively left to fend for themselves. That means that there needs to be better and more effective training for healthcare professionals. It is really not acceptable that such limited pre-qualification bereavement training—sometimes as little as an hour—is given to midwives, given the current stillbirth rates. There needs to be better pre-qualification training for them and also for sonographers and GPs, given the statistics.

There are a number of inspirational examples of good practice in the country, and this weekend they are being celebrated at the Butterfly Awards ceremony in Worcester. If Members have examples of good practice in their constituencies, they should consider nominating them for next year’s Butterfly Awards, so that we can increase their prominence.

NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dunne]

If I manage to get there, I am going to come on to the footprints and how it was that 44 areas were identified, but in rural areas in Wiltshire and Shropshire we do look to urban areas to provide the acute care for all our local residents, so it is appropriate that the footprint areas encompass both the acute and the full range of primary sectors.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his new job. What is happening in relation to bed-blocking, and what are the Government and the national health service doing to deal with care in the community in particular?

[Mr Dunne]

The hon. Gentleman raises a critical point and one of the real challenges facing the NHS at present, which is how to make discharge out of the acute setting, and movement right the way through the patient flow, more effective. As I will come on to say—if I get there—that is precisely why we are looking at bringing local authorities into the footprints for these STPs, so that the entire patient pathway can be taken into account.

Land Registry

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I have a feeling that my hon. Friend is clear about which side of the argument she is on. This Minister is not a bad man. so we will be interested in what he has to say—and which side he will pick in the forthcoming leadership battle.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he agree that the proposal is an ideologically driven attempt to reduce transparency?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend makes a serious point. According to the Government’s answer to my written questions tabled earlier this month,

“No decision has been taken on the future of Land Registry”.

I fully expect that line to be trotted out later today, but the serious questions that hon. Members are raising about transparency in this important institution must be heard.

Budget for Community Pharmacies

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Dugher]

My hon. Friend is of course absolutely right. One of the successful community pharmacy operators in my own constituency, Lo’s pharmacy, which has 20 community pharmacies across Yorkshire, was set up by a fantastic individual, Mr Steve Lo, who was brought up in Hoyland Common in my constituency and remains the firm’s managing director. Of the Government’s proposals, he told me:

“There is a real and present danger that these cuts will make many pharmacies unviable. That can only mean a longer trip, not just for your prescription, but for free advice on minor ailments or medicines as well as a number of other NHS led services, and is only going to put more pressure”,

as my hon. Friend just said,

“on GP surgeries and Accident and Emergency departments.”

I wholeheartedly endorse his comments.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this timely debate. Pharmacists have become very much like GPs—they are part of the community. This Government are always telling us all how they are taking big government out to the communities, but here they are again cutting another community facility, as well as cutting local government facilities.

[Michael Dugher]

My hon. Friend is right. A modern community pharmacy of the type he referred to has so much to offer patients—from free medical advice and dispensing prescriptions to, crucially, reducing strain on other NHS primary care services.

Community pharmacies are of growing importance. Figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre show that since 2005, the number of prescriptions dispensed has risen by 50%, with over a billion items dispensed in the community last year. There have been increases in the number of items dispensed every year for the last decade, as community pharmacies have become more important for public healthcare. Staff at community pharmacies, trained pharmacists, technicians, dispensers and counter assistants are often the first port of call for an unwell patient or indeed a carer. Some 1.2 million health-related visits are made to community pharmacies across the country every single day—more than to any other primary care provider. The average person visits a pharmacy 14 times a year, and there are 11,500 community pharmacies across England.

Defending Public Services

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I welcome the legislative programme that the Government have set out in the Queen’s Speech, particularly on improving life chances for disadvantaged people, which is in the very best traditions of one nation Conservatives.

In opening the debate, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State demonstrated his strategic vision and his clear personal commitment to improving life chances through the NHS. We owe him a debt of gratitude for the work he is doing in that respect, and for his work on ensuring that the NHS is fit for the future. There has been a great deal of discussion about NHS budgets—perhaps there was a lack of clarity from the Labour Front Benchers on their budgets—but, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said, we need to talk not only about the budget, but how we use that money. That is the point I will focus on in my contribution.

In this Session, whether through legislation or other ministerial action, we need to ensure that we have a nimble, agile and responsive NHS for the future. We need public services that respond to people’s needs as they change. People’s lives are changing: we are living and working longer, and we have growing communities with more housing. The NHS, not simply Ministers, needs to respond to those changes to reflect our changing community needs.

The NHS cannot afford to lag behind its users—its patients—in its thinking. That is why I believe that, more than ever, the Government need in this Session to ensure that there is more devolution to local government to join together NHS spending and social care spending, which will help to make sure that our money goes further in future.

Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, has set out a compelling vision for the NHS in this changed world. People with non-life threatening needs should have access to care as close to home as possible, and people with life-threatening conditions should be treated in centres with the very best 24/7 consultant-led care. That is safer and better for patients.

Like many constituencies throughout the south-east, my community has grown not only in recent years, but throughout the recession. We need the Secretary of State to press for a nimble NHS that can respond to the changes in our community, and hopefully plan for the future. We need clinical commissioning groups to work to ensure that new doctors’ surgeries are delivered where there are new houses, and that hospitals deliver the very best every day of the week.

In my constituency, we are truly fortunate to have clinicians who are already ahead of that thinking. The Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust already has fully funded plans, a site with planning permission and support across the community to establish a 24/7 critical treatment hospital, bringing together emergency care for the sickest patients in one site, leaving those requiring walk-in A&E, planned surgery and out-patient care to our local hospitals in Andover, Winchester and Basingstoke.

That approach has been developed by clinicians to keep services safe and sustainable, and I urge the Secretary of State to ensure that we listen to clinicians carefully. They often see the needs of the NHS changing before others do, and we need to ensure that those changes are put in place. The NHS investigation unit is looking at how we deal with delays at A&E, because the changes proposed by clinicians have not been brought forward in a timely manner. We are now awaiting a new models of care programme, and sustainability and transformation plan. In the meantime, my constituents regularly face more than four-hour waits in A&E, which I hope will come to an end when the long-awaited centralised critical treatment hospital is brought to fruition—after four years of planning and discussion.

Within the NHS programme for the future, we need to find ways to respond to the needs of other groups of people. The first Women and Equalities Committee report brought the needs of transgender people to the fore. It was clear from the evidence we received that access to primary and specialist care for this group of people was far from routine and, in some cases, quite shocking—another example of the need for the NHS to respond carefully to the needs of communities. I do not underestimate the challenges GPs face in our communities, but we need to ensure that they are tasked with, and deliver on, treatment and care plans for every group of people and do not leave minority groups out.

We live in a country with a proud tradition of fairness and some of the most comprehensive legislation in the world to protect disadvantaged people—the theme of the Queen’s Speech. Too often, however, legislation does not create the change in the delivery of public services that we in this House would perhaps like to see. I hope the Government will use every Bill in this parliamentary Session to challenge themselves on whether there is more that can be done to support disadvantaged people: whether, in the modern transport Bill, the Government could consider how disabled and older people can benefit from important developments in transportation; whether, in the local growth and jobs Bill, the Government could look more closely at the three quarters of pregnant women and new mums who suffer negative or discriminatory experiences at work, and bring forward measures to help to address this problem more speedily to unlock this important pool of labour for the future; and whether, in the education for all Bill, the Ministers responsible could look carefully at the House of Lords Select Committee paper on the achievements of disabled children in schools. Despite a great deal of work in recent years, we still need to be better at unlocking the educational achievement of disabled children. At the moment just 18% of children with special educational needs achieve good development, compared with 65% without.

The prison reform Bill will of course be pivotal in supporting disadvantaged people. I am sure there will be a great deal of debate on that today, but I would like very briefly to touch on the importance, in relation to the Bill of Rights, of the need to ensure that we really do tackle the disadvantage that people face. I refer again to the need to address the rights of transgender and non-gendered people. They suffer great disadvantage in our society. If we are to have a Bill of Rights, we need to tackle this issue head on.

Before I close, I want to touch on something very close to my heart from when I was a Minister: superfast broadband. I was delighted to see the Government propose a Bill to ensure that superfast broadband is seen as the essential utility that it is. I am sure the Health Secretary will have responded to this with great joy too, given his previous role as Culture Secretary.

The experience of my local authority means that I will be looking very carefully at the detail of the Bill. My local authority in Basingstoke has long seen superfast broadband as essential infrastructure, but when trying to make it happen, in terms of planning conditions for building, it has been blocked pretty firmly by the local planning inspector. Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council and Hampshire County Council have looked long and hard at how they might make progress on this. I am sure they will welcome, as I do, the measures in the Queen’s Speech. Indeed, they have asked the Government for superfast broadband to be a material planning consideration. I hope the Minister will clarify that superfast broadband will be a material planning consideration and indicate when that will come into force. My local community, like those of many other Members, has seen a rapid increase in the rate of house building, and we need to know when this might come into play.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Coventry has also experienced problems with BT’s delivery of broadband. That is one of the big problems. I know that Ministers have been looking at this, but we need urgent action. BT is a big problem in this regard.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman makes a point that many Members have made, but I am making a very different point—about ensuring that local authorities can make superfast broadband an essential prerequisite for new house building. No one can build a house in this country without water, electricity and the many other utilities we have come to rely on. Superfast broadband has fast become a basic utility of life, and that is how it needs to be viewed; I am sure that other Members will mention the performance of those who put the service into place.

The Government have a powerful opportunity to continue on their mission to improve life chances for disadvantaged people, not only in the obvious Bills, such as the one on prison reform, but in every single Bill on their agenda. I urge Ministers to consider carefully how they can bring that into play. While we might have some of the best equalities legislation in the world, when it comes to putting it into practice, we sometimes fall short. We need to admit that and up our game.

Meningitis B Vaccine

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ben Howlett]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; as ever, he is fast off the mark in intervening. I agree that urgent action is needed and I will come on to give the reasons why. From the evidence that we heard, there is, in effect, a two-year window for a vaccine’s shelf life, so I hope that when the Minister sums up, she will make that case clear. Previous campaigns on this issue have brought about change, and I can only hope that this campaign has gathered enough momentum to follow in their path.

Before I turn to the evidence that we heard in the joint sessions, I will mention a constituent of mine from Bath. I am sure that many hon. Members here have seen for themselves, as I have, the effects of this awful disease and what it does to those who suffer from it. One case that has particularly moved me is that of my constituent, Harmonie-Rose. She contracted meningitis B when she was just 10 months old. Just a few days after she had taken her first steps, she was taken into hospital with one of the worst cases of the disease that her doctors had ever seen. As she battled to survive, the toxins in her body spread to her limbs. The disease attacked and destroyed the tissue in her arms and legs, meaning that they had to be amputated in order to save her life.

Although Harmonie-Rose eventually recovered, she now lives as a quadruple amputee. Harmonie-Rose is a lovely, bubbly young child, living her life to the absolute full. She is beginning to adapt to her prosthetics; one day, she will have the freedom to move around that we all enjoy.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate, and I also congratulate all the people who signed the petition. While this debate in Parliament is very timely, meningitis has in fact been around for a very long time. A constituent wrote to me to say that they were having difficulty getting the vaccination. More importantly, if they had gone private, it could have cost them something like £700, which is very expensive for any family, for any treatment. I wonder what the hon. Gentleman thinks about that.

[Ben Howlett]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is quite right to pick up on the fact that the long-term costs to families need to be taken into account when the JCVI makes its decision about whether to extend vaccinations; I will come on to that issue later. It is quite clear that without the support of many of our constituents—those who fundraise and do so much work to help support families in need—those families would be in a much more challenging situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Howlett]

Yes. I do not think JCVI gives as much consideration to peace of mind as it should. From speaking to the parents of Harmonie-Rose and others, I know that that sense of reassurance is in many instances unquantifiable, which makes it difficult for the JCVI to base a decision on peace of mind, but at the end of the day, my opinion, from the evidence we heard in the Committee hearings, is that we need a review of these matters.

As was highlighted repeatedly during the evidence sessions, the exact effect of the vaccine is still unknown, and parents should not ignore any potential signs of the disease just because their child has been immunised. They may still contract the disease, although the chance is much smaller. As ever, early identification is key. The families and experts we heard from stressed the need for strengthened education campaigns highlighting the symptoms of meningitis B, which include a rash that spreads quickly across the body, a high temperature with ice-cold feet and hands, and babies who are agitated and refusing to feed. While it is important that all parents receive that information, it also needs to be targeted at all those with responsibility for children, including childminders, teachers and nurses.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

One of the things that struck me was that there has always been difficulty negotiating the price of drugs with manufacturers. Has the hon. Gentleman come across any evidence that in this case that could contribute to any delays with progress?

[Ben Howlett]

I have not yet seen that evidence, because we are a couple of stages away from that point. Compared with some of the other long-term battles in this place to get access to particular drugs, the conversations that were had with GlaxoSmithKline when the immunisation programme went up to the age of one were particularly small. Longer term, there is obviously a wider conversation that we need to have around access to medicines, if we are going into a world where everybody will, effectively, have a rare disease. We know even more now about genetics and the genome. The system is not set up to help the 68 million people in our country to access medicines in a quick way. That system needs to be created, and the work that the Under-Secretary of State for Life Sciences is doing is leading the way on that. I call on all Members in the Chamber to help speed up that process, and to put pressure on the Government to come up with an accelerated access to medicines review as quickly as possible to help the people that the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) identified.

While we decide what needs to be done, we need to be thankful to the public for raising so much money to support the families living with the reality of a child having meningitis B, and thankful to the charities that provide them with financial, emotional and practical support. Only yesterday, some of the London marathon runners, including seven Members of Parliament, raised thousands of pounds to support such families. Such efforts are vital to providing support, and I know that families are thankful for those efforts. I am tremendously proud to represent a constituency where thousands of pounds have been donated and fundraised for Harmonie-Rose. I know the family are immensely grateful for all the support.

In summary, I am honoured to have been able to open today’s debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. It is unsurprising that this campaign has gathered so much attention following the sad stories in the media. I hope that the Government listen to the widespread calls for a change in policy, and I hope that they have a one-off catch-up vaccination programme for those up to the age of five to put parents’ minds at rest while research is conducted into the impact on adolescents and the spread of this horrendous disease.