Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Diana Johnson

Thursday 29th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

3. What progress he has made on considering the recommendations of the second interim report of the infected blood inquiry.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

4. What progress he has made on responding to the final recommendations on compensation by the infected blood inquiry.

Bird Nesting Sites: Protection

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Diana Johnson

Monday 13th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I think this is the first time that you have chaired a debate that I have taken part in, Ms McDonagh, so it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today.

It is good to see so many hon. Members here to discuss this important environmental issue. We have already heard some excellent speeches on the consequences of netting and the action required. I commend the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill), who set the scene well.

In a short speech, I will concentrate mainly on my constituent, Maggie Moran, who started the petition that is the reason we are all here this afternoon. Maggie and her family are in Parliament today. She started her petition in the early hours of the morning after a long shift at Hull Royal Infirmary, where she works. At first it was shared among friends; it went on to gain more than 300,000 signatures, national media coverage and a response from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which I understand has written to developers reminding them of their legal obligations.

Maggie was kind enough to write to me before the debate. I know that she has also spoken to the media and received a lot of media coverage, and has explained why this issue is so important to her. In her note to me, she talks powerfully of her upbringing and how her family instilled in her a deep love and respect for nature. She speaks fondly of holidays where she and her father calculated the age of hedgerows. As she reminds us, our hedgerows are ancient, beautiful, rich ecosystems. They are homes, breeding grounds, safe corridors and hibernation spots for birds, bats, dormice, reptiles, insects, hedgehogs and others. They play a major part in preventing soil loss and reducing flooding. I represent a constituency in east Yorkshire. The Humber estuary is prone to flooding and 95% of the city of Hull is below sea level, so flooding is an important issue for me and my constituents. Also, hedgerows help to reduce road noise, and they produce oxygen, which of course helps with the climate challenge. Hedgerows are not obstacles to be removed, but life support systems to be protected. As has been discussed in more depth today, netting puts those fragile ecosystems at risk. It can entrap birds, dormice, bats and hedgehogs, separating them from their nests and food, injuring them and even putting their lives at risk.

We must look seriously at ending the practice of netting, but we must also think beyond that. Last year in the UK, numbers of bats, hedgehogs, birds and insects continued to plummet. The UN report last week spoke powerfully of how nature’s decline will presage our own. Awareness is growing that to support society, we must change the rules to give nature room to thrive. The Government must look again at how the developments we need—houses, schools and hospitals—can be achieved without destroying nature. As Maggie said, we must look at prioritising brownfield land, which the Campaign to Protect Rural England has said can be used for more than 1 million homes on 18,000 sites. When greenfield is the only option, we should include original habitats, including hedgerows and trees, in the designs.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech; I hope her constituent appreciates what she is saying on her behalf. As parliamentary species champion for the swift, I am keen to ensure that in urban development we put swift bricks into houses, which provide those birds with a habitat,. That is a really easy step and councils such as, I think, Exeter have made it compulsory for new developments. Does she agree that that is an excellent way to provide a home for swifts?

[Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend, who is a great champion of nature and the environment, makes an important point. If that practice could be spread far and wide, it would be an excellent measure.

I will conclude by saying that it was nice to meet Maggie’s children Nell and John today; they are seeing at first hand what campaigning can achieve. Maggie told me that she put together the petition and brought her children to Parliament today because she hopes they will witness the lesson that, if we speak out, we can create real change for the future. To use her words:

“I want them to see that…if they believe in a cause, and if they have conviction and are willing to speak out and work hard, then anything can be achieved”.

I am profoundly thankful to Maggie for raising this issue with us. I hope that this debate will prove her right and that action will be forthcoming to deal with netting of hedgerows.

Contaminated Blood

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Diana Johnson

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

May I start by thanking the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for securing this debate and for all his incredibly hard work over the past year or so in championing this cause? I also thank him for his kind remarks about the late Paul Goggins, the late Jim Dobbin and the late Lord Morris.

I co-chair, along with the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney), the all-party group on haemophilia and contaminated blood, and it has been a privilege to be involved in putting together the report. I think I speak for both of us when I say that many of the contributions made by the nearly 1,000 people who gave evidence to the APPG were harrowing and at times very moving. The substantive report would simply not have been possible without those submissions. They are quoted throughout the report and highlight in vivid detail how the current system of support is not fit for purpose. Our report is clear that there needs to be dramatic change to the level of support people get, and the way in which it is managed, before we can even hope to achieve closure for these people. Needless to say, my biggest thanks go out to the whole community of people who have been affected by this tragedy.

In addition, I thank YouGov and the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who generously helped put together the survey; the Haemophilia Society, which provides the all-party group’s secretariat, and particularly its chief executive, Liz Carroll, without whose help we could not have conducted the inquiry or produced and printed the report; and Fiona McAndrew and Thomas Stephens, who both worked so hard to put the report together. I am also pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) is on the Labour Front Bench, and that the Secretary of State for Health and his Minister, who has direct responsibility for this area, are also present.

I want to highlight two matters. First, I want to clarify the issue about the number of people infected with hepatitis C. Since we concluded our inquiry, several people have got in touch about the figures. We state at the beginning of the report that, historically, it was estimated that more than 30,000 people were infected with the virus during the relevant period, and the figure was given in the Government’s 2011 review of support for those affected. Figures for the numbers affected by haemophilia derive from the United Kingdom Haemophilia Centre Doctors Organisation, and those for the number of people without bleeding disorders who are infected are estimates from an academic study.

I want to make it clear that no support package would extend to anywhere near such a number, because many of those originally infected have—unfortunately and sadly—died, while some cleared hepatitis C at the acute stage and others, especially those infected through a blood transfusion, would find it very difficult to link their hepatitis C infection with a single period of NHS treatment and so could never qualify for help in practice. It would be a shame if any Government used such a figure to argue that it is too costly to expand support. In practice, trust-based assistance would cover only a much smaller number of people—fewer than 6,000—and any consideration of the costs of extending the support package should take that into account.

Secondly, I want to highlight the case of my constituent Glenn Wilkinson, who was infected with hepatitis C from NHS-supplied blood products. Without Glenn, I would never have become involved in the all-party group. He is a resolute and determined activist, and he has campaigned vigorously for more support for those affected. We all owe him a huge debt of gratitude for keeping on going, and for fighting for what is right.

As a minimum, Glenn would like a number of measures taken to reach a full and final settlement for all. I will set out what he has told me in the past few days and how it fits with what we said in the report. First, he wants to remove the distinction between stage 1 and stage 2 hepatitis C, because the majority of people in stage 1 do not receive ongoing payments. The distinction is based on a decision that those in stage 1 are not in a state of ongoing need, but our inquiry clearly showed that they are in need. The accounts we received show that the Government need to rethink the current system, which denies ongoing support to those in stage 1. We therefore recommend that the Government provide ongoing payments to all people with stage 1 hepatitis C at a level to be set by a public health doctor.

Secondly, Glenn wants all widows and family members of deceased infectees to have equal access to financial support, irrespective of the infection that caused the virus. We recommend that all widows of hepatitis C infectees, who are currently denied any ongoing support, get the same support as those of HIV infectees. We also recommend that the families of deceased hepatitis C infectees should get the same support for at least nine months after the primary beneficiary dies, as is already the case for those with HIV. Thirdly, Glenn wants the support to be simplified and administered by just one trust, rather than by the five trusts that currently exist. Our report recommends that the Government review the support provided, because it is a mishmash and a hotch-potch.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and other Members involved in producing this excellent report. One of my constituents affected, Councillor Bill Payne, has praised the report. On her point about the piecemeal nature of the support available, I must say that I was really struck by that when I read the report. It is difficult enough to deal with the health care system and the welfare system without the additional burden of bureaucracy, and it seems that some of the organisations involved are not very good at responding to people’s needs, so I agree that that needs to be addressed urgently.

[Diana Johnson]

I am grateful for that intervention. I think I should be allocated an additional minute that has not been put on the clock. [Interruption.] Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Fourthly, Glenn told me that he thinks it would be fair to see priority access to NHS treatments for those affected, and that is rightly one of our recommendations. He also wants automatic passporting to employment and support allowance and disability benefits for all infectees. Because this is an all-party group, that recommendation is not included in the report, but I think it should be considered by the Government. Just today I received a message from someone who said that the money they get from one of the trusts is now being spent on paying the bedroom tax—I am sure the Minister does not think that that is what trust money should be used for. Once the Penrose inquiry is published, we hope there will be no further delays, or that any delays will be minimised in any inquiries that the Department of Health and Government need to make.

I will end with a quote from a person I think was very brave to come forward. She is an HIV infectee and the widow of an HIV-infected husband:

“I refuse to be a victim. Despite everything I cherish my life and count my blessings. I have faith that this will end soon and maybe then, my talents, intelligence, spirit, sense of justice, experience and energies can be better directed at contributing towards and being part of a better society. I pray for the day when this Trust is out of my life. I do not think that is much to ask.”