Covid Pandemic: Testing of Care Home Residents

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

I fear that the hon. Lady did not hear my previous answer, which was that the public health advice and the advice of the chief medical officer was followed. Of course there is a job to do when advice is given, and then there are the practicalities of implementation. As the volume of tests became available, those tests were used as advised, following the public health advice.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

I will not forget the totally shameless politicking by Opposition Members during the pandemic. I specifically remember the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who is no longer in her place, and the Leader of the Opposition talking about how we had the worst death toll in Europe. They said that again and again. [Interruption.] I hear the shadow Minister say from a sedentary position that we did, but the studies now show that we were ahead of Italy, ahead of Spain, broadly in line with France and Germany, and very far from the worst in Europe. Have we ever heard any Opposition Member come to the Dispatch Box and apologise for misleading the British public about our record during the pandemic? Does my hon. Friend agree that they might seek to do that before criticising us any further for our record?

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend is right. The right thing for us to do as a country is to reflect overall on how we handled the pandemic, on the decisions that we made and, indeed, on how prepared we were in the first place. That is the right way to do it. Of course we regret every life that was lost; I think about the families who lost mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and grandmas. It is so deeply sad that so many lives were lost, but that is something that affected us here in England, across the UK and, indeed, across the world. But the right thing for us to do is to look at these things in the reasoned environment of the inquiry and then use the lessons learned and the reflections from that inquiry to make sure that, in the event that we ever have to face another pandemic like it, we can do better.

Government PPE Contracts

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend is right to capture the mood of the public on this. At a time when the public are told that we have to show restraint, at a time when they can see the finances—not least because the Government’s former Prime Minister and former Chancellor crashed the economy—it absolutely galls them to think that Ministers were not doing the due diligence that was required with the funds we needed. Now we have a situation where we are spending billions of pounds on wasted PPE and we also have thousands of pounds every single day being wasted on storage for PPE.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

Obviously in government you have to get on and make decisions, and we do not often get to see what the Labour party would do in our place. On this occasion, we did have an insight because the Labour party recommended a whole series of people who could supply vital supplies for us during the pandemic, including a football agent supplying ventilators. What assessment has the right hon. Lady made of the quality and credibility of the Labour party’s own suggestions for supplies during the pandemic?

[Angela Rayner]

I thank the hon. Member for his comments, but I ask him: how many Members from across the House who were not Conservative Members got access to the VIP lanes? I can give him the answer: none, zilch, zero. That is the problem. The due diligence was not done on those contracts and it was his Government’s problem, his Government’s responsibility and his Government’s failure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Under those circumstances, in those conditions, we had to be quick and decisive to protect colleagues on the frontline so that they could continue providing life-saving care. With lives on the line, of course we had to change our approach to procurement and adjust our appetite for risk. I do not believe the British people would have forgiven us if we had stuck to the same old processes. We had to balance the risk of contracts not performing and supplies being sold at a premium against the real risk of harm to the health of frontline workers, the NHS and the public if we failed.

[Dr Mullan]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Opposition want to have it both ways? They criticise us for our procurement decisions but, as I said earlier, they recommended a football agent to supply ventilators, and the Labour Welsh Government procured PPE from the same Serco company that they criticise us for procuring PPE from,

[Will Quince]

I am keen not to get into a political slanging match on this point, but my hon. Friend is right that all Members on both sides of the House were receiving multiple emails from people who, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) said, were panicking because they wanted to ensure that we procured PPE as quickly as possible.

Colleagues across Government and beyond worked day and night, taking tough decisions, to keep our country safe. Those efforts secured billions of items.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Minister’s robust performance. He said at the end that the Government have learned many lessons. Lesson No. 1 appears to be, “Apologise for nothing.” He knows that no one I heard was criticising the civil servants. Everyone on the Opposition side of the House knows that the civil servants were working in impossible conditions—conditions created by this Government.

I can understand why the Minister has been told to come out swinging and apologise for nothing. Let us be honest: from the moment we first learnt of the existence of the VIP lane for the politically connected, it was inevitable that it would come to this, with Members of this House discussing the eye-watering sums of public money that was earmarked for procuring vital PPE during the pandemic but instead found its way into the hands of fly-by-night chancers who had little or no knowledge or experience of PPE procurement, but who—and this is probably the most charitable thing I can say about them—became fabulously wealthy while making an absolute pig’s ear of it while trying to learn on the job.

Long before the PPE Medpro scandal broke, many of us were already trying to work out how the brains behind this “get rich quick” scheme ever believed that a plan in which the Government would fast-track their cronies, their politically connected pals and now, it would appear, their parliamentary colleagues was ever going to end well. I suspect, as I said during the urgent question on 24 November, that the shocking allegations that have been levelled against PPE Medpro in both The Guardian and The Times—allegations that lead directly to a Member of the other House—may well be the tip of a very large iceberg.

I suspect the reason the Government have been so reluctant to release the papers containing the advice, the correspondence and all the communication between Ministers and special advisers relating to the awarding of that contract is that they do not want to create a precedent that would require them to open the Pandora’s box that is the VIP lane for PPE procurement. However, the Minister would do well to remember that there is another precedent here. The similarities between today’s motion and the motion of 17 November last year, when the Government were instructed to release the papers in relation to the Randox/Owen Paterson scandal, are striking. They will also recall how that scandal rumbled on for two and a half months into February, before the papers were finally made available. Similarly to last year’s debate, the same very simple questions go to the heart of today’s: do this Government have something to hide? Is there something this Government do not want us to see?

The Minister must be aware that the more the Government dodge scrutiny, so public suspicion will grow about this PPE procurement programme being little more than a get-rich-quick scheme for their politically connected pals. Given what we already know, who can blame the public for thinking that? Byline Times recently said that the covid contract winners with direct links to the Conservative party—donors and associates—have seen their collective financial position improve by in excess of £300 million. Was anyone really that surprised when Private Eye described how

“The DHSC’s London-controlled PPE ‘cell’ was dishing out contracts like confetti to opportunistic businessmen”?

[Dr Mullan]

What would the Scottish public think about the Scottish Government awarding PPE contracts, without competition, to more than 20 brand-new suppliers that were unknown to the Government?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I hate to say it, but my goodness you are predictable, Sir. That was probably the most predictable question I could ever have imagined. I will come to that later in my speech. Compared with what went on in this place, the audit of the Scottish Government’s treatment of the procurement process is squeaky clean. I so look forward to having that conversation in about six minutes.

Many of those opportunists hit the jackpot in the Government’s VIP lane for PPE procurement. Prominent among them was PPE Medpro, whose bid to supply the UK Government with face masks and surgical gowns was in the high-priority lane after, we are told, some particularly enthusiastic lobbying was carried out on its behalf by someone down the corridor. Indeed, the peer in question was so enthusiastic about the abilities of PPE Medpro to deliver that she made her passionate pitch to Ministers before the company was even incorporated. Through remarkable powers of persuasion, she persuaded Ministers to propel that embryonic company—one with no experience in delivering medical or protective equipment, and one with which, she told them, she had no personal involvement and from which she did not stand to gain financially—straight into the VIP lane.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

The hon. Member is talking about the Scottish Government’s track record on procurement and value for money. Does he think that that applies across the piece? How well are they doing when it comes to ferry procurement in Scotland?

[Brendan O’Hara]

It is remarkable—we can always spot when a Tory is sinking beneath the waves when they start shouting “ferries” at us. Let us remember that this is a Government who awarded a ferry contract to a company with no boats.

Hospital Building Programme

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings. This is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I also remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the parliamentary estate. That can be done either at the testing centre in the House, or at home. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated, and when entering and leaving the room.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the hospital building programme.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I welcome the chance to discuss the Government’s £3.7 billion hospital building programme, and particularly welcome the opportunity to make the case to the Minister for my local hospital, Leighton, to be included as one of the final eight sites chosen by the Government.

Leighton Hospital was built in the 1970s, and officially opened by the Queen in 1972. I have looked back at the pictures of her visit, and it made me think about just how long Her Majesty has been serving our nation in this way—visiting, before I was even born, the hospital that serves my constituents today. At that time, Leighton Hospital represented a huge change in how healthcare was provided in the area, going on to pick up the role of several smaller hospitals spread across the patch. Its importance and role have only grown since then, serving a population that has increased significantly and now stands at more than 300,000 people.

Whether it is the hip and knee replacements it carries out, the babies it helps deliver, the thousands of cancer screening tests and treatments it undertakes, the cataracts it repairs, or the urgent GP and accident and emergency care it provides, Leighton is at the heart of our local health services. In an ordinary year, Leighton provides around a quarter of a million out-patient appointments, carries out more than 30,000 operations and more than 200,000 diagnostic imaging tests, and has more than 90,000 visits to its emergency department. Of course, none of that would be possible without its fantastic staff: Leighton employs more than 4,500 staff, and that fantastic team of cleaners, porters, cooks, receptionists, healthcare assistants, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, nurses, doctors, volunteers and many others is what turns a building into a hospital.

Those staff can be proud of their achievements in the battle against covid. Not only have they cared for covid patients, but they have also vaccinated 47,000 people under the leadership of their director of pharmacy, Karen Thomas. I had the absolute pleasure of volunteering alongside the staff during the first lockdown. I was quite uncomfortable with the media attention on me for doing this for only a short period of time, when those staff do it day in, day out without any fuss or attention.

As I have seen again and again during my time working in the NHS, its staff have an enormous amount of dedication, often going above and beyond, and are perhaps too accustomed to working in departments and environments that make doing a really good job more difficult than it should be. That is why, although we are talking about buildings today, it is important to highlight that—as others have said—we will only be able to make the most of new facilities if we are able to carry on with the success we have had so far in recruiting more staff.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a strong case for Leighton, and he will know that, as a former Member for his constituency, I was able to work with that hospital very closely. All four of my children were born at Leighton Hospital, which sits in my constituency, and I also spent a week working in that hospital and cannot praise its staff highly enough. I hope that this building programme will give those staff the environment they deserve in order to provide the healthcare we know they can deliver, which is world class.

[Dr Mullan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and what he has said is typical of people who live in the area, who have also experienced their children being born at that hospital and receiving excellent care there.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Speaking as a neighbouring constituency MP whose family has also made great and beneficial use of Leighton over many years, I strongly support my hon. Friend’s campaign for additional resources and support for Leighton. I very much respect him for that effective campaign, which I know has strong support across our constituencies.

My hon. Friend has spoken about the number of people who seek services from Leighton at the present time. Does he agree that that number is not going to diminish: it is going to increase, due to the additional numbers of houses that are being built in our areas? I note, for example, Northwich, where there is a huge amount of house building on the former ICI site, Middlewich in my constituency and Sandbach. Altogether, in recent years, thousands of new houses have been built for people who will want to look for support from Leighton.

[Dr Mullan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the great things about the plans for the new site is that they take into account those future projected increases in population. I do not know what we will do if the resources are not there to do that.

Going back to staffing, we have more nurses and doctors and more staff overall working in the NHS than ever before, but it remains a huge undertaking for the Government to continue to work on recruitment and retention to staff new facilities. I know a lot of the media and campaigning by Opposition parties has focused on pay. While it is important, my experience is that fixing staff shortages would be the priority for most staff. The obstacles for further recruitment will not simply be solved by higher pay; the challenges are more complicated than that.

Of course, buildings and facilities matter, but we have to remember that the material used to build Leighton was expected to last only 30 years. It might seem odd to us now to create a major public facility with that sort of life span, but that is the reality.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is a neighbouring MP. A reference was made to Northwich in my constituency. This proposal certainly has cross-party support. I support the hon. Gentleman and all Cheshire MPs in arguing this case with the Minister in front of us for much-needed investment in a first-class hospital facility in our patch.

[Dr Mullan]

It is great to get cross-party support to demonstrate to the Minister how important it is to all our local communities. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support.

As I was saying, the building was not designed to last this long or to serve the size of population that it serves. My view is clear that we can be more efficient and do more in the community, but an aging population will have an ever-increasing demand for healthcare. We can delay the need for the most specialist hospital care in a population, but we can almost never remove it and stop the demand increasing overall.

How has Leighton managed this challenge over recent years? Rightly, it has benefited from major investment, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) who is working closely with me on this campaign alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). I remember his excellent work in helping to secure funding for brand new theatres and a brand new ITU.

My first campaign after becoming the candidate for Crewe and Nantwich was to reverse the decision to turn down a request for an emergency department extension, which was ultimately funded in 2019. More recently, Leighton received £15 million to build a brand-new emergency department. As the Government understand the necessity, Leighton has had funding to tackle the parts of the original building that are simply not fit for use in the short term. However, there comes a point where the costs of one-off investments, accumulated maintenance and the need to replace the original building structures become a cost that cannot be borne by the ordinary capital spending, and when a whole new building becomes the best option financially and for patient care. That is where Leighton is at.

The life span of the original building is coming to an end. I suggest to the Department of Health and Social Care and the Treasury that they view the funding committed to the hospital building programme as a unique opportunity to look at estates that are winding down towards the end of their life span and address that now.

Under the leadership of the chief executive officer, James Sumner, Leighton has done an enormous amount of work for many months to develop its plans for a new hospital. The team sought expert advice on the life span of the current estate and, importantly, the cost of maintaining it and to keep the existing original buildings in use. I know the Minister will scrutinise the figures and see for himself the financial sense in the case that has been made. Independent analysis demonstrates that the ongoing refurbishment of the present failing infrastructure over the next 15 years will cost substantially more than projected new build costs.

Importantly, the plans are ambitious in ensuring better healthcare is delivered in a better environment for patients and staff. As well as providing the mentioned much-needed bed capacity to meet the projected demand later in the decade, the new facilities will deliver single rooms to improve privacy, dignity and infection control. The new layout will incorporate the latest design advice for supporting patients with conditions such as dementia.

The site as a whole will be reorganised some of the long journeys from key locations, such as the emergency department, to other parts of the hospital that have grown as a result of sporadic development to date. They will future proof the hospital with the most up-to-date digital infrastructure which is becoming increasingly important for delivering the best possible care and doing so efficiently. A new site will enable Leighton to play its part in the race to net zero with more energy efficient buildings and solar power and even, potentially, a geothermal heat source, which is a technology I am campaigning for the Government to support to get off the ground across the country.

The team at Leighton have a track record of delivering improved and innovative care to back up their pledges. For example, the trust recently received an award for its same-day emergency care programme, led by surgeons David Corless and Ali Kazem. I am sure that, with improved facilities, they will continue to find new and better ways to care for their patients.

[Edward Timpson]

My hon. Friend has been extremely generous with his time. Will he also confirm that this project, if delivered, would save more than £400 million in backlog maintenance, as well as helping to free up a lot of the community care, which at the moment is under extreme pressure because of the lack of beds available at Leighton and in the surrounding area?

[Dr Mullan]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This is actually about saving money in the long term given the unavoidable costs at the existing site.

Of course, building the hospital will provide jobs and opportunities for local people, with apprentices at South Cheshire College and others well placed to take advantage in the parts of Crewe where employment and salaries are still not where we would want them to be. I know that the plans have the full support of my hon. Friends for Congleton and for Eddisbury. Leighton’s bid is also supported by both Cheshire West and Cheshire East, as our local authorities, and the Cheshire clinical commissioning group. There is also cross-party support with the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury).

The chair of our newly formed Crewe Town Board, Doug Kinsman, has been keen that the whole board support the proposal, and the rest of the board have seen how important Leighton is to Crewe, both economically and in improving the health and wellbeing of Crewe residents. Importantly, we have the support of those residents. So far, more than 1,000 people have signed our petition supporting the hospital in its efforts to make it into the final eight. The residents include Betty Church, whose daughter was born in the hospital the year it opened, 1972, and Steve Burnham, who explained that not only were three members of his family born there, but his mum worked there for 40 years.

I asked residents to tell me about their experiences and share why they were supporting the campaign. Janice Butler wrote:

“My husband, elderly mother-in-law and father-in-law have all received fantastic help and treatment here. The hospital serves a huge population now and help to improve and upgrade its facilities is desperately needed and has been for many years. Despite the huge pressures, we have experienced excellent help here.”

Susan Marsh wrote:

“I started work at Leighton in 1972 and worked there for 35 years. Since retiring I have been a patient there numerous times. It has changed in the care it delivers since my day, both numbers and treatments. With a new build it will be able to continue to grow along with the population in the area, which will be badly needed.”

I will finish with what a current staff member said about Leighton, both as somewhere to work and as somewhere their family received treatment. Sophie Morris has shared her perspective from what must have been a difficult time in her life, which makes her words even more powerful. She wrote:

“I have worked at Leighton A&E for 6 years now and over that time the demand on the hospital has increased massively. Our last few summers have been busier than most winters. Shortly after starting as a nurse in A&E, my husband became ill. We found out he had terminal throat cancer when I was 7 months pregnant. From beginning to end we had fantastic support and care from all over the hospital.

I think it says a lot about the place and the fabric that is the staff who work there, that I could carry on working in a place that holds so many raw memories. As a body of staff we work so hard to look after the people who come to us for help, now we need some help so that we can provide the care that is demanded of us. Now we need some help so that we can provide the care that is demanded of us.”

I could not have put it better myself.

I know that the Minister will hear the case for investment in many other sites. He will need to consider all the applications carefully. I will work with residents to campaign for this much-needed investment, whatever the outcome of this opportunity, but I hope that I have left him in no doubt today that the case for Leighton to be included is a strong one and there is a whole community of people who want to see it succeed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

I thank the Minister and the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), for the time they have taken to listen to us all in Westminster Hall today. I particularly thank the Minister for his openness and frankness in discussing this issue. I am sure that, as Members, we all understand why he cannot commit today to the various programmes we have put forward.

I particularly thank my hon. Friends the Members for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who have worked very closely with me on pushing forward this campaign for Leighton Hospital. I also thank the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for showing cross-party support for Leighton. The contribution from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) reminded us all of what a unique role an MP plays in their constituency, having that individual voice on behalf of their constituents. My hon. Friends the Members for North West Norfolk (James Wild), for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) and for Keighley (Robbie Moore) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) all spoke powerfully and passionately about their commitment to their local hospital and the investment they are seeking.

There were a couple of common themes that I want to pick out, the first of which was about house building and population growth, which touches on work I have been doing in my constituency to address the postcode lottery when it comes to the voice of the NHS in the planning system. Very often, schools’ education provision is supported by housing development, but it is not very often that our local hospitals are supported financially by developers. Those developers have a role to play, and I encourage the Minister to look at what more he could do centrally to spread best practice. I have been doing that locally, but we need that central drive to make sure that hospital developments, mental health and primary care get the money they deserve where there is new housing.

We are all facing a similar challenge when it comes to the shelf life, so to speak, of our hospital buildings. There is no shame in that—when things are built, they have a timeline—but it is very important that the Minister makes sure that for those of us who may end up disappointed, particularly in relation to the RAAC plank issue, the Government have a clear and strong story about how they are going to tackle that issue and what investment will be put in place, regardless of which hospitals make it into the final round of the hospital building programme. I will finish by inviting the Minister to Leighton Hospital, if he does not mind,

[Edward Argar]

What is one more visit on a tour? I am delighted to accept; it would be a pleasure.

[Dr Mullan]

I look forward to seeing him there with my hon. Friends the Members for Eddisbury and for Congleton. I thank the Minister for his time, and thank you, Mr Sharma, for chairing proceedings today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the hospital building programme.

Covid-19 Update

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. I agree with him that as we move towards removing restrictions and step 4, we should take seriously into account what he said about people attending churches and the restrictions that they currently face. That is certainly my intention.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con) [V]]

The Secretary of State will rightly focus on the immediate challenges of covid, but his Department is also about to make decisions related to integrated care systems, which have potentially enormous long-term implications for the provision of healthcare for my constituents and the constituents of fellow Cheshire MPs. The NHS wants to create a Cheshire-Merseyside ICS, which will not serve the best interests of our residents. Will the Secretary of State meet us urgently to discuss the proposal before it is quietly pushed through?

[Sajid Javid]

First, I thank my hon. Friend for the work that he personally has done to support the NHS, especially through his work in A&E departments. I also thank others who have contributed in that way. On his particular question, no final decisions have been made on ICSs. I absolutely understand the importance of his point. I want to make sure that we get these things right and, although I understand that he has already met Ministers in the Department, I would happily meet him myself.

Coronavirus

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have listened carefully to the contributions this afternoon and we have done a good job at articulating the challenge we face. Basically, what is reasonable to do to stop coronavirus spreading, infecting and killing enormous numbers of people and overwhelming the NHS? The answer to that asks us to consider what the costs are for doing something, and what the costs are for doing nothing.

There has been a cost to freedom from lockdowns, but freedom is complex. What freedom would people aged 50 years and up have had to venture out of their homes when coronavirus ran rampant and left them with at least a one-in-200 chance, or worse, of dying if they caught it?

There has been a cost to businesses, particularly those in hospitality and other businesses that people have been prevented from visiting. I am certain that had our NHS been overwhelmed, had one in 200 people aged 50 started dying en masse, and had the news shown patients being turned away from intensive therapy units, the impact on those businesses would have been similar to, if not the same as, that of lockdown.

There has been a cost to children’s welfare. Which parent would really have carried on sending their children to school, knowing that there would be no help if there was an outbreak of meningitis or measles? How traumatised would the nation’s children have been when one in 200, or more, of their grandparents died in the space of a year or two?

There has been a cost from lockdown to people with illnesses such as cancer. Where exactly would cancer patients have gone after their operations when ITUs were full? Which immunocompromised patients having chemo would have risked visiting their local hospital for treatment and catching covid? It is wrong for critics of lockdown to think that they alone care about freedom, hospitality businesses, children and those suffering from other illnesses; we all do. I do, but I just took what I thought was a rational choice in weighing up the costs across the board. I must take issue with people today who have talked about our freedoms not being used to support the NHS, as if that were some kind of abstract concept. What we are talking about is supporting the patients, their friends and their family who would have been prevented from accessing the NHS if the restrictions had not prevented the NHS from being overwhelmed.

It was always inevitable that, over time, these judgments would have become more finely balanced, as they have done, but I will not be told that I am not capable of continuing to make these finely balanced judgments. It is right that the next phase means a new discussion. Like others, I find these types of restrictions—restrictions that stop us living out our fundamental desires to mix, socialise and spend time with each other—a heavy, heavy price to pay. I have no doubt that the public will be willing to pay a similarly heavy price to remove most, if not all, of them. That is not to say that people will not mind wearing a mask on the tube, for example.

We have some tough decisions ahead of us, and I welcome the recognition of that from the Government. It is now time for the Government to state more clearly and starkly what these choices are, so that the British public can decide together what sacrifices we are and we are not willing to make.

Covid-19: Effect on People with Learning Disabilities

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani; I appreciate the generosity of spirit you have shown in calling me to speak. I congratulate the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) on securing the debate.

There is no doubt that the pandemic has had a huge impact on people with learning disabilities. As was mentioned, the recent Public Health England report identified a much higher death rate among people with learning disabilities. Particularly worryingly, it found that the gap is even greater for young people. The death rate for people aged 18 to 34 with learning disabilities was 30 times higher than those in the same age group without disabilities. I expect some of that relates to the overlap with other physical health conditions that are present at a higher rate in this population, as the report alludes to, but I do not imagine it will be the entire answer to why people with learning disabilities have suffered as they have in the pandemic.

My speech will focus on an issue that has been brought to my attention as a local MP: the risk of economic consequences that the pandemic poses.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Dr Mullan]

To continue, I will focus today on the risks that the economic consequences of covid pose to the job opportunities of people with learning disabilities. Locally in Crewe and Nantwich, there are a range of organisations that try to find job opportunities for people. Organisations such as Safe Opportunities and Seetec Pluss, employers such as AO.com and charities such as Community Recycle Cycles have all worked tremendously hard, and secured successful and ongoing employment for people with diagnoses associated with learning disabilities, such as Down’s syndrome and autism.

Those organisations are understandably concerned about the impact the covid-19 pandemic we will have on their ability to carry on delivering this work. We know that even before the pandemic there was a significant gap in the employment of those with learning disabilities. I have heard from residents who have struggled to find work because of their disabilities, and from their families. Recently, I took part in a meeting with Scope that explored this issue and heard from people with lived experience of it.

What might happen now? Employers might rightly be concerned about the health risks their employees could face, given what we discussed earlier regarding the additional risks that we have seen for people with learning disabilities. If we are being realistic, employers who are laying people off and struggling to make ends meet might not go as far as they ordinarily would to try and stretch people’s employability and support people into employment who have disabilities of any kind, including learning disabilities. That is the reality we will face.

Nevertheless, we cannot afford to have a lost generation of young people with learning disabilities who have missed out on employment that they would otherwise have been able to secure. The Disability Confident campaign was launched by the then Prime Minister in 2013, and it aims to encourage businesses to employ disabled people. By December 2019, more than 15,000 employers had signed up to the scheme, as they wanted to offer disabled people roles in their organisations.

There are also local initiatives. As I mentioned, we have an organisation in Crewe and Nantwich called Safe Opportunities. It has launched a campaign called Big10forSEN, which is building towards having 10 big employers locally that are putting in the effort to secure employment for people with learning disabilities.

There are other measures available. There is the 2017 personal support package, which gives people access to a disability employment adviser, and the Access to Work scheme, which provides financial support for the extra costs of being in work that go beyond the reasonable adjustments that are required in law. As part of the Access to Work scheme, specialist support is provided to people with learning disabilities and other less visible disabilities through a hidden impairment specialist team.

In response to the pandemic, the Department for Work and Pensions has worked tremendously hard to develop policy to prevent ill health-related job losses, but we must not forget the Government’s ambition to get 1 million more disabled people into work by 2027. We cannot allow the coronavirus to prevent that from happening.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

There is now a formal time limit of five minutes. I call Ms Olivia Blake.

Covid-19 Vaccine Roll-out

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

This year, I have sometimes turned for inspiration to the bard:

“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”

So it was a delight and a coincidence to find that Mr William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, a constituent of the vaccine roll-out Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi)—by coincidence; Members should not get any ideas—was called forward to be the second person to be vaccinated by the NHS. It is absolutely terrific to see that people right across this United Kingdom are being vaccinated right now according to need, and I hope it can bring us all together.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

Can I start by joining my right hon. Friend in paying tribute to the scientists, clinicians, trial volunteers and many others who have made it all possible? They have given us the light at the end of the tunnel. We have to remember that there were no guarantees that we would get any vaccine; to have at least one is fantastic. I am glad to see a number of sites in the north-west have been allocated for the roll-out, but my constituents will probably be asking for and expecting somewhere closer to home—for example, at Leighton Hospital near Crewe and Nantwich. What are the plans for expanding the sites available for vaccination?

Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Services: Covid-19

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under the chairmanship of a fellow Cheshire Member, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey) on securing the debate.

I think we all agree that the NHS is facing probably the most challenging period in its history. During the previous lockdown, the Government and the NHS leadership were dealing with enormous levels of uncertainty and, like all of us, had in their minds the images of what happened in Italy, with parts of its health service totally overwhelmed by covid cases. Enormous effort was put into preparing the NHS for that possibility: wards were reorganised, whole new systems for moving patients through hospitals were instigated and staff were redeployed. I pay tribute to the hard work, commitment and flexibility shown by so many NHS staff as part of all this. The changes made and the approach taken can only be described as a success, in terms of the NHS managing the wave of covid cases as it did. Our NHS was not overwhelmed, and no patient with covid who needed more intensive treatment was prevented from getting it.

However, we are here to talk about the wider picture of healthcare for our constituents during the pandemic. Colleagues of mine noticed almost immediately enormous drop-offs in patient attendance that simply could not be explained away by the lockdown. The first time I went to help in A&E, the department was quite simply the quietest I had ever seen it. It seems clear that there were people at home experiencing things such as heart attacks and strokes, which do not always present in a calamitous way that would cause one to definitely seek help.

[Steve McCabe in the Chair]

Of course, the debate is specifically on cancer diagnosis, and even in the best and most proactive health systems in the world, the journey often consists of experiencing a wide range of minor symptoms that only over time become apparent as something more serious. That is why it matters that, over the last few months, there has been an inevitable downturn in people seeing doctors and nurses, because people think they can put off seeing them about these symptoms.

In discussing breast cancer, we can at least take some comfort from our relative success in educating people about the symptoms to watch out for, which by comparison with other cancers are a little bit more specific. We have a proactive screening programme, because we know that we can spot cancers earlier and save more lives if people are screened, rather than waiting for symptoms. Most breast screening services were suspended due to the coronavirus, and Breast Cancer Now estimates that, while screening was paused, almost 1 million women missed out on their mammogram, and that around 8,600 women caught up in the screening appointment backlog could be living with undetected breast cancer. Thankfully, screening has now restarted across the UK, and I understand that more than 400,000 women were invited for breast cancer screening between June and August, with thousands more invitations being sent every month.

I will finish by focusing on two points. First, backlogs—I just described them for breast cancer; we have all described them today—affect a wide range of treatments. We must ensure that the NHS gets the additional resources that will be vital for it to catch up on the backlog of care and treatment built up during the lockdown, and which I am afraid is still building up in some areas. The record numbers of nurses and doctors now working for the NHS will be needed, and we will have to deliver on our manifesto commitments to keep building that workforce in primary and secondary care.

Secondly, we must make it clear to the public that the choice is not between tackling coronavirus or tackling the other healthcare needs of our constituents. Tackling coronavirus will allow us to carry on meeting the wider healthcare needs of our constituents. Any hospital faced with a choice between providing critical care for patients very sick with covid, who are at risk of dying there and then, and providing screening and non-urgent treatments will have to prioritise that immediate and critical healthcare need. That is why keeping the coronavirus suppressed is absolutely vital.

The NHS has moved on from where it was at the start of lockdown and every week is getting better and better at doing both things at the same time. We must all carry on giving it the room to manoeuvre that it needs to build on that further, enabling it to look after patients with and without covid, patients with urgent healthcare needs and planned healthcare needs, and patients requiring things such as screening.We will only stand a chance of being able to do that if we can continue to keep coronavirus suppressed, following the guidance that we have all been given—hands, face and space. Let us ensure that it is clear to constituents: this is not a choice between one or the other, but about supporting both groups of patients.

Local Contact Tracing

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to take part in this important debate.

Effective contact tracing is going to help us to tackle this virus, and all of us here want the best possible version of that tool in the toolbox. The question is how best we do that. Despite what the Opposition might have people believe, there are no easy answers to this problem. It is easy to stand up in this place or go on TV and say, “Fix it”, but anyone with any real-world experience of organising any kind of project or undertaking that is even a fraction of the scale and size of this one understands the incredible challenges that are inevitably faced. Over recent months, the Government have built a huge testing regime capable of processing 340,000 tests a day that has tested over 7 million people in a matter of months. At the start of this epidemic, the yardstick for all this was Germany. Now that we are testing more people than Germany, France, Italy and Denmark, and many others, that yardstick has quietly disappeared.

Yes, there are challenges. Supply and demand are not uniform across the country and supply needs to be increased, but, whatever Labour Members think about the Government’s approach to testing and tracing, if they describe testing 69% as a complete failure, what does that say about the Welsh Labour Government’s programme? To be brutally honest, I am struggling to understand what exactly Labour Members are trying to say today, beyond of course, “We could have done it differently. It would all have been different and fantastic, and nothing would have gone wrong.” That is basically their position on everything to do with the coronavirus.

Let us talk about some of Labour Members’ common criticisms. They say we should not have the private sector involved, and that there is insufficient capacity. At the same time as criticising the Government for not having enough testing capacity, they are telling them that they should immediately and drastically cut out a chunk of that capacity because it does not suit their ideology. This is all based on their blinkered mentality that if the private sector does something it will automatically be bad and if the public sector does something it will automatically be good.

That brings me to the question of whether doing everything locally would have been the right approach at the outset of the programme. I simply do not accept that asking all 152 directors of public health to go off and set up their own approach at the outset would have been in any way feasible. Were they all supposed to come up with their own laboratories, their own contracts and their own apps? That just is not a credible solution in the short term. It was common sense to begin with a central programme, although even at the outset, when it was clear that something centrally driven was needed to kickstart the process, the Government recognised that local systems had a role to play. Many months before Labour was calling for it, £300 million was provided to help local authorities to develop their own test and trace programmes and, importantly, we have now 93 local authority test and trace regimes up and running.

So what is it that Labour Members are saying? Is it that we should immediately hand over everything that is being run nationally to local authorities?

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

No.

[Dr Mullan]

Well, it is.

Many of us in this place who have had dealings with local authorities—as well as lots of our constituents and probably millions of people across the country—would agree that getting everything done by the local authority is by no means a guarantee of success. Just this morning, in news that I am sure was greeted with groans in the Labour Whips Office, it was revealed that Birmingham City Council’s local programme dropped off 25 used swab kits to homes in Selly Oak. Does that mean that local authorities are incapable of delivering? No, of course not. We have problems in the private sector, and that should not bar them from involvement, and we have problems in the public sector too.

Local authority solutions are not a magic bullet. The quality of leadership, management and organisation varies enormously among local authorities. We all know this, and the Opposition know it. At the election, so many bricks in their red wall fell because residents were fed up not just with Labour at national level but with inept, Labour-led local authorities. After decades in power, they were taking people for granted, with leaders and councillors who were not even up to the job of taking away the bins on time, let alone organising a test and trace programme. The national programme inevitably has challenges, but do Labour Members really think that each and every one of the local authorities will deliver on this flawlessly?

Local leaders are political. Sadly, time and again we see Members on the Opposition Benches putting politics first. In the past 24 hours alone, they have said that they support local lockdowns but then did not vote for local lockdowns; that national lockdowns were a disaster, but now they want a national lockdown—and they cannot even make up their minds whether they want a two-week or a three-week lockdown. And they want the country to believe that if they had been in charge, all this would have been going smoothly. That is not accurate. When it came to getting children back to school, the national Labour party was kowtowing to national union leaders and doing what they said, and we all know that the local Labour parties are just as likely to be influenced by the unions. I absolutely recognise that there is work that needs to be done, but I am afraid the idea that if we just flick a switch and give it all to local authorities everything will be fine is complete and utter nonsense.

Public Health: Coronavirus Regulations

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

I want to focus my remarks on whether there is currently any viable alternative to the lockdown measures that have been put in place in my constituency. In my view, there is not. The argument put forward by some is that we could somehow isolate or protect the vulnerable, to allow the rest of us to carry on with our lives as normal, but how realistic is that? We have to be clear about the number of people that we are talking about. This is not just about people in their 80s. Our current understanding is that approximately one in every 200 people in their 50s and 60s affected by coronavirus will die. For people in their 70s and above, that figure is more like one in 10. Taken together, those age groups add up to something like 25 million people. How viable is it to keep them safe?

In answering that question, we must not compare it with how successfully we have been able to do that so far, because if we abandon lockdown measures for everyone else, there will be one key difference. Right now, as we are all involved in the national effort to stop the spread of the virus, we all play a part in keeping the levels of the virus low. That means that when a grandparent meets up with their grandchildren, their grandchildren probably do not have the virus. It means that when a plumber turns up to fix a pensioner’s boiler, they probably do not have the virus. It means that when a carer arrives to help get an infirm person out of bed, they probably do not have the virus. Most importantly, it means that when an older person managing their chronic illnesses turns up to their next GP or hospital appointment, the receptionist, the nurses, the doctors and the people in the waiting room probably do not have the virus. That is because we are all playing our part in trying to stop the spread.

If we were to let the virus spread among the rest of the population, we can forget all of that. We would reach a point where, in every single one of those examples, the vulnerable person would stand a very real chance of catching the virus because it would be rampant. That is the reality of the strategy that some are proposing. We would effectively be telling 25 million people to play Russian roulette every time they step outside their door—they can hug their grandchildren, but they run a real risk of catching a deadly disease if they do that. They can go to work, but they run a very real risk of catching a deadly disease if they do that. Most importantly, if they go to their cancer screening, their radiotherapy or their chemotherapy, again, they run a very real risk of catching a deadly disease. That is no choice at all.

But we do have a choice, and that is to persevere. It is not easy, and I have no doubt that we are paying a terrible price in terms of the economy, our wellbeing and our health, but I simply cannot see how that price would be outweighed by the loss of life on the scale we would see and the restrictions we would have to put in place on 25 million people if we were to give up. I do not think we can justify abandoning the older members of our society to their fate—not when, if we buy them more time, I believe we will find other ways forward. Whether it is a vaccine or mass daily testing, science will provide us with the solutions. I could be wrong. We could lose that battle in the long run, but we have not lost it yet, and I do not think the British people are ready to surrender; I know I am not. We must push on with these measures.