Oral Answers

Debate between Maria Caulfield and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

8. What steps his Department is taking to tackle health inequalities experienced by people with learning disabilities and autistic people.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

Annual health checks for people with a learning disability are important in addressing the causes of avoidable deaths and avoidable morbidity and in improving health.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

It is eight years since the Transforming Care programme started, with a target of halving the number of people with a learning disability and autistic people in in-patient mental health settings by 2024, yet according to the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, the number of children in those settings has nearly doubled since then, the average length of stay is 5.4 years and, 12 years on from the Winterbourne View scandal, reports of appalling standards of care are still too frequent. Does the Minister agree that people with learning disabilities and autistic people deserve so much better?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Maria Caulfield and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

I am sorry to hear about the experience of the hon. Lady’s constituent. I am sure that she will welcome the 91 community diagnostic centres that have already been set up to provide a range of tests, including CTs, ultrasounds and MRIs. We are expecting to deliver up to 160 community diagnostic centres in total, with the capacity for up to 9 million more scans per year when they are fully operational. That will not just deal with the backlog, but future-proof our diagnostic services.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

The Minister will know that cancer is the biggest cause of death in children under 14. There are countless instances of failure and missed opportunity in how we detect it, how we treat it and how we care for children with cancer. I am grateful to her for meeting my constituent Charlotte Fairall earlier this year, who tragically lost her daughter Sophie. Does the Minister agree that we need a childhood cancer mission embedded in the heart of any cancer strategy if we are serious about saving other families from that tragedy?

[Maria Caulfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for all her hard work in this space and for leading our debate on childhood cancer outcomes in this Chamber. I was delighted to meet her constituent Charlotte, who is campaigning so hard on the issue. I promised her that we would look at a child cancer mission; we will update the House on our progress shortly.