Hospitals

Melanie Ward Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

I must confess that I am slightly surprised that the Lib Dems have brought forward an Opposition day debate about hospitals and are stating their case in such a way, because the last thing we need in this country is a load of promises we cannot keep. I am proud that we Government Members have provided sustainable and affordable plans for the new hospital programme. I have been on the doorstep the last few weeks in the run-up to the county council elections, and the No. 1 priority that comes up is GP access. We have provided 1,500 new GP posts in this country, and waiting lists have been going down for the last five months. Emergency dentistry is also very commonly brought up on the doorstep, and we have provided 700,000 new dentist appointments.

There are many other parts of the NHS that are crumbling. I see the crumbling of the hospital buildings as a metaphor for what has happened to the NHS over the last 14 years.

[Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is talking about the important work done by Lord Darzi, and the findings on crumbling hospitals in England. He may be interested to hear that recent figures show that the bill for the high-risk repairs needed to Scottish hospitals stands at £64 million. Those repairs have not been carried out under the SNP. They include two high-risk repairs that are badly needed, and have been outstanding since 2016, at Cameron hospital in Fife, which is used by some of my constituents. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Scottish Government should use some of the record funding provided to them by this Labour Government to fix our hospitals in Scotland?

[Dr Opher]

Of course it is essential that we maintain hospitals so that they are safe to treat patients in, so I agree with my hon. Friend about spending the money. In fact, the backlog bill for repairs in the NHS runs to £13.8 billion. I work as a GP in a GP practice, and I note that Lord Darzi estimates that £37 billion more should have been spent on the NHS since 2010, but was not. For those of us working in the NHS, it does feel like that. There is a massive building project ahead of us.

I point out that the previous Labour Government built 100 new hospitals. One was the Vale hospital in Dursley, which we started in 2008, and which I had a hand in. As hon. Members have said, community hospitals such as Vale hospital are crucial to how the NHS works. We must invest in our community hospitals and use them properly. The Vale hospital provides excellent minor injuries unit services, a specialist stroke service and in-patient beds for the community. We must invest in our community hospitals going forward. As we have heard, there were meant to be 40 new hospitals in the last few years, but none of them got built, and it turned out that they were not even funded.

We need to get care out of hospitals and back into the community. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) talked about GP premises; 20% of GP premises were built before the inception of the NHS, and I inherited one of those premises in Dursley. Twenty years ago, we opened a purpose-built surgery at May Lane, and we are still enjoying the benefits; it provides patients with excellent services. We must therefore invest. I was glad to see the Government investing £100 million in GP surgeries. I was pleased to see £80 million put into GP advice and guidance; that will allow consultants to give GPs advice, so that they can care for patients in the community. I am also really delighted with the push for neighbourhood health centres; that must be the way. We must bring back the family doctor, as that continuity of care is what really makes patients better. That is so important.

We must also integrate health and social care in the community, so that we can pull patients out of hospital. That also applies to emergency care, as far too many people are having to go to overwhelmed A&Es at big district general hospitals. At the moment, only 20% of acute admissions go through GPs, who are the best people to ensure that we avoid admissions. We have to change all of this. Our NHS staff and patients deserve better; they deserve facilities that reflect the excellence of the care provided within them. The Labour Government are committed to rebuilding not just our hospitals, but trust, and the integrity of our public services.

Health and Social Care: Winter Update

Melanie Ward Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for her usual constructive contribution to proceedings. She is absolutely right to raise the issue of variation in performance across different parts of the country. It is not acceptable, and one thing we will be doing as a Government is to ensure that, as well as creating a rising tide that lifts all ships, we raise the floor in performance so that we see far less unwarranted and unwanted regional variation. She talked about the Shrewsbury and Telford trust, which has had a number of challenges over many years. We have seen some signs of improvement as recently as this week, and we continue to support local leaders as they strive to improve the performance of their system overall.

The hon. Member raises some good and interesting questions about the frequency with which we publish data. It is right that we ensure that data is properly validated so that accurate data is put into the public domain, even as NHS England’s control room monitors live reporting into the centre. I will take into account what she said about her requests both for more live data—collected and published data—about critical incidents and for more localised data in individual trusts, including ambulance services, to monitor variations in response times within a region. Although the points she has raised are interesting, I add the caveat that we would not want to burden the system with more reporting requirements if that causes a distraction from improvement. I tend to lean towards more transparency in data and reporting, however, and I will take into account the representations she has made as we put together our urgent and emergency care plan.

[Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)]

At the Victoria hospital in Kirkcaldy, paramedics have had to establish a makeshift ward outside as ambulances queue up outside A&E. The number of people presenting in December 2024 was roughly the same as in December 2019, but there has been an increase of almost 300% in those waiting over four hours at A&E. Does the Secretary of State agree that this is a dreadful indictment of 18 years of SNP rule in Scotland, and that the SNP Government must use some of the additional £4.9 billion from the UK Labour Budget to get a grip? My constituents deserve so much better than this.

[Wes Streeting]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The conditions she describes at her local hospital are truly shocking. As I have said, and this is often quoted by the SNP, all roads lead to Westminster, and I am happy to report that up that road from Westminster to Holyrood lies a record uplift in funding for the Scottish Government. They have no excuses for inaction. They need to grip the crisis in the NHS in Scotland, as we are here. The difference, as my hon. Friend states, is that they have a record of 18 years that they cannot defend, and I hope people will consider that record very carefully when they decide who should govern in Scotland at the next set of Scottish elections.

Hospice Funding

Melanie Ward Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

I have to say that dancing is more my style than marathon running, so I wish the hon. Lady luck with that. At least she did not ask me for any money. I refer her to my earlier answer: this is additional money to support the hospice sector. It is a £100 million boost for adult and children’s hospices to ensure that they have the best physical environment for care, and £26 million in revenue to support children and young people’s hospices. We look forward to working with the sector in order to best deploy that in the New Year.

[Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)]

Merry Christmas to you and your team, Mr Speaker.

Our hospices do an amazing job, and I look forward to visiting my local hospice in the next few days, but Scottish hospices have warned that they might have to turn patients away because of the funding crisis that they face under the SNP. Does the Minister agree that the Scottish Government must at least match the level of investment that she has announced today? They must have a similar level of ambition for Scottish hospices, and provide fresh investment for our hospices, which do an amazing job in Scotland.

[Karin Smyth]

As my hon. Friend highlights, this is a devolved issue for the Scottish Government. We hope that they match our ambition, as she rightly puts it. I wish her well with her local hospice, and I hope that the Scottish Government take note of what we are doing here in England.

Lobular Breast Cancer

Melanie Ward Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman—who is my hon. Friend—very much indeed for that intervention.

Heather died in St Christopher’s hospice near her home on 30 August. She was 48 years old. Shortly before she died, Heather’s daughter, who was due to start secondary school in September, visited her mummy in the hospice, so that she could see her in her school uniform. In that unbearable heartbreaking detail is why we must do better on lobular breast cancer: better on awareness of symptoms and better at research into treatments.

The heartbreak of Heather’s story and the impact on her family and friends is sadly replicated for too many women and their loved ones throughout the UK. Lobular breast cancer is the second most common type of breast cancer, accounting for 15% of all breast cancers, and 22 women a day are diagnosed with lobular breast cancer in the UK. It behaves differently from other forms of the disease, mostly strikingly because it does not cause lumps, and it is often completely invisible on a mammogram.

[Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate on such an important topic, and for so movingly sharing the story of her friend Heather. I want to raise the case of my constituent from Dalgety Bay. Just days before her surgery for lobular breast cancer, a mammogram was still unable to pick it up, exactly as my hon. Friend describes. It could not pick up the existence of her cancer at all. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a perfect example of why we so badly need more research and better diagnosis and treatment of lobular breast cancer for women across the UK?

[Helen Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing the story of her constituent to this debate. This is exactly the reason why we need to find better means of diagnosis and treatment for lobular breast cancer. I will come talk about some of those means shortly.

Currently, there are no treatments specific to lobular breast cancer. This must change. The issues have been well documented by Dr Susan Michaelis, founder of the Lobular Moon Shot Project. Susan was 50 when she noticed a small, pale, 1 mm mark on her left breast in 2012. She had no lump and both a mammogram and an ultrasound were reassuring. Six months later, the small mark had become redder and Susan had a biopsy that confirmed she had invasive lobular breast cancer. Susan’s cancer had spread to her neck, the back of her head, the eye area and her ribs. She is now on her sixth line of treatment.

Dr Michaelis is a qualified air accident investigator. She focuses on how accidents can be prevented by learning from past mistakes, and has used these skills to look at how treatments have failed her. In doing so, she has identified the need for a new approach.