A Plan for the NHS and Social Care

Debate between Nigel Evans and James Davies

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Queen’s Speech today. The past year has highlighted the challenges facing our health and social care systems, and I welcome the Government’s legislative agenda, which will tackle some of the most pressing issues. In the short time available, I will focus on three issues: plans to tackle obesity, the potential benefits of UK-wide comparable healthcare data, and the need for better access to, and choice of, secondary and tertiary healthcare for the residents of north Wales.

In the UK, 63% of adults are overweight or living with obesity. This places an enormous strain on the NHS, reduces quality of life and stifles economic productivity. The Government have a clear agenda to tackle obesity, and I welcome, among other measures, the confirmation of a total online ban and a 9 pm TV watershed for the advertising of high-fat, salt and sugar products. The commitment to legislate for calorie labelling in cafés, restaurants and takeaways is also welcome. Although I acknowledge certain concerns on behalf of those with eating disorders, I believe this policy will have a clear net benefit for our national health.

Can progress also be made on introducing calorie labelling for alcohol products? I am in no way anti-alcohol, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you know—in fact, I am a proud member of the beer, and wine and spirits all-party parliamentary groups—but I believe that there is currently poor awareness that alcohol consumption is a significant contributor towards our national obesity crisis. An alcohol calorie labelling programme would be a useful tool to enhance the plans already outlined in the Queen’s Speech.

The availability of comparable data on covid infection rates and vaccination roll-out throughout the country has been a key driver in our response to the pandemic, yet looking at healthcare more broadly, comparisons between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can be difficult to draw. My personal experience as a GP, anecdotal evidence and basic comparisons indicate that, despite the hard work and commitment of health staff, patients in Wales often receive inferior levels of service when compared with their friends in England.

By introducing UK-wide health data, politicians at all levels will be held to account, practitioners and policy makers can better share best practice, and, ultimately, equal health outcomes will be promoted. Such an approach would be complemented by the establishment of independent UK-wide healthcare inspection, safety and audit mechanisms. In short, we have opportunities that I believe we must seize to level up healthcare. I ask the Minister to consider what the UK Government can do, beyond the legislative programme already announced, to protect and promote the health of all British citizens.

I am looking forward to seeing the progress of the health and care Bill. I hope that, as part of the legislative process, the Government will consider the challenges that Welsh patients currently experience, whereby access to specialist healthcare treatment in England is typically dependent on restrictive contracts or individual funding requests. Improving access to specialist care—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Sorry, James.

Covid-19

Debate between Nigel Evans and James Davies

Monday 11th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con) [V]]

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. During the pandemic, many have turned to their MP for help, and so far nearly 800 cases have been brought to me by constituents. That has proven to be a challenge at times —especially while I have been struggling with covid symptoms myself—but it has been rewarding to assist so many people. I thank all who have joined me in working around the clock to provide responses. I must also thank key workers at this immensely challenging time and pay tribute to all who have volunteered to help their communities.

I welcome the generous package that the Government have introduced to support individuals and businesses. A great number of my constituents have expressed their thanks for these schemes, and I would like to add my own thanks for the hard work that has been undertaken by Ministers, officials and industry representatives to construct these programmes.

In such difficult times as these, a united approach across our country is vital, and regrettably, much of my time over the last several weeks has been spent dealing with confusion and anxiety where that has not been the case. It started with national guidance to seek coronavirus advice via the 111 service, when no such service existed in north Wales. Soon afterwards, the Welsh Government were in such a rush to announce the closure of schools in advance of the UK Government that they did so without the initial mention of provision for vulnerable children and those of key workers. Following this, the very successful GoodSAM scheme, which recruited volunteers, was not embraced by the Welsh Government, with far fewer volunteers being registered in Wales as a result. While the UK Government ploughed on with their plans for the Nightingale hospitals, precious little appeared to be under way in north Wales. Following work with the health board, three temporary Rainbow hospitals are now available, and mercifully they have not been required as yet.

Perhaps one of the greatest issues in my mailbag has been the difficulty of obtaining supermarket delivery slots, because the Welsh Government were initially unable to provide supermarkets with electronic lists of shielded patients. To compound matters, the online form for registering as a vulnerable person would not accept applications from Wales. Shielding letters were greatly delayed in comparison with the situation in England. It then emerged that the 80,000 shielding letters sent out by the Welsh Government included 13,000 that were sent to the wrong addresses. Only a week ago, a shocking further 21,000 recipients were identified. A survey by Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation found that while 10% of its respondents from Wales had received a shielding letter, this rose to an average of 17% in the rest of the UK. I still have many constituents yet to receive a shielding letter, such as Eleri Humphreys from Rhuddlan. It is my belief that the dispatch process of shielding letters highlights critical failures in the IT systems in use in NHS Wales, which contribute towards poor performance of the system on a daily basis.

As covid testing has been ramped up in England, the Welsh Government failed to match that, with access to testing still unavailable to many groups. It is now belatedly available to some care homes. The online booking portal available in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland does not function in Wales, and until just days ago, all tests carried out in north Wales were being sent on a several-hour trip to Cardiff for processing, when sending them to the Alderley Park “mega-lab” would have reduced lab transfer times to as little as an hour. Most recently, it was revealed that poor communication between the health board in north Wales and Public Health Wales had resulted in a failure to report all of its 84 coronavirus-related deaths over the—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We appear to have lost James, but thank you very much for your contribution. Let us move now to our final speaker, Dan Jarvis.