Coronavirus Response

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We have been building the test and trace system and improving the data that flows from it and underpins it all the way through this crisis, and I am glad that the hon. Lady is pleased by the continued progress that we are making. That is the way to look at this. We have been building this extraordinary service at extraordinary pace, and I am really glad we are able to get more.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I welcome the Health Secretary’s statement and share his concerns that we do not know how the virus will react when we enter our cold weather season. Wealden constituents are already concerned about winter flu. When he has the data on cold weather and the virus, will he ensure that it is shared with East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, East Sussex County Council and Wealden District Council so that we can prepare and be resourced to deal with both covid and winter flu?

[Matt Hancock]

I will do better than that: when we get scientific evidence on the impact of cold weather on this virus, we will publish it.

Covid-19 Update

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am absolutely determined to address the questions and the impact of covid on those who live with disabilities. The hon. Lady’s point is important and this will form part of our work on inequalities and the response to covid. The Minister for Equalities is taking that work forward.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend share what factors lie behind the infection rate being so high in Leicester? Will those factors be shared with local resilience forums, such as mine in the south-east, so that they can also prepare? Secondly, he said that children in Leicester were particularly vulnerable. That is not the norm for covid, so is this a separate strand of covid or can he say why the youngsters in Leicester are so vulnerable?

[Matt Hancock]

To be clear, children have a very low risk of suffering from covid, but we have been looking at the proportion of children who have tested positive and therefore may be transmitting the disease. Thankfully, the disease poses a very low risk to any individual child in terms of their becoming ill or worse, but the challenge is that it still transmits through children. That is why we have taken the decision that we have on schools in Leicester. Of course, there are many reasons and potential reasons why the outbreak has occurred in the way it has in Leicester. We are still getting to the bottom of those, but I undertake to ensure that directors of public health in other areas understand those reasons. For instance, we are doing work specifically on food processing factories, which seem to have a higher rate of infection around the world, including in America, Germany and also in north Wales. Of course, there is a challenge in the community to ensure that we understand properly the origins and the spread of the outbreak in Leicester and then look at similar cities where the case rate is thankfully much lower, but ensure that we learn the lessons for similar cities, precisely as the shadow Secretary of State said.

Covid-19: BAME Communities

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the passionate speech of the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi). I first want to thank all NHS workers, who have done a tremendous job during this covid period. My speech will not be so friendly, so I want to start by thanking the Minister, who has been tremendous in supporting me in Wealden, where we have a particularly large care home system—I have a lot of older constituents. Regardless of the day of the week and the time of day, she has been incredibly responsive. Unfortunately, the rest of my speech will not be so flattering, so I will just crack on.

Like so many people in this country, I have lost loved ones to covid. I also have loved ones working on the frontline dealing with covid. We had the experience and network to highlight quite early on that we saw a pattern forming, but we were met with, “We don’t have the data”—it is 2020, and we do not have the data. I understand the argument that this is an unusual situation, and that we did not have the statistics to deal with this particular pandemic, but we do have data about how viruses spread. We also understand the long-standing institutional biases of NHS England and Public Health England, which have failed in their leadership, are unaccountable, and hide behind the catch-all, “We just don’t have the data.” It is shameful.

[Caroline Nokes]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we did not actually need data, given that we could open up the pages of any newspaper and see the photographs?

[Ms Ghani]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. That goes back to my earlier point: Public Health England needs far more functioning leadership.

Public Health England’s report says:

“It is clear from discussions with stakeholders the pandemic exposed and exacerbated longstanding inequalities affecting BAME communities in the UK.”

That is nothing new. Moreover, it confirms to me the wilful blindness of Public Health England and NHS England in addressing racial inequalities and their inability to put in place measures to address workplace risk and make sure that so many BAME staff were not exposed. In the time it took for Public Health England to review the disproportionate number of BAME deaths, another 17 doctors passed away. Sixteen of those were BAME.

What else do we know? We know that there is a significantly higher proportion of BAME healthcare workers in England across our health system; without BAME workers, there would not be a health system. We know that BAME workers are in lower-paid jobs and that they cannot work remotely. We know that BAME workers tend to work in high-risk areas, and that the families they go home to are high-risk individuals. It was a high-risk strategy, yet Public Health England and NHS England continued to expose high-risk staff to high-risk shifts.

We know that 94% of doctors who died were of a BAME background. In the biggest survey of its kind, ITV News asked the UK’s BAME healthcare community why they thought more of their BAME colleagues were dying than their white counterparts, and 50% felt that discriminatory behaviour played a role in the high death toll. One respondent described the treatment as “very unfair”, adding that “all BAME nurses” have been

“allocated to red wards and my white colleagues”

are “constantly in green wards.” Perhaps more worryingly, ITV found that 53% of BAME respondents said that they felt they could not comfortably raise concerns about deployment, so they risked their health as against their employment.

To me, that suggests that the problem is related not to covid but to long-standing institutional inequalities. I want to hear from the Minister a resolute commitment to hold Public Health England and NHS England to account, and to ensure that the recommendations are acted on, reviewed and assessed by the real workers on the frontline who are most at risk—by that I mean BAME workers—and that all the data, good and bad, is shared in good time. I hope that the Minister understands that I have very little confidence in particular in Public Health England.

As we champion our frontline key workers, we also need to give them confidence that we have their backs. Like all public workers, they want to do their jobs, but many are concerned that if there is a second wave of covid they will be risking their lives or their families’. The BAME community has already been severely hit. I am not sure that it could take a second wave. For BAME health workers to die at such a rate frankly amounts to negligence on the part of NHS England and Public Health England, but perhaps it is not that surprising. Their leadership boasts 46 individuals; yet only four of them are from BAME backgrounds.

The country was united in tackling covid, but Public Health England and NHS England let down BAME health workers. They have time to put the record straight. Either we are in this together or we are not. I hope that the Minister can confirm that the Department is committed to ensuring that Public Health England and NHS England will treat, manage and support all their staff equally, so that we do not see a second wave of disproportionate BAME health worker deaths.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We have introduced something similar. In areas where it has been difficult to recruit GP trainees for three years or more, we have provided a £20,000 salary supplement to attract people to those areas. It has been very successful, and we have extended it to 200 places this year.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

High Weald Lewes Havens clinical commissioning group has undertaken a consultation on closing Rotherfield surgery, which is in my constituency, against the wishes of the community and local councillors. Does my right hon. Friend agree that CCGs have responsibilities and liabilities when it comes to supporting rural practices, and that they should do all that they can to recruit GPs in rural areas?

[Mr Hunt]

I do agree. I also know that, although areas such as Wealden are beautiful places in which to live, it is sometimes very difficult to recruit people to become, in particular, new partners in general practices in such areas. We are concerned about that. Nationally, we have a plan to recruit 5,000 more GPs by 2020-21, but we need to ensure that they go to rural areas such as that represented by my hon. Friend.

Valproate and Foetal Anticonvulsant Syndrome

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

I absolutely agree. I hope to pull that issue together as I go on with my remarks. It is really important that we raise the case of sodium valproate, which, as we have heard, is still in use. All of these issues need to be looked at.

Common to this debate—and in all such cases, including Primodos—are the hidden, missing and lost documents, along with a delay in education and information. That was raised again today by the right hon. Member for North Norfolk. I pay tribute to Sky News for its exposés on valproate and Primodos, because this really matters to the families affected.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

My hon. Friend raises a valid point about media coverage. I congratulate right hon. and hon. Members on raising the issue in the Chamber today, but I am concerned that it might make some women nervous about taking medication if they are pregnant, or are considering whether they would like to become pregnant and are on medication. Surely one of the messages we want to send out today is, “Please consult your doctor and do not respond to everything you read in the press if you are taking epilepsy medication.”

[Mims Davies]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Many of us have constituents, friends or family who are affected by epilepsy, which, in itself, is very serious, or by bipolar disorder. Appropriate use remains very important. For the vast majority of patients, treatment can be effective and useful if it is done right—if managed, if educated and if understood. The argument, therefore, should not be about ceasing use, but about telling the truth and looking at appropriate use during pregnancy. Men use the drug too, so we need to take a balanced approach and reflect all situations.

Baby Loss Awareness Week

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

The fact that we have some really ambitious targets is to be applauded, and I welcome the Minister’s update on the Government’s position on those targets. Even if we achieve a target of about 50%, however, that would mean that between 2,500 and 3,000 babies will still die every year. We must ensure that the parents, grandparents and wider family members have a support network. That is why the all-party group was established very much on the basis of bereavement care, and our focus very much remains on bereavement care.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

My hon. Friend mentioned support networks, and I want to draw attention to the Crowborough birthing unit in my constituency of Wealden. It does fantastic work with mums and dads, and siblings, to make sure everyone can go through the process either of having a healthy baby or, if they have such a tragedy, of losing a child.

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend gives a great constituency example. Maternity units up and down this country have the most incredible provision and offer the most incredible compassion and care. In fact, we have some of the best provision in the world. Tragically, however, that is not replicated all across the country, and there is regional variation. I will come on to what we need to do to address that a little later.

To return to bereavement, the very first debate, which I led in this House back in November 2015, was about bereavement care. It specifically looked at bereavement suites in maternity units, and that was very much the focus. I am pleased to say that the theme of this Baby Loss Awareness Week is bereavement.

This week, we have seen something incredible, something truly groundbreaking—the result of over a year of work —which is the establishment of the national bereavement care pathway. The pathway has been developed by a number of charities and professional organisations, with the support of the Department of Health and the all-party group on baby loss. It has primarily been developed to improve the quality of bereavement care experienced by parents and families at all stages of pregnancy and, indeed, baby loss up to 12 months. The objective of the pathway is to ensure that all bereaved parents are offered equal, high-quality, individualised care that is safe and sensitive.

The national bereavement care pathway was launched yesterday in 11 pilot sites, and the plan is to roll it out nationwide over the next year. This has been an incredible exercise in collaborative working. I want to pay tribute to Sands, all the baby loss charities and organisations that have made an input, NHS trusts, the Department of Health and all the parents who have fed in their experiences. It is not easy for them to talk about their loss, and the evidence of all the parents who have talked about their tragic experience will improve care for very many others up and down the country. I also pay tribute to a former colleague, Ben Gummer, who, when he was the Minister with responsibility for care quality, pushed so hard for this and worked so hard to make it happen.

Yes, it is important that we push the Government to address the UK’s high stillbirth and neonatal death rate, but the support that we give bereaved parents is just as important, if not more so. We need to make sure that they have the support that enables them to have the time and the space in which to grieve. We know that going through this most traumatic of experiences can often lead to mental health issues—such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, about which there is growing evidence—whether they appear weeks, months or sometimes even years later. The number of couples that separate after losing a child is still very high, and that comes with huge social costs. Putting in place the right level of high-quality, consistent bereavement care is not just the right thing to do for parents; it should be part of our push to improve mental health care nationwide.

Adult Social Care Funding

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine]

I confirm that there will be the widest possible engagement across the House and across the sector, including with the Select Committee that the hon. Gentleman may or may not be in charge of in the next few weeks.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I have visited many nursing and care homes in my constituency of Wealden and have met committed and caring care staff. Does the Minister agree it is the inspection system introduced by this Government that is finally shining a light on poor care and driving up standards?

Oral Answers to Questions

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. I think I can call her that; we have worked closely together in the past. I am new to my ministerial post, but I have been through the plan, and it is I who has to stand up and defend it. I want to be sure that it is right and that I am as happy with it as everyone else in the Government. My intention is that it will be published before the summer recess.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Within East Sussex, Wealden has the highest number of smoking-related deaths. I welcome the update on the tobacco control plan, but how will my hon. Friend raise awareness and provide equal access for rural communities?

[Steve Brine]

Rural communities are as important as any other. It is up to East Sussex County Council to come forward with a local tobacco control plan, and I know my hon. Friend will be taking a close interest in that, as she does in all matters when representing her constituents.

Preventing Avoidable Sight Loss

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered preventing avoidable sight loss.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating me this debate, the Chairman of Ways and Means for approving it and you, Mrs Gillan, for being in the Chair. I am also grateful to all the MPs who supported my application and to Lord Low of Dalston, my co-chair on the all-party parliamentary group on eye health and visual impairment, who, with his passion and experience of these issues, is a fantastic source of knowledge and support for the group. I believe that he is with us today in the Gallery.

The latest information from local authorities, which is from 2014, shows that almost 300,000 people in England and many thousands in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland are formally registered as blind or partially sighted. Many thousands more suffer from sight difficulties without being registered with their local authority. I thank the Royal National Institute of Blind People for its support as the secretariat of the all-party group, which I have the honour of chairing. The RNIB estimates that almost 2 million people in the UK live with sight loss. It is predicted that that will double to around 4 million by 2050 due to our ageing population and the fact that more people will live with conditions, such as diabetes, that can lead to visual impairment.

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

My hon. Friend talks about sight loss increasing in the future. Does she agree that obesity, which has the knock-on effect of causing type 2 diabetes, is one of the causes of sight loss? Children in their teens are being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, so we really need to think about how we tackle and prevent that in the long term.

[Nusrat Ghani]

I definitely agree that we need to think about the long term and look at childhood obesity and diabetes, which are on the rise. I would like to put on the record that my application for this debate—I applied for a debate in the main Chamber—was supported by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on diabetes.

It is estimated that half of sight loss is potentially avoidable. Glaucoma is the single biggest cause of preventable sight loss. Some 600,000 people in the UK have glaucoma, but half are undiagnosed. If it is detected and treated early, around 90% of people with glaucoma retain useful eyesight for life.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the most important features of this situation is that at least half a million schoolchildren are affected, one way or another, by sight problems, if I may use that expression? Some 100,000 people in the west midlands, of which my constituency is a part, are probably also affected.

[Nusrat Ghani]

Of course. I will go on to mention children and the fact that it is necessary for them to be tested earlier than we previously believed they should be.

Wet age-related macular degeneration affects the retina and causes changes to central vision. In October last year, Jean Rugg’s eye clinic consultant told her that she needed follow-up treatment. She was told by the receptionist to expect the appointment in the post, but nothing arrived. By December, Jean was continually contacting the booking department and being turned away. She was told that she would not be booked in because the department was just too busy. Time passed. Jean noticed changes in her vision and was extremely worried about permanent damage to her sight. She was getting nowhere, so she contacted her consultant’s secretary and, after much urging, managed to secure an appointment with him to discuss her sight.

By that time, three months had passed. Jean’s consultant was alarmed that she had not received treatment sooner and explained that her vision could well have deteriorated due to the delay, as there had been further leakage of fluid into her eye. Jean needed an urgent course of injections, so the consultant took her to the booking department to try to secure an appointment that same week. They were both told that there were simply no spaces in the injection clinic. After repeatedly explaining the urgency of the matter, the consultant was eventually able to obtain an appointment for Jean the following week.

I am sure that the Minister agrees that that is just not good enough. That delay and lack of responsibility and urgency is just not acceptable. There are many more Jeans across the country. A 2014 survey by the Royal National Institute of Blind People showed that 86.5% of the public were more fearful of losing their sight than any other sense. As I said, 50% of all sight loss is potentially avoidable if treated early, yet NHS England does not give eye health the profile it deserves. There is no overarching NHS England-led strategy to govern it and push for more prevention of avoidable sight loss. There are equivalent strategies for hearing loss and dementia.

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady mentioned dementia, which is a growing problem, especially among elderly people, although not all elderly people. Sight loss can exacerbate or even mask symptoms for people with dementia. Correcting vision loss can help reduce the impact of dementia, at least in the early stages, and improve quality of life. Does she agree that policy makers and commissioners must seek to prioritise addressing sight loss for people who have dementia or are suffering its early onset?

[Nusrat Ghani]

I agree. We most definitely need to prioritise sight loss for all vulnerable people, including older people, who might also have mental health illnesses.

There are eye health strategies in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; England is an anomaly. I therefore ask the Government to consider developing and implementing a national strategy for eye health in England. That would not require additional funding, but would be a commitment to improving the efficiency of eye care services and ensuring consistency across the country. It would enable the development of improved clinical leadership at clinical commissioning group level to prevent eye health from slipping down local commissioning agendas, enable closer partnerships between CCGs and local eye health networks, and aid commissioners to identify eye health priorities that respond to the needs of local populations.

The Department of Health and NHS England already do great work to support the voluntary sector-led England Vision strategy, but that is, by definition, limited in its ability to bring together all the relevant organisations in a joined-up way. In response to a written question that I tabled last week, the Department rightly explained that England’s size

“and the diversity of the health needs of different communities”

mean that commissioning is best “owned and managed locally”. I completely agree, but that should not be incompatible with strategic thinking from above by people who see the bigger picture, or establishing principles that local areas can fit to their circumstances.

Local commissioning must be coupled with national leadership. Leaving things to local commissioners is not working as well as it should. There is significant variation in the quality and quantity of services. For example, someone in Luton will wait for 15 days between their first attendance at a hospital out-patient clinic and their cataract surgery, but if they were in Swindon, they would wait not 15, 50 or even 150 days, but 180 days. That is a shocking difference. No doubt the Minister agrees that, again, that is just not good enough.

Small changes to guidelines and legislation would streamline the process for many patients. For example—my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) may have to help me out with my pronunciation—allowing orthoptists to sign hospital eye service spectacle prescriptions, rather than requiring ophthalmologists to sign them, would allow the delivery of effective patient care and reduce the number of appointments required to access spectacles.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

rose—

[Nusrat Ghani]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not intend to make a quip about my pronunciation.

[Mr Cunningham]

The hon. Lady’s pronunciation is not as bad as mine. I would support a national strategy. More importantly, however, the cost of drugs for treatment is an area that creates difficulties. In 2014-15, the cost of two drugs alone to treat age-related macular degeneration was £287 million. There is room for discussion between the Government and the drug companies on the cost of drugs to treat people with eye problems.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nusrat Ghani]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I hope that the Minister will respond to that and that we can tackle the postcode lottery in treatment and care across the country.

More generally, sustainability and transformation plans are an exciting opportunity to bring different parts of the NHS together, with greater efficiency and greater outcomes. They are designed to ensure that health and social care services in England are built around the needs of local populations. However, of the 44 STPs, only 22 mention ophthalmology. There is a gap in local plans, which could be narrowed by a national strategy. No doubt the Minister will share my disappointment that half of all STPs do not mention ophthalmology.

It is also worth noting that there are national strategies for other health conditions, in which local commissioners play a role alongside national leadership. The cancer strategy for England, for example, was developed by an independent cancer taskforce, including a number of charities. As a result, NHS England’s national cancer transformation board subsequently published an implementation plan. If there was a need for national leadership on cancer, dementia and strokes among other things, why does the same not apply to eye heath? If the Minister needs to look elsewhere for places where there are national eye health strategies, he could even look to Zimbabwe, which has one.

Professor Tim Briggs’s review of ophthalmology services in his capacity as national director for clinical quality and efficiency is warmly welcomed, but his review focused predominantly on secondary care. A national eye care strategy would cover all stages of the patient pathway, from prevention and early diagnosis to effective treatment and management, and high-quality rehabilitation and social care.

Early diagnosis is an important part of prevention, and it hinges on awareness. Eye health must be seen as a public health priority rather than in isolation from wider health and wellbeing issues. For example, too many people see eye tests simply as a way of identifying refractive error, but their purpose is wider: to identify eye conditions that could lead to loss or deterioration of sight at a later date and prevent that before it happens. Anyone entitled to a free eye test must know that they are entitled to it.

Vision defects in children include amblyopia, which can be mild but becomes more serious if left untreated or if the sight in the other eye is lost or damaged. In December 2013, the UK national screening committee recommended that screening should be offered to all children aged 4 to 5 years. However, children’s vision screening in schools has yet to be implemented across all local authorities. Some, where it does not exist, are not commissioning it, and some are decommissioning existing programmes. The national guidelines provide a population-based examination of all children, ensuring that at-risk and vulnerable children in the population are reached. How does the Minister see the future of eye treatment and screening for children, and how does that fit into wider healthcare plans? I know that NHS England is working with CCGs, general practitioners, patients and the public to improve patient choice in all secondary care services by 2020, not least to increase awareness and achieve improvements in patient outcomes and experience. That is extremely welcome, but will the Minister outline how that applies to ophthalmic services in particular?

When early diagnosis is achieved, referral processes must be equally efficient: straight to hospitals, rather than via GPs as happens in some areas, which is inefficient for patients, GPs and hospitals alike. I would be grateful if the Minister provided information on how optometrists and other service providers are encouraged to follow referral guidelines issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and professional bodies.

Preventing avoidable sight loss relies on timely access to treatment for eye conditions. The latest hospital episode statistics for ophthalmology show a picture of missed and delayed appointments across England. In the High Weald Lewes Havens CCG, which covers my constituency, 6.47% of ophthalmology appointments were cancelled by hospitals in 2015-16. In Sutton, that figure leapt to 26.17%. Cancelled appointments put people at risk of losing their sight unnecessarily, so I would welcome the Minister setting out how his Department works with hospitals and CCGs to ensure that such cancellations are as rare as possible.

As I draw to a close, I will briefly mention the UK’s work on global eye health. In May, the World Health Organisation will discuss how countries are delivering on the avoidable blindness plan. The UK is a signatory to that and also one of the largest supporters of aid to combat the neglected tropical diseases that often cause blindness. Some 90% of blindness is in the developing world, and 80% of cases can be cured or prevented. I pay tribute to the Sussex-based non-governmental organisation Sightsavers, which the Department for International Development supports to deliver British goals for the reduction of blindness abroad. I thank the Government for their international leadership on this important issue.

Back home, I pay tribute to all the work done by Lord Low, the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group. I asked him what sight loss is like and what obstacles have to be overcome. He said that we cannot underestimate or understand the hurdles, time and energy it takes just to try to live independently and have access to services that the rest of us do to enable us to live a full life. There is also the importance of technology in this area, and how it must be harnessed to support people with sight loss.

Will the Minister explain how much work is being done to harness technology to help people with sight loss and how much work, commitment and finances are put into research? The eye research charity Fight for Sight has done so much commendable work in research. We cannot deal with some sight conditions, but the right amount of investment may help us tackle and stem the rise in sight loss in our ageing population.

Blindness and partial sight in the adult population costs the UK about £28 billion a year—not the £28 million mentioned in the House of Commons Library research paper. However, it costs so much more than that: opportunities are missed and careers stall. While disability employment in general is increasing, the one exception is eye disabilities. Family and relationships are challenged. I know the Government and the Minister are committed to reducing avoidable sight loss, improving the quality of life for people with sight loss and addressing persisting health inequalities. I finish by thanking the Minister for the work he does in this area and encouraging him to keep going.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nusrat Ghani]

I have only a few minutes for my winding-up speech. It has taken a long time to discuss sight loss here in Parliament, but I am pleased that the Minister has responded so positively. Of course the all-party parliamentary group, the RNIB and I look forward to holding a meeting with him. We agree that the lack of local action, accountability and deliverables must be addressed. We are still convinced that it requires a national strategy, but we are more than happy to discuss that with him.

Fundamentally, the population is growing older, and more and more health problems are coming our way. The number of those with sight loss will increase from 2 million to 4 million. We need to do more on screening, research into treatments, prevention and ensuring that, regardless of where in England people live, they are treated equally and with dignity, within a period of time that ensures that preventable sight loss does not happen. Some 50% of current sight loss could have been prevented. That is not a statistic that we want to repeat.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered preventing avoidable sight loss.

Young People’s Mental Health

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I would like to start by commending the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for securing such an important debate and raising so many important issues. The quality of the debate has been incredibly high so far, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to make a short contribution.

I will start, as others have, by paying tribute to the Youth Parliament. I want to give a shout-out to our young Members of the Youth Parliament in East Sussex: Joshua Moreton, Orla Phipps and Reuben Hayward-Brown. These MYPs do a fantastic job, and I hope that, one day, at least a couple of them will be sitting on these Benches as grown-up MPs—Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure that you, for one, will agree that we could do with far more grown-up MPs in the House of Commons. The mentor of those three MYPs—and my mentor—Councillor Sylvia Tidy, has done a great job in supporting them, and she is a huge credit to East Sussex County Council.

I also pay tribute to the work of the Youth Select Committee, which has produced this important report. It is still shocking how mental health is treated as a second-class health issue, compared with physical illnesses.

This October, we recognise Breast Cancer Awareness Month by wearing pink ribbons. This month is also when some celebrate Halloween parties up and down the country. It remains a common occurrence for people to dress up as someone with a mental health illness because it is seen as scary to portray mental hospital patients next to flesh-eating zombies. In our culture, sufferers of mental illnesses are often supposed to be feared or ridiculed, and that must change. We have to challenge the stigma and attitude that are so present today; we must challenge those prejudices.

We are all often guilty of making assumptions that are just wrong—I am also guilty of that. As a new MP I received an early piece of casework. I heard about a young teenager who was struggling with an eating disorder, who was self-harming and who had run away from home. I just assumed it was a girl. When I met the parents, “she” was a boy.

We have already heard about the impact of mental health issues on young men. Suicide rates among young men are shockingly high. In the UK today, a young man between 20 and 49 is more likely to die as a result of suicide than he is to die from a cancer, in a road accident or from heart disease. The stats are shockingly high. We do better than Japan, where suicide is the leading cause of death for men aged 20 to 44, but we have a lot of work to do on prevention, early diagnosis and early treatment.

Mental illness also has consequences. It has particular consequences for young people who are already vulnerable to grooming and exploitation, who become more vulnerable when they suffer from a mental health issue. I recently chaired an inquiry for Barnardo’s into harmful sexual behaviour between children, where the victims and survivors are children, and where the perpetrators are children as well. A lack of self-esteem, an eating disorder or depression can sometimes be a factor in children committing, or being victims of, sexual abuse. That makes effective early diagnosis and therapy even more important.

There is an issue about these children sometimes being seen as troublesome, but not recognised as vulnerable or struggling with mental illness. Here, the Government can do more, by sharing best practice across schools, councils and police services. The integration of education and health is key—something my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has already touched on.

The role of the digital world is also important in terms of its impact on young people’s mental health—something my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) has spoken about. The internet can be a dangerous vehicle for grooming vulnerable young people, so I especially welcome the Youth Select Committee’s recommendation that the Department of Health should develop a trusted app, with NHS branding, that young people can use to access mental health services—a positive use of the digital world that stands in stark contrast to the negative use of it. The Government have done great work on the youth mental health hub website, but the hub has not quite made it into app form, so I would be grateful for an update from the Minister.

Though we less youthful MPs have many disagreements across the Floor of the House, there is one thing on which we can all agree: we would be nowhere without the energy, enthusiasm and youthful brains of our hard-working teams. I was touched to hear the story of one young parliamentary assistant, who lost his brother to suicide. This is Jed’s story. Jed woke up on his day off to find his mum in despair at a Facebook message posted by his brother. The message read, “I’m sorry”, with the location, “At the Needles”—a beautiful but treacherous location on the Isle of Wight. Jed’s brother was hard-working, reliable, genuine and caring. He had suffered a marriage breakdown, but he was back to his former self, with a fantastic new girlfriend by his side. But Daniel Dwight took his own life. Writing afterwards, Jed said:

“It seems such a shame to think that he felt that he had nothing to live for...I for one can promise that I shall do everything I can to ensure that the world I grow old in will learn to be fairer, more caring, with a greater willingness to understand others whilst providing all important support.”

Jed’s experience, like that of others, shows what is at stake. We need to tackle stigma. We also need early diagnosis, early support and good-quality therapy that is offered within a sensible timeframe. Waiting months for therapy, whether for depression, anxiety, a personality disorder or an eating disorder, often just because someone has not quite reached a trigger level of concern, does not help them. It hinders their recovery because time allows their suffering to get worse, and they come to believe that their case cannot possibly be important, because if it was then surely the therapy would be provided sooner. This means that when the therapy finally is available, it is even less likely that it will be successful.

One of the key lines in the Youth Select Committee’s report is this:

“Until young people’s mental health services receive funding proportionate to that of physical health, we do not believe parity of esteem can be achieved.”

For me, that squares the circle. The amount of funding we put into mental health support and therapy is linked to our attitude towards it, and our attitude towards it is linked to the amount of funding we put into it. One must lead to the other. We in this place can lead on the funding, ensuring timely and good-quality therapy and support for mental health.

I welcome all the steps the Government have taken so far to improve support for mental health, and youth mental health in particular. The investment of an extra £1.4 billon in children and young people’s mental health services over the course of this Parliament is especially welcome, although there is always more that we could invest, and I urge the Minister to do exactly that. When funding parity is achieved, and timely and appropriate support is available to everyone who needs it, the taboo that surrounds mental health can be crushed.

Finally, I pay tribute to Jed for allowing me to share his touching account of the painful and still vivid memories of the day his brother committed suicide. We both hope that sharing his story might help to prevent others from taking that most desperate route, and remind any young person struggling with their mental health who is listening today that they are valuable and valued.