Listeria: Contaminated Sandwiches

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I hope the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) will not be saddened by the fact that he is not yet a member of the Privy Council. After all, he is a Staffordshire knight, he has served his constituency without interruption in this House for 35 years, and I remind the House that the hon. Gentleman has a whole chapter named after him in the late Hugo Young’s estimable tome on Britain’s relationship with Europe. There is a chapter in the name of Mr Bill Cash.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

I, too, would like to express our sympathies with the families of the five patients who lost their lives, but also the four who remain critically ill. Obviously, we do not know what outcome they face.

As the shadow health spokesperson highlighted, these sandwiches were sold to 43 trusts, and while there have been no cases since 25 May, the incubation period of listeriosis is 70 days, so will surveillance of those 43 trusts continue alongside the Health Secretary’s investigation?

The Food Standards Agency published a report in 2014 about the dangers of hospital food. It cited 32 failures, including sandwiches spending hours outside fridges, and fridges often not being cold enough. Indeed, it has been highlighted that hospital sandwiches have been the commonest source of listeria outbreaks over the past two decades.

As the Health Secretary says, simple cases are often a matter of people being unwell for a few days, but listeria poses a major threat to pregnant women, who may lose their child, and is life-threatening for people who are already ill. Will the Health Secretary therefore pay particular attention in his review to why on earth people who were seriously ill or frail were being fed sandwiches? Someone who has no appetite and is recovering from illness is simply not going to be tempted by a pack of sandwiches. That really makes the case for bringing food preparation in-hospital and producing tempting meals, because nutrition is critical to recovery.

[Matt Hancock]

I entirely agree with and endorse what the hon. Lady has said. She is quite right to point out that a meal has to be appetising as well as nutritious. The best hospitals deliver that, and I would like that practice to be much more widespread.

I reassure the hon. Lady that the 2014 report by the Food Standards Agency was, as I understand it, looked into in great detail and assurances have been made that what it raised has, correctly, been followed through. Obviously, that was before my time as Health Secretary but I have taken advice on precisely the point she raises and I have been assured that what was necessary happened. I am open-minded, however, on what may have happened and what more needs to be done, and the review will absolutely look into that question.

Finally, the hon. Lady is absolutely right about the incubation period. We remain vigilant. Because listeria is a notifiable disease, Public Health England is told of every case and is able to analyse the links from every new case to existing cases. Notification of most cases takes place after the fact, given the nature of the disease, but we are then able to find genetic links, where they exist, and find out whether different cases have the same source.