NHS Shared Business Services

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The costs are in excess of £6 million, and we are seeking to recover as much of that as we can from the company involved. I know that the regime in the Labour party has changed, but to try to turn this into an issue of privatisation when under the right hon. Gentleman’s own party’s Government—and indeed, during his own time as Health Secretary—we had problems at Mid Staffs that were squarely in the public sector is wholly inappropriate. This is about proper assurance of what is going on in the NHS, and both sides of the House need to learn the lessons.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

In order to reassure my constituents, will my right hon. Friend confirm that NHS SBS no longer provides this mail redirection service, that all backlogged correspondence has now been delivered to the relevant GP surgeries for filing and that no patient harm has been found in this case?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Of course we welcome the fact that no patient harm has been identified to date. We have to wait until the process of the third clinical review is completed on at-risk patients’ records, which will happen by the end of December. She is absolutely right to say that SBS is no longer performing this contract; it has been taken in-house. Other parts of the SBS contract not related to what we are discussing today were given to another supplier.

NHS Shared Business Services

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Objection to the manner and content of a ministerial response is not a novel phenomenon in the House of Commons.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

There have been cries of privatisation from the Opposition. Is not the truth that in 2007, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs lost the entire collection of child benefit records, affecting 25 million people? Is not the point that all data holders, whether in the private or public sector, must hold our private information securely?

[Mr Hunt]

That is absolutely the point. What people will be wondering is, when we were faced with this issue, which was indeed serious, did we react as quickly as we could to keep patients safe? I believe the answer is yes. Did that happen under the last Labour Government? I will leave the House to draw its own conclusions.

Breast Cancer Drugs

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for securing this debate. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane). I am sure everyone in the House wishes his assistant a very happy and fulfilling birthday, and many more to come.

Sadly, most families in this country have had some experience of cancer at some point, and we have heard of many compelling examples today. As we debate the difficult topic of the provision of medicines to those who need them, I am very conscious that discussions about prices and the costs of drugs mean nothing, frankly, to the wives, daughters, mothers and grandmothers who simply want to live for the next week, the next month or the next year to see their next birthday or the birthday of a loved one.

I do not underestimate the task facing NICE, but having listened to the speeches today, we must ask why countries such as France and Germany have approved this drug, when NICE drew the initial conclusion it did at the end of last year. I know that the Minister is listening carefully, and I hope that our questions and thoughts on this process will feed into a larger review of how NICE looks at this and other drugs, and of whether the process is as correct and appropriate as it should be. I am a big believer in saying that any system run by human beings can always be made better, and I wonder whether this is such an example.

I want to look at Lincolnshire, the county in which my constituency is situated. I am pleased that we have better than average cancer screening in the county. What worries me, however, is that when it comes to diagnosing the early signs of breast cancer, my local clinical commissioning group ranks third from the bottom in the United Kingdom. That is very significant because, as we all know in this House and beyond it, the earlier the diagnosis of cancer, whether first stage or secondary, the better the chances of successful treatment.

The treatment of secondary breast cancer is particularly relevant to my constituency. I have met representatives from Breast Cancer Care—I say “representatives”, but they are women, mums and wives—and I was incredibly moved to hear the stories of their experiences of living with secondary breast cancer. I commend the vital work that the charity has done, particularly its “Secondary, not second-rate” campaign looking at the barriers preventing the improvement of care for those with secondary breast cancer.

Breast Cancer Care highlighted to me the key point that unless our hospital trusts collect specific data on how many people have been diagnosed with secondary breast cancer, they cannot accurately plan services for those patients. I was shocked to learn that two thirds of hospital trusts in this country do not collect those data. Sadly, my hospital trust—the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust—is one of those trusts. I urge my hospital trust and others across the country to start to collect those data, so that the services provided to women with secondary breast cancer can be planned properly and effectively.

The Minister will want to tell the House about the success of the cancer drugs fund. We know that 95,000 people have received the life-extending drugs they need through the fund. However, we must always strive to look at new ways of making sure that patients have access to innovative new medicines, diagnostics and medical technologies, as is happening through the accelerated access review plans.

I also welcome the Government’s commitment to making sure that the prices charged to the NHS are fair and not inflated. I cannot be the only Member who was shocked and pretty disgusted by some of the headlines that have appeared in newspapers recently about the conduct of some companies in massively inflating the price of patent drugs. I am pleased that that loophole will be closed by the Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill, which is currently in the other place. I urge the Secretary of State to ensure, as I know he is doing, that the Competition and Markets Authority keeps a close eye on the matter. Unfair practices should not conspire against our constituents, neighbours, friends and families when it comes to cancer treatment.

I know that my hon. Friend the Minister has listened carefully to the concerns raised in this informative and engaging debate. I hope that a solution is reached quickly between NICE and Roche if the problem is that the price charged for the drug is simply too high. I join other Members in wishing every single woman in this country who is battling first stage or secondary cancer the very best of luck. I hope those women feel that the debate has done them proud.

NHS and Social Care Funding

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is right. What we did not hear from the Labour party is that, in 2010, we inherited a £70 billion PFI overhang, which is making it incredibly difficult for hospitals to recruit enough staff, because they are having to pay so much money to financiers.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

An example of how we are spending money practically on the ground to make sure patients get a better deal is in Lincolnshire, where, because there is a shortage of GPs, the local health authority is offering £20,000 as a golden hello to new GPs. Is that not the way to manage resources, to attract the best medical talent into our areas and to help ensure that patients get the best care?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I talked about these issues when I visited her in her constituency. The truth is that, to solve this problem, we are going to have to have a dramatic increase in the number of people working in general practice, which is why we are funding the second biggest increase in the number of GPs in the NHS’s history.

It is a great shame that the Leader of the Opposition is not here, because this is the bit that I wanted to address to him—his proposal to put extra funding into the NHS by scrapping the corporation tax cuts. That reveals, I am afraid, a fundamental misunderstanding of how we fund the NHS. Corporation taxes are being cut so that we can boost jobs, strengthen the economy and fund the NHS. The reason we have been able to protect and increase funding in the NHS in the last six years, when the Labour party was not willing to do so, is precisely that we have created 2 million jobs and given this country the fastest growing economy in the G7, and that is even more important post-Brexit. To risk that growth, which is what the Labour party’s proposal would do, would not just risk funding for the NHS, but be dangerous for the economy and mortally dangerous for the NHS.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitford]

I would be delighted to agree with that, but NHS England did not make it over 90% at any point in 2016, so perhaps the right hon. Gentleman might want to check the NHS England figures before having a punt at me.

NHS England is performing 8% to 10% lower than NHS Scotland, which has been the top performing of the nations for the past 19 months. We have not done that by magic. We face exactly the same ageing population, exactly the same increased demand and complexity, and exactly the same—indeed, often worse—shortages of doctors as NHS England does, because of our rurality. We are not using a different measure—we use exactly the same measure—but the data show that there is a significant difference, and it is being maintained.

The Secretary of State is right: winter is always challenging. Summer is often busier for attendances at A&E, because the kids are on the trampolines and people go out and do silly things, but hospitals are under pressure in winter because of the nature of admissions—the people who go to A&E are sicker, older and more complicated. However, we have not seen any summer respite in NHS England. The worst performance in the summer was 80.8%; the best was 86.4%. NHS England is under pressure in the summer, and when winter is added on top of that, it is no wonder that we are talking about the situations that doctors, nurses, patients and relatives are describing to us.

My first health debate after my maiden speech in this House was an Opposition day debate on the four-hour target. At the time, I commented, and still maintain, that this target is not a stick for each party to hit each other over the head with, but it is a thermometer to take the temperature of the acute service, and it does that really well, because it measures not just people coming in through the front door but how they are moving through the hospital and out the other end. At the moment, the system is completely overheated. The comments about this not being anything unusual but just a normal winter, and everyone whingeing, show that the Government are not recognising the problem. The first step to dealing with any problem is to recognise it, because then we can look at how we want to tackle it.

[Victoria Atkins]

I remind the hon. Lady of the point the Prime Minister made in Prime Minister’s questions, which is that on the Tuesday after Christmas, A&E received the highest number of visitors it has ever received in its history. Does that not show the challenges facing the NHS both nationally and locally? These are extraordinary figures, and the Secretary of State is very much doing his best to help the NHS, with the professionals, to deal with them.

[Dr Whitford]

I totally accept that the NHS has been under inordinate pressure with, absolutely, the busiest day in its history, but given an ageing population that has been discussed for years, we should have been able to see this coming.

If, in the next couple of months, we get a massive flu epidemic, we are going to see things keel over. We have already had debates in this Chamber about STPs taking more beds away. I totally agree with the Secretary of State that part of the issue is that patients could be seen somewhere else. However, it is not a matter of changing the four-hour target and saying to someone who turns up, “You’re not going to count;” it is simply a matter of providing better alternatives. If we provide better alternatives, people will go to them. The House has discussed community pharmacy use, and it has been recognised that the minor ailments services we have in Scotland can deal with 5% to 10% of those patients. We have co-located out-of-hours GP units beside our A&Es, so someone is very easily sent along the corridor or into the next-door building if they need a GP and not A&E. We do need to educate the public, but the public will use an alternative service if it is there. If it is not, they know that if they turn up at A&E and just keep sitting there, eventually someone will see them, and we should not blame them for that.

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[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

After four years of having responsibility for the national health service, the Secretary of State for Health has declared:

“We need to have an honest discussion with the public about the purpose of A&E departments”.

We, who have seen his work from this House, and those who have felt the effects of his work on the frontline know exactly what he means:—“Let me tell you why everyone is to blame except for me.”

Earlier this week, the Secretary of State told the UK that nearly one in three visits to accident and emergency do not need to be made. That was his reasoning for weakening the target that every patient should be seen within four hours. That target applies only to people whose condition is serious and urgent enough, so I find staggering the sheer hubris of those comments, the avoidance of accountability in that decision and the danger inherent in both. As an A&E specialist doctor, I have treated patients who arrive in A&E with what seem like minor injuries or illnesses but develop into much more serious and life-threatening issues. The fact that the Secretary of State, both in his words and in that decision, is telling the people of the UK that they should self-diagnose before heading to A&E could have disastrous consequences, for which he would be responsible.

What if, because of the Secretary of State’s words, patients decided to stay at home after a serious bang on the head that turns out to be a life-threatening bleed to the brain? What about a potentially deteriorating case of pneumonia that is not serious enough to warrant being in A&E but eventually results in somebody becoming severely septic and dying?

As a citizen of this country and a patient of the NHS, I find the Secretary of State’s refusal to accept responsibility for the state of A&E departments deplorable. Instead, he blames patients for visits that “do not need to be made”. However, patients do not go to A&E for fun. They go because they are ill and cannot get a doctor’s appointment for two weeks. We have heard today from Members on both sides of the House who have taken their own young children to A&E. Did they do so for fun, or because they felt there was a need for their child to be treated? People go to A&E because their GP does not have resources at their practice, in some cases for something as simple as handing out crutches. They go to A&E because there is something wrong and they are worried sick and simply desperate to speak to somebody professional about their health.

[Victoria Atkins]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

No, I will not. [Interruption.]

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[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan). I have not heard her speak before, and I look forward to hearing many more speeches from her in the future, but I completely disagree with her implication that we are letting ourselves, the House and our constituents down by standing up and championing health services in our constituencies. It is an essential part of our work and the reason many of us sought election to this place, particularly those such as my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), who has such relevant experience of this subject and made a tremendous speech. I listened with great interest to what she had to say, and I think that Ministers ought to be doing the same.

We have had a lot of debate about whether the NHS is in crisis and whether it is a humanitarian crisis, an ordinary crisis or a winter crisis. I looked the word up and found that a crisis is “a period of intense difficulty or danger”, which strikes me as a good description of where the NHS is today. Intense difficulty is what I am seeing in my local hospital, and it is what my constituents are coming to tell me about.

I have been an MP for nearly seven years, and I keep track of the topics people come to talk to me about in my local surgeries. I am sure many of us do that; it is not hard to do. Someone comes to see me every week either about an experience at the hospital or, more often still, because of an experience in adult social care. That is not something that has occurred suddenly over the last few weeks; it has been growing over time. I would say that the crisis we are witnessing today has been long predicted and is something that we have all felt happening over time.

The Government have chosen—they made a decision—not to act to prevent the worsening of the crisis, which is why there is such anger on the Opposition Benches. When a quarter of patients wait longer than four hours in A&E, that is a crisis. I do not really care whether they are there with an minor ailment or a more serious one, because four hours is too long to wait. The fact that people are there with minor ailments is a very clear demonstration of the problems that exist elsewhere in the system.

When people cannot get a GP appointment they sometimes phone 111, and, more often than not, they will be directed to A&E. I think we need a selection of services available at a central point, whereby if people need a GP, they can see a GP; if they need a practice nurse, they can see a practice nurse; and if they need to be admitted, they can be admitted.

[Victoria Atkins]

In an effort to reassure her colleagues, I want to ask a genuine question—one that I would have asked the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan). What impact does the hon. Lady believe the 2004 GP contract has had on out-of-hours care? This seems to be the nub of many of the issues discussed this afternoon.

[Jenny Chapman]

The GP contract was changed in 2004, but I did not notice the sort of issues that we face today until far more recently. I am not a scientist or a doctor, but I understand cause and effect, and it does not ring true to say that something that happened six years prior to the change in government can be blamed for something that is happening six years after the change in government. I am not saying that there were no consequences, but I believe that ample opportunity has been provided to put measures in place that would have prevented us from being where we are now.

The hon. Lady’s intervention leads me nicely to my next point, which is about the Secretary of State. I had not intended to speak today, but I was so frustrated listening to him on the “Today” programme, trying to blame anybody but himself, that I decided to do so. He has a pattern. The first thing he does is blame the Labour Government, who were in government until 2010. His party has been in government since then, but he will blame Labour for anything he possibly can. He will find something that happened, perhaps at a particular trust and say that that is why something has gone wrong today. If that does not work and cannot be evidenced, he will say, “Well, that particular trust is a basket case. It is the trust’s fault or the fault of the local managers and local clinicians who have not organised themselves right.”

If that does not work, he will then blame the public, and tell them that they are going to the wrong place, accessing their care in a way that he does not think they should. He might call them “frequent flyers” or point to a problem that is the public’s fault. He will say, “They do not look after themselves properly; it is clearly their fault.” If that does not work, he will blame the local council, and I think that is the worst thing that I have heard him do—blame the local authority.

My local authority has prioritised adult social care, but the pressures are not going away. They are going to get worse and more difficult to manage—and it is running out of things to cut. It is closing our central library in Darlington and making other hideous cuts, and I do not know where the next round will come from.

Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will develop that point in his own speech. Of course, the thalidomide compensation was based on a clear line of accountability as the company admitted responsibility. The situation has not been quite the same in this case, for reasons that we all know, but perhaps I can come on to financial matters in a second. I will now move on from the speech made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North, the majority of which I supported wholeheartedly.

It is a matter of some despair that we are here again. I remember those friends who came to the public meetings in the House of Commons a couple of years ago saying they were actually sick of coming here as they had done so so often over the years. I would be grateful if the Minister could relay to the Government—I have not been able to get this point across—that this drip, drip approach over the years is just not working. The Government can find money at various times for some big affairs. If there is a natural disaster, a dramatic crisis or a banking collapse, vast sums suddenly appear. We have not been able to give this issue the same priority, but it cries out for it. That we are here again is proof that these concerns are not going away and cannot be dealt with drip by drip. Somebody has still not grasped the fact that, for the many reasons that I know colleagues will raise, a settlement is of the highest importance.

I will not rehearse the history, because colleagues indulged me when I raised it in a Back-Bench debate a couple of years ago, so I will not go into it at such great length again. Neither will I cite the accounts of individuals who have come to us because, frankly, I find it too difficult to read them into the record. I have done that before, but I am not able to do so again. Instead, I want to make a couple of personal points and three comments about where we might go from here.

I campaigned on this issue for many years—in government and in opposition; and when I was a Minister and not a Minister. I was pleased that the hon. Lady mentioned David Cameron, because his response to my contribution at Prime Minister’s questions in October 2013 began the current chain of events and continued the progress made over many years. I was grateful that he met me, a constituent and a dear friend of ours. He seemed to understand where we were going, and more money has come into the scheme, which I appreciate.

In June 2015, I was re-invited by the then Prime Minister to join the Government in the Department of Health, at which point I went quiet on campaigning as far as the public were concerned. I know that some people misinterpreted that. My position in the Department of Health was not conditional on the fact that I had been involved with contaminated blood, and neither was my positon in the Foreign Office or my decision to leave the Department of Health of my own accord earlier this year. However, the ministerial convention is clear: Ministers say only what the Government’s position is. We cannot have two colleagues firing away on the same issues, so I did indeed go quiet publicly for a period. Inside the Department, I made my representations to the then responsible Minister, and I want to put on record my appreciation for what my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) sought to do with the scheme. She worked extremely hard, saw a lot of people and tried to do her best.

I think that I made a mistake when the original proposals that the current scheme is based on came forward in January this year. I sat beside my hon. Friend on the Front Bench and while I understood the general thrust, I had not fully grasped the detail, which became clear only in the consultation. My mistake was to think at that time that we had solved the problem—we clearly had not. I got that wrong, but I hope that I have tried to contribute to the debate since, both inside and now outside the Department, as we try to deal with the present proposals. As the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North said, they move us on from where we were, but we are not yet there, so perhaps I could say a couple of things about where I think we might go.

First, we got the issue of discretionary payments wrong in the original proposals. A number of discretionary payments have effectively become fixed and people have become dependent on them. That should have been known to the Department, but clearly it was not known in enough detail, which has accordingly led to uncertainty and to people feeling that they might not be financially compensated to the extent that they are at present. That cannot be the case, and I am certainly not prepared to support anything that will make my constituents worse off than they are at present. That was not the intention, so we must make sure that those discretionary payments are included in the new scheme.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for the work that they have done. One of my constituents is co-infected with many conditions as a result of receiving contaminated blood. It has affected literally every part of his body and his life. He worries that he may lose up to £6,000 in discretionary payments and that the cost of his many treatments may count against him in the settlement. We know that our hon. Friend the Minister is listening carefully, so will my right hon. Friend join me in urging her to look carefully at those concerns so that the Government can do the right thing?

Baby Loss

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Antoinette Sandbach]

October 15 is the international Wave of Light day, on which parents across the world will light candles in memory of their children. I believe that a lighthouse in Scotland will be lit up for the first time in many years in memory of lost children. I agree that if we talk about the issues and really drill down into the causes, we can start to change the figures in the UK. Key to that is raising the issues here in this place.

Our final ask to the Secretary of State for Health and the Minister is for a bereavement care pathway for parents. That needs to involve an integrated support service, including counselling for parents following the death of a child. I am grateful that, as a result of the work of the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss and information obtained through freedom of information requests, the Department of Health has commissioned Sands—the stillbirth and neonatal death charity—to start developing such a pathway. It is clear that it will require clinical commissioning groups, GPs, local NHS trusts and healthcare professionals to recognise the need for these services and to support such a pathway, working together with the third sector.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I join other Members in thanking my hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) for bringing this issue to the Chamber today. A mother and father living in my constituency had the nightmare of their baby boy passing away unexpectedly at home. The baby boy was rushed to the nearest hospital, which happened to be in a different region. The fact that the death was registered in a different region from the one in which my constituents live has caused them incredible problems, not least in accessing counselling and therapy. Does my hon. Friend agree that geographical and regional boundaries must not prevent grieving parents from getting the help that they need and deserve?

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I most certainly do. That is exactly the kind of bureaucratic barrier that needs to be broken down. My hon. Friend’s example powerfully demonstrates the need to have a proper bereavement care pathway in place in every region. It should not matter where someone lives; everyone who needs such support should be able to access it.

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[Will Quince]

The hon. Gentleman raises an incredibly good point. In the run-up to birth, people can go to groups such as NCT and prenatal classes, so I totally agree. We have made friends who have gone through similar experiences. You feel that you can talk openly with them, because they have gone through very similar experiences and are feeling the same things as you. That is very powerful. There may be a role that charities and the NHS can play in putting parents—where they feel able—in touch with other parents who may want to talk about their experience.

I shall speak briefly about Government targets. I know that the Government sometimes get a hard time on the NHS, but they have accepted the premise of our argument. I remember first meeting my right hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich as Minister responsible for care quality—it was like pushing at an open door. We now have firm commitments to a reduction of 20% by the end of this Parliament and 50% by 2030. It is our job as an all-party parliamentary group to hold the Government’s feet to the fire and to make sure that they are working towards those targets and that we start to see results.

I could not let this debate go by without talking about some of the issues that charities have raised with me. I shall touch on prevention and then talk about bereavement. Research in this area is vital. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury said, around 50%—in fact, the figure is 46%—of stillbirths and 5% of neonatal deaths are unexplained. We need to look, for example, at ethnicity and ask why south Asian women are 60% more likely to have a stillbirth, and why black women are twice as likely to do so. Why is there a geographical disparity across the UK? I know that part of the answer is social inequality, but why is the figure 4.9% in some parts of the UK and 7.1% in others? That is around a 25% variation. It is not acceptable and we need to understand why it exists.

We need to look at multiple pregnancies, as the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) mentioned from the Scottish National party Front Bench, and at lower income families. We need to study our European counterparts and see why they are getting it so right and whether we can implement similar measures in the UK.

Some right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned public health and they are right to do so. Maternal age, nutrition and diet, drugs, alcohol and smoking are all relevant. We could achieve a 7% reduction if no woman smoked during pregnancy. That is a huge target to achieve and we could do a lot of work on smoking cessation, especially during pregnancy. Studies show that we could achieve a 12% reduction if no mothers were overweight or obese.

There is a huge piece of work that we could do on empowering women and mothers-to-be. Initiatives such as Count the Kicks are important. Nobody knows their body as well as a mother. If she feels that there is something wrong, there is a good chance that something is wrong. When she picks up the phone to the hospital or to her GP and her concern is dismissed with the words, “Don’t worry, it’s not important,” she needs to get it checked out. If there is nothing to worry about, great, but on the occasions when we do not get a concern checked out and then something terrible happens, we have to hold ourselves responsible.

There are various initiatives to empower women. Teddy’s Wish is currently sponsoring fantastic folders—as anybody who has had a baby will know, mothers-to-be get purple maternity notes which they carry around religiously just in case the baby comes early. The wonderful plastic folders that the maternity notes go in inform mothers—and fathers—what to look out for, what are the signs if something is not right, when to pick up the phone, when to go and see their GP and when to go to the hospital. Such innovation is exactly what is needed.

Investigation and reporting are important so that we learn the lessons of every stillbirth and neonatal death. Covering things up and dismissing them with comments such as, “That’s unexplained. These things happen. I’m terribly sorry,” are unacceptable. We have to learn from every case. I am pleased that the Government have put a significant amount of money into setting up a system of reporting to enable us to investigate and learn from every stillbirth and neonatal death.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) rightly mentioned post-mortems. So many parents are not offered a post-mortem. One might wonder what parent would want that opportunity, but parents who lose children often want to know why. They want to understand how and why it happened and how they can make sure that it does not happen again. Offered the opportunity, many parents opt for a post-mortem because they know that that research can help others, but clinicians may not be asking the question—often with good intentions, because it is not an easy question to ask. We must ask the question if we are to get post-mortem rates up, which will feed into the research that will allow us to cut our stillbirth rate.

An hon. Member—I apologise, I cannot remember who it was—mentioned late-stage pregnancy scanning. In this country we do not scan past 20 weeks. We scan at 12 weeks and we scan routinely at 20 weeks, but there is no routine scanning past that. I find it bizarre that the abnormality scan takes place halfway through the pregnancy, but after that the mother-to-be is not seen again for a scan until she arrives at the hospital when she is in labour. Other countries across the world and particularly our counterparts in Europe do scans at 36 weeks or Doppler scans. There are huge improvements that we could make in that area.

I want to clarify one point in relation to prevention. The NHS is brilliant, and where we get it right in this country, we really get it right. The problem is the inconsistency across the NHS. I know that the Secretary of State and the Minister of State will agree when I say that we have some of the best care in the world, but it is important that that is replicated in every hospital and every maternity unit in the country, so that whatever hospital a woman goes into and whatever GP she sees, she will get the same level of care and consistent advice.

Even if we manage to achieve our target, even if we match our European counterparts and reduce our stillbirth and neonatal death rates by 50%, that will still mean between 1,500 and 2,500 parents going through that personal tragedy every year. That is why it is important that the APPG puts an equal emphasis on bereavement. I have talked about consistency of care across the NHS, and there should also be consistency of bereavement pathway and bereavement care across the NHS. It is important that we consider aspects such as training for staff. I know that Ministers have put huge amounts of funding into training as part of the plan to achieve a significant reduction in the stillbirth rate.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful, as I said, to my hon. Friend for his part in securing this debate. I mentioned my constituents who had the nightmare of losing their baby boy. I asked the mother to write to me to set out precisely what had happened. Perhaps one of the most harrowing parts of an already harrowing story was when she told me that at the hospital she and her husband were not allowed to stay with the little boy for long. They were pressured to leave and when she was leaving the baby boy, she wanted to go back to say her last goodbye. She was refused. She collapsed to the floor and the officials around her said that if she did not get up, she would have to leave in a wheelchair or a stretcher, as it was time to go. Does my hon. Friend agree that kindness costs nothing, and that there is a duty on everyone, whether in the NHS or in the police, to make sure that when they are dealing with parents in such a situation, kindness is very much part of the way that they behave?

[Will Quince]

Yes, and my hon. Friend raises a good point. I only wish that the disgraceful behaviour and story that she has just related was unique, but sadly it is not. Reports from across the country and personal testimonies that I have read, sadly, echo such experiences. That is exactly what we need to address, and it is why training in this area is so important. Midwives and clinicians should be trained to deal with bereavement, including what language to use and what not to say. I will not repeat some of the things that I have heard said to parents who are grieving.

In our case, a stillbirth did not come as a huge shock, but let us not forget that many parents have no idea that such an experience, of stillbirth or neonatal death, is coming. It is one of the most emotionally sensitive periods of their lives and they are at their most fragile. My hon. Friend is right: it costs nothing to act with kindness, empathy and compassion. I would like to think that we can reach a point where those themes run through every maternity unit in the country. I know that that is the case in the vast majority of maternity units, but where we have instances such as my hon. Friend describes, they have to be ironed out.

I know that I am pushing your patience with regard to time, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I think that the bereavement point is so important. We must have bereavement suites and bereavement-trained midwives in every hospital in the country, and we need gynaecology-trained counsellors in every maternity unit. We also need ongoing mental health support, because the time a bereaved parent leaves the hospital is the not the end of their grief; for many it is just the start. Indeed, future pregnancies can be the most traumatic periods, because from the day they find out they are pregnant to the day they have a crying baby in their arms, they are thinking, “Is this going to happen again?” What mental health support is available? In some parts of the country it is fantastic, but in others it simply is not.

I want to make two final points. One relates to relationship support. We know that between 80% and 90% of relationships break down after the loss of a child, and that has a huge social cost. That is why mental health support is so important. I also think—this is one of the reasons I co-chair the APPG—that the voice of fathers must be heard. Fathers feel that they have to act as a rock, but in many cases we were there too. In my view, there is no worse experience than seeing your wife give birth to a lifeless baby. It is something that never leaves you. Every single day I think about my son. I think about what he would have been like yesterday, on what would have been his second birthday. I imagine a small boy running around our house, causing havoc and winding up his sisters. It is not to be, but every single day we live with that grief. Fathers need support too, as indeed do the wider family.

I want to end on a positive note. This is a hugely exciting time for us, because the opportunity for change is enormous. The APPG has made enormous progress since publishing our vision document, and I encourage those Members who have not yet seen it to find a copy—it is available online and in paper copy. What we have achieved since February, working with magnificent charities across the country, and with individuals feeding in their personal experiences, has been absolutely incredible. This is just the beginning of the journey, because we have just set out our aspirations and our vision of what we want to achieve. I know that we are pushing at an open door, because the Government want to achieve these targets too.

I want to send one final message to every parent who is bereaved up and down this country: we care; we are going to keep talking about it; and we are not going to stop talking about it until we reduce the stillbirth rate and, most importantly, we have the best quality bereavement care in the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call next the medal-wearing member of the team which won the parliamentary pancake race this morning, against the peers and against the press.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

7. What progress the Government has made on integrating and improving care provided outside of hospitals.

[Amanda Solloway (Derby North) (Con)]

16. What progress the Government has made on integrating and improving care provided outside of hospitals.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Life Sciences (George Freeman)]

I join you, Mr Speaker, in offering the Government’s congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) on her extraordinary success.

Tackling the long neglected integration of health and social care is a major priority for this Government. It is crucial to avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions, providing better care outcomes for the elderly and easing the pressure on our health economy from an ageing population. That is why we have set up the better care fund, providing funding of £3.9 billion—£5.3 billion if we include local funding; why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has announced the social care precept, which will raise £2 billion; and why we have fully funded the NHS five year forward view integrated care pioneers and new models of care in 95 sites. That is more than Labour promised or ever did in its term of office.

[Victoria Atkins]

Thank you for calling me, Mr. Speaker. I must mention the team ably led by the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) and of course the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes).

In areas with a high proportion of older residents, home aids and adaptations can help people live longer in their homes, which benefits them and can also help to ease pressure on the NHS and social care services. What steps are the Government taking to boost such support?

[George Freeman]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The disabled facilities grant is our primary mechanism for supporting the most vulnerable patients. It is currently £222 million, and I am delighted my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has announced it will increase to £500 million by 2019-20. That will fund 85,000 adaptations and help to prevent 8,500 unnecessary hospital admissions.

William Mead: 111 Helpline

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

No one could have done more than this Government to tackle the issue of avoidable deaths across the NHS. It is much harder to identify when a death was avoidable when it happens outside hospital. As part of our work on reducing the number of avoidable deaths in the wake of what happened at Mid Staffs, we are looking at how we could improve primary care generally. Our first priority is to reduce the number of avoidable deaths in hospital and to learn from reports such as this one when they point to improvements that need to be made in the 111 service.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I join in the condolences that have been expressed in the House. By way of tribute to Mr and Mrs Mead’s campaign to raise awareness of sepsis and its symptoms, I wonder whether each and every parent can take a small but practical step today and google the symptoms of sepsis so that we know when things are not right with our children and are better armed to tackle doctors when we are not getting the answer that we need. I did exactly that this morning after hearing Mrs Mead’s very moving interview on the radio.

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. If we are going to deal with the 1,000 tragic sepsis deaths among children every year, it needs a sustained effort from all of us, not just the NHS. I will take away the action of looking at what Public Health England is doing to raise public awareness. The Minister for Public Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), will look at what health visitors can do to boost awareness of sepsis, but in the end we all have a responsibility to understand the symptoms better.