Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Anna Firth

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

5. What steps she is taking to ensure adequate funding for hospital repairs.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Victoria Atkins)]

May I wish you a happy St. George’s day, Mr Speaker? I also wish the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) a speedy recovery; I hope to see her across the Dispatch Box soon.

The Government have invested significant sums to maintain and modernise NHS buildings, including £4.2 billion for integrated care boards this financial year. This is on top of the expected £20 billion for the new hospital programme. We have invested a further £1.7 billion for over 70 hospital upgrades across England, including in mid and south Essex.

[Anna Firth]

I thank the Secretary of State very much for the Government’s commitment to delivering the £110 million in capital funding for south Essex hospitals and for her recent visit to Southend hospital, where she saw in our emergency village how much £8 million can do in the hands of Southend hospital’s inspirational NHS staff. However, our aged buildings do also need urgent maintenance, so what can she also do to deliver the £38 million in maintenance funding also needed for Southend hospital?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend, and also wish her the very best of luck, as she is due to abseil down the hospital next month for its radiotherapy appeal. I very much hope she lands safely and does not trouble Southend hospital. I was delighted to visit the hospital at her invitation earlier this month, and I was very much impressed by the immediate improvements that the £8 million funding has meant in the Dowsett ward and for discharge and treatment times through accident and emergency. This is part of our plan, both through the urgent and emergency care plan and through our recovery plan for electives and the new hospital programme, to rebuild hospitals and provide that investment so that clinicians can use it to treat their local patients.

Cass Review

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Anna Firth

Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to make it clear again that this report is about gathering the evidence to help support our children and young people to the best care they can have. For a very small number that may well be a medical pathway, but for the overwhelming majority we know from Dr Cass’s report that there may be other ways in which they can be best supported and looked after. I do not want anyone to walk away from this debate thinking that this is somehow a report about those adults who have made that decision of their own free will and are living their lives as freely as we all want them to—it is not. It is about the healthcare and emotional care and support that we give to young people and their families, and the professional confidence we give to clinicians to ensure that we get to the right place for each and every individual child.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s powerful statement and the Cass report. However, we have to acknowledge that the report would not have been commissioned without this Government, with the support of some other parties. So many Opposition Members just stayed silent and thought the report was pretty much a waste of time, and to see the lack of any appreciation of that today is shocking and shameful.

On the timetable to enact the wider findings of the Cass report, I am grateful for what the Secretary of State said about meeting the GMC over the weekend, but there is work to be done. Secondly and really concerningly, what steps are—

[Anna Firth]

What are we going to do to provide emotional and psychological support for those who have already undergone this treatment with irrevocable consequences?

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend’s observations about Members from other parts of the Chamber and their response to this are well made, frankly. [Interruption.] Gosh, I am being told they are not true. Crikey, Opposition Members may have just opened up a Pandora’s box. On my hon. Friend’s point about supporting people who have gone through the process and are trying to detransition, she is absolutely right that they need particular care. I am actively looking into what NHS England needs to provide to look after the very complex needs that such people have.

NHS Dentistry: Recovery and Reform

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Anna Firth

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

As I have said, dentists are independent contractors but we want to encourage them back into the NHS if they have left it, and we believe that the new patient premium and the work on the UDA are just two of the levers that we can deploy to achieve that. We also have a longer-term vision for our NHS, and through the long-term workforce plan we will be training 40% more dentists by 2031. That is real ambition and a plan for the long-term future of our country.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I completely welcome this plan, and particularly my right hon. Friend’s focus on underserved areas and coastal communities. This is something I have raised before in the Chamber. Southend is a coastal city with over 180,000 residents but only three dentists currently accepting NHS patients, so we qualify on both counts. Please could she confirm for Southend and Leigh residents that we will also get either a van or better dental care, preferably within months, not years?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am delighted to tell my hon. Friend that those dental surgeries already operating under NHS contracts will have the benefit of new patient premiums and the increased rate of UDA. On the dental van, she will appreciate that we are having to apply strict criteria to this, but I am delighted to see how enthusiastic she is about this recovery plan.

NHS Winter Update

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Anna Firth

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I hope the hon. Gentleman is injecting the same anguish into the conversations that I imagine he is having with his local junior doctors, asking them to come back to work. Of course, having junior doctors not working in hospitals across the NHS has an impact—of course it does; they are a vital part of our NHS. The attention of NHS leaders, medical directors and clinicians over past weeks has had to be diverted towards covering the strike action rather than making the sorts of improvements and progress we all want to see across urgent and emergency care, in line with our recovery plan.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

Happy new year, Mr Deputy Speaker. The majority of NHS staff at Southend Hospital are working incredibly hard. Despite winter pressures and industrial action, they have used winter money to open a new ward, adding extra bed spaces. However, the chief executive has written to tell me he is extremely concerned that approaching 40,000 out-patient and in-patient appointments across the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust have been postponed since this industrial action started. This afternoon, we learned from the Secretary of State that doctors in training have received above inflation average pay rises of 9%, so is it not time that they simply got back to work, delivering the care my constituents deserve and pay for?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend. We know the figures for previous strike actions, but sadly we will hear the true extent and impact of the strike action over the last six days later this week, and I suspect we will have even more missed and cancelled appointments to add to the list she rightly sets out.

On the point about pay, the basic pay of a foundation year one doctor has risen by 10.3%. Once one takes into account factors such as overtime and unsocial hours payments, that means the average salary is £40,800, a figure that I hope begins to reflect the importance we put on doctors and their role in the NHS. As doctors progress with their careers, there is a good package of development and progress, culminating in the pay settlement, currently out to ballot with the BMA, that I hope consultants, who are at the end of their career and do so much to help train younger doctors, will vote for. There is much work to be done, but progress has already been made on pay. That is why the decision by the BMA junior doctors committee to call strikes of such length at this time of year was so disappointing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Anna Firth

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I will not comment on evidence from the covid inquiry, given that it is an independent inquiry. However, on the general principle of encouraging people back into work, we have the plans set out by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Chancellor at the autumn statement. We want to encourage people back into work and to support them when they fall ill and need help from the state.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

Last year, I asked the Government to show me the money with respect to £118 million of long-awaited capital funding for south Essex hospitals. With £8 million now delivered and the other £110 million now confirmed to be on its way, will the Secretary of State please come with me to Southend Hospital and see how that vital money will transform care in Southend and Leigh-on-Sea?

[Victoria Atkins]

I will be delighted to visit that hospital with my hon. Friend—I suspect that I will be visiting a lot of hospitals.