Health and Social Care — House of Commons, 2015-06-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Anne Margaret Main (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) on her maiden speech. It was a very thought-provoking speech and one thing I will take from it was her passionate wishes for her young son, who she said survived at 23 weeks’ gestation. I wish her well in that and some of my right hon. and hon. Friends and some Opposition Members who tried in the last Parliament to revisit the gestational age for abortion may well wish to remind her of that if she is present for any such debate. I would like that subject to be revisited at some point in the future, as I know would other colleagues There is some unfinished business from the last Parliament and I want to touch on some of that as well as speak about the proposals on health and social care in Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech I was reminded quite forcefully by a constituent that we are still waiting to hear the outcome in respect of some of the rendition that may or may not have occurred on Diego Garcia. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the lease with America and it can now potentially be renewed. Colleagues in previous Parliaments have looked at this and asked about our role in this potential rendition of torture victims. This year, the first year of this Parliament, is an opportune moment to look at our renegotiation of the lease with America. I hope that we perhaps might take time to reflect on the Prime Minister’s commitment in 2010 to have some form of inquiry into whether or not the previous Labour Government dragged us through unfortunate circumstances whereby we were complicit potentially in torture and rendition Another topic that will come back to us is in this Parliament is the need to tackle bovine TB. In the last Parliament I was pleased to lead a debate on our ineffective tackling of bovine TB through our unfortunate slaughter of badgers. I know that this is not high up on everybody’s agenda, but it will be coming back because we will potentially be rolling out our TB strategy. I want to see TB controlled and I know that farmers have suffered greatly because of it but, now that the British Veterinary Association has said that our strategy to free-shoot badgers was totally flawed and inhumane, we have to come back with something better During the election period I spoke to quite a few people about Equitable Life. I hope that we can revisit that topic at some point given the grave injustices that were done to all those who were caught up in that saga. It was a scandal that they lost the pensions that they had banked on for their future I also want to pay tribute to a little girl I met during my campaign in St Albans. Her name is Bessie and she and her parents, Mike and Abby, were shocked to discover that she had a serious condition called neurofibromatosis. She went from being a little girl running around to a little girl in a wheelchair. Thankfully, following treatment, she regained some use of her limbs and is now making good progress, but she will always have to tackle the condition. I said that I would like to look into that topic if I was returned to this place That brings me to the health and social care aspect of the Queen’s Speech. A week after the general election I was shocked to read an article on the front page of my local newspaper in which a coroner was calling for a resolution in co-ordinating social care and NHS care. As we know, if one pot in the health and social care budget is raided, the other is somehow slightly better off. There is a real problem of people being kept in hospital beds and not receiving care packages. When they do receive a care package, the hospital cannot wait to get rid of them. There is no linking up in the system The coroner was really unhappy about this, and I want to use some of his words to describe the situation. He criticised what he called the bureaucratic hurdles that result from the lack of joined-up thinking. He said that the Government needed to tackle this, as it was difficult to know who to contact for reports. When someone dies, it is difficult to know whether that has been the result of poor healthcare or poor social care. We all have what are considered to be bed-blockers. At the inquest, the coroner asked Ms Reynolds, who was asked to explain what had happened, whether there were bed-blockers. She said that some patients "may not be quite ready to go home, because there is a delay in their social care package" This is something that we see over and over again We must stop these delays in social care packages. It is too easy for patients to languish in hospital beds while the local authority drags its feet, for whatever reason. I accept that there are lots of reasons, but these care packages are not being put in place quickly enough. In St Albans, which is covered by the West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, up to 48% of all acute beds at any one time have been occupied by patients who could have been dealt with in an alternative way. Some patients could have been discharged to their own homes or perhaps to a less acute bed service. We need to tackle this problem, and I welcome the fact that it is a priority for the Government We also need to have a big think about how we deliver care, and there is a review taking place in my hospital trust at the moment. I make no secret of the fact that I am arguing for an urgent care centre in St Albans. Unfortunately, we lost our accident and emergency department under the Labour Government, but that is history and there is no point in going over it again now. We must look forward to the future, and I would like an urgent care centre to take the pressure off the Watford A&E. People who do not know what to do in a stressful situation will go to A&E rather than risk not being seen locally. I will be fighting to those acute services. I also want us to get people out of their hospital beds and into their own homes, with a care package I am sorry to have to end on a sour note, but Labour must also be held accountable. Labour’s spokesman threw a lot of bricks in his opening speech, but when my mother died in Wales, she was told that she would not receive a care package for six weeks. She died before she got one. So let us not pretend that this is something that only we in England have to deal with. It is also happening on Labour’s watch in Wales. Having been a carer myself, I know how important it is to get that support in place. When carers are supported, it takes a burden off the NHS. I welcome the announcement in the Queen’s Speech that this Government have made this matter a priority. Let us have some co-operation from the Opposition to help us to deliver this, so that all those carers out there, many of whom are elderly, can know that they have the support of a Government who truly want to join up the services for the good of all.