Acquired Brain Injury — House of Commons, 2019-05-09
Topic: Health
John Henry Hayes (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. The hon. Member for Rhondda talked about the understanding that we need in the welfare system and the expertise that we need to acquire in dealing with the repercussions of a traumatic event. Often, misdiagnosis is part of that problem. Because of the characteristics of acquired brain injury that I described earlier—the changes in personality and the effect on cerebral function—misdiagnosis is all too easy. Part of our mission in bringing the all-party group’s report to the House’s attention, and doing so again in today’s debate, is to get all of Government, including the Ministry of Defence, working together to understand the breadth and scale of the problem. That kind of intergovernmental approach is essential to the recommendations of our report, and I shall say more about it in my concluding remarks Before I do that, I wish to say a little about the difference between the initial responses to acquired brain injury, whether acquired through a traumatic event such as a road traffic accident—indeed, many are acquired that way, which is why so many young men are affected—or through the kind of illness that the hon. Member for Rhondda spoke about, such as a brain tumour, meningitis or some other disease. By and large, the initial response is, as is so often the case in the NHS, routinely excellent. People are treated quickly and highly effectively. It is what happens afterwards that is more variable in its effectiveness. When people leave hospital, invariably having been treated extremely well by our superb NHS, whether their subsequent treatment is effective is a matter of some uncertainty. It can be, and often is; indeed I pay tribute to the good work of Headway—I am a patron of Headway Cambridgeshire and have been for many years—and the other organisations that play a part in supporting families, spreading understanding and sharing good practice, but it is to some degree a lottery. It is partly about where someone lives and how effective the local agencies are; it is partly about how well Government Departments and local government work together and how meaningfully they address some of the challenges that are the inevitable consequences of these kinds of injuries. The all-party group’s report deals with them and the hon. Member for Rhondda highlighted some of them. There are educational effects and effects in the workplace and in socialisation; perhaps there is even the risk of criminality as a result of the consequences of a brain injury. It is the business of neuro-rehabilitation, which we emphasise so strongly in the report, that lies at the heart of what we believe the Government need to do to improve the outcomes for the people and families concerned When I was a Minister, which I was for a long time but not for long enough, many people in the House tell me—it is not for me to say, of course—I found that perhaps the greatest challenge Ministers face is in dealing with matters that cut across Departments. It has become almost routine to talk about Departments working in silos, but it is certainly true that the character of the vertical structure of the way we run Government and organise ministerial responsibilities makes it quite difficult for Departments to interact, or sometimes even to interface. On this subject, perhaps as much as on any subject that I know of, it is critical that Departments do just that. We speak in our report of the Departments concerned, and my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) mentioned another, the Ministry of Defence. I urge the Government to continue to explore how we can take a cross-departmental approach. We have had strong support from the Cabinet Office, but I hope that the Minister will take that further forward.