Helen Morgan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Oct 2024 · Access to Primary Healthcare · Hansard source

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  No, I will make some progress. People do much better if they have access to continuity of care, but 8,000 more GPs are needed to deliver the rights that we laid out in our manifesto. We do not shy away from the fact that that is an ambitious objective, and we accept that it cannot be achieved through training and recruitment alone: we need to retain and incentivise our existing workforce. As I said earlier, seeing people in their communities avoids hospital admissions and saves money. Unfortunately, although the Conservatives promised us 6,000 more GPs in 2019, we ended up with 500 fewer. That is why people are so frustrated. According to the findings of research carried out by the House of Commons Library, GP funding has fallen by £350 million in real terms since 2019. As a result, not only are people struggling to gain access to basic care in their communities, but there is a postcode lottery when it comes to availability of that care. In the area where I live, which is covered by NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, the number of fully qualified GPs fell from 280 in 2016 to 242 in 2023, despite an increased and increasingly ageing population with a much higher level of demand, while 43% of patients are waiting more than 28 days for non-urgent appointments. The Darzi report showed that the number of people waiting for long periods for appointments is rising throughout the country: it is a national issue. We know that from our own doorstep conversations. Members might ask me, “Where are you going to get 8,000 more GPs from? That is a big number.” Apart from training new ones, we should value greatly our experienced ones. A recruitment and training programme is one idea, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) pointed out, using the dentists we have trained properly is extremely important, but we also need to focus on retention and incentivising our existing GPs, to ensure that we hold on to valuable experience and valuable patient continuity. Let me move on from GPs to local pharmacies. Pharmacy First was a great idea of the previous Government —I am willing to give them credit—but pharmacists are under huge strain. According to the Darzi report, some 1,200 have closed since 2017, and spending under the community contract has fallen. Tomorrow I am going to visit Green End pharmacy in Whitchurch, in my constituency, which wrote to me: “As an independent pharmacy, we’re unable to keep on absorbing costs with losses on dispensing.” The pharmacy is struggling because it is making losses on the drugs that it gives out on prescription. Given that it is a small, independent pharmacy, it does not have a massive shop from which to make profits to subside that work. In 2023, Community Pharmacy England warned of “systemic pharmacy funding cuts of at least 25% in real terms since 2015.” That has led to a postcode lottery of access, and to many pharmacies being unable to have a full-time pharmacist and relying on locums, which has led to a really poor and insecure level of service. That is impacting on people who just need to go and pick up their prescription and get on with their day.

• 16 Oct 2024 · Access to Primary Healthcare · Hansard source

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  Other opticians are available, but I did! The Liberal Democrat manifesto suggested solutions to these problems, and they have been well received, as I mentioned before. We have a record number of MPs, and that is because we put this issue front and centre of our election pledge. I urge the Government to reverse the catastrophic state that the NHS has been left in by the Conservatives, to take our ideas on board and to invest in primary care as soon as possible.

• 16 Oct 2024 · Access to Primary Healthcare · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. That is an important point and I apologise for not making it in my speech. Optometry is really important, and as somebody who spends their whole life looking for their other glasses, I can absolutely appreciate his point.

• 16 Oct 2024 · Access to Primary Healthcare · Hansard source

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  Flexibility of contracting is critical, and learning from best practice elsewhere in the country will help to address the problem. I want to highlight how silly it is that people cannot find an NHS dentist when they need one, because NHS dental funding is actually going unspent. In Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, the area I know about, £1 million was clawed back in 2022-23 because dentists were unable to spend the money allocated to them; they do not have enough staff to work the contracts with them. I met someone last year who had not had a day off work—we were in October by that point—and he had to hand back his contract. The Government have proposed golden handshakes, but I have heard on the ground that they do not work, certainly in Shropshire. We need a reformed contract, flexible commissioning, a proper statutory requirement for workforce planning, and the ability for dentists to use their funding to manage their own practices in a way that allows them to make a bit of money out of treating patients on the NHS. I also want to highlight the public health grant cuts by the Conservatives and how important it is to reverse them is. It is a complete false economy to cut programmes that help with oral health and prevent poor teeth and future dental problems, when we could spend the money up front so that it would cost far less in the future.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Patient Waiting Times · Hansard source

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  My constituent Mel Lycett has terminal cancer. After repeated visits to her GP, she was referred to a two-week urgent pathway in May. She was not diagnosed until the end of July, and she still has not started treatment. Every single target for her diagnosis and treatment was missed. That is not uncommon in Shropshire, and it is not uncommon in the rest of the country. Can the Secretary of State reassure me of what he is doing to deal with this terrible legacy left behind by the Conservative Government? How will he ensure that cancer patients are treated in a timely manner?

• 15 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  In England, 4.4 million children have not seen a dentist for at least a year. Meanwhile, in Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin integrated health board, £1 million of dental funding went unspent in 2022-23. The system is clearly broken. When can we expect the Secretary of State to fix it?

• 9 Oct 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q9. The A483 runs through my constituency from Llanymynech to Oswestry. It is one of the busiest and most dangerous roads in the constituency, and National Highways says the crossroads at Llynclys is the worst accident blackspot in the midlands. It has a proposal to improve the situation, but Treasury rules place a higher value on road speed than on the lives of North Shropshire’s residents. Will the Prime Minister look at flexing those rules to back National Highways and my residents, to give them the safe road they deserve?

• 9 Oct 2024 · Maternity Services: Gloucestershire · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) on securing this important debate. Maternity services affect every single one of us at least once in our lives, so it is important that we protect them to ensure that, for all of us, that moment—obviously, many of us experience it more than once—is a safe one. I will not mention all the hon. Members who have spoken, but I am pleased to see so many of my Liberal Democrat colleagues, who have all made excellent speeches and powerful points. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) for sharing her experience, and the hon. Members for Gloucester (Alex McIntyre) and for Stroud (Dr Opher) and my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) for sharing theirs. Obviously, the hon. Member for Stroud has his own medical expertise, which is very important. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) described his constituent’s shocking experience, which I think we were all upset to hear about. This is not the first debate we have had on maternity services—not even the first in this Parliament—and the reason for that is the shocking under-investment in those services. On 19 September, during recess, the Care Quality Commission issued a report, and its contents are hugely disappointing if not surprising. As has been mentioned, it spoke of the risk of normalising avoidable harm, which is an unacceptable situation to be in. Hon. Members might be aware that my interest in maternity care came about because I am from Shropshire—I represent North Shropshire—and my constituents Kayleigh and Colin Griffiths lost their daughter Pippa at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust. They fought tooth and nail alongside Rhiannon Davies and her husband Richard Stanton to bring about the Ockenden review into the scandal that unfolded at the trust. Since then we have had a report on East Kent, and there is a review going on in Nottingham. None of that is news to us, which is shocking. I sat on the all-party parliamentary group on birth trauma, which was brilliantly led by the former Member for Stafford, Theo Clarke, and on the baby loss APPG, and I am currently trying to reconstitute the maternity APPG. All those groups have found the same failings over and over again. The CQC report tells us what we already know: 40% of maternity services are rated as requiring improvement and 18% are rated inadequate. That means that less than half are rated as acceptable, which is not excusable, particularly given that we have had so many high-profile scandals and so many commitments—I believe they were made in good faith—from the Dispatch Box that these things will not happen again, but they are happening every single day. We know from all those reports that unsafe staffing is at the root of most of the problems and that it is pushing hard-working midwives, in particular, to the brink. They work their socks off to share in what should be the most joyful moment of each individual’s life. When I had my baby nearly 16 years ago in an emergency situation, the midwife, who had been with me all afternoon, stayed on at the end of her shift to make sure that I and my baby were okay. We received excellent care and were both fine in the end, thank goodness. However, we have all relied so much on the good will of those individuals that they are experiencing burnout at an alarming rate. I was canvassing in my constituency during the general election when a midwife came running across the road in her dressing gown and slippers to tell me that she was emigrating because she had had enough and that two other midwives she knew in the county were taking the same step because they had experienced burnout on such a shocking level. Any workforce plan needs to deal urgently with that problem. Staffing is one problem, but unsuitable buildings are another. In the shocking inquiry into the Lucy Letby case at the Countess of Chester hospital, which is slightly unrelated, I read that sewage was coming up into the hospital’s sinks. How can we control infection when there is literally raw sewage in the building? It is unacceptable. We need to ensure that this Budget invests not just in the GPs, healthcare workers and midwives we so urgently need, but in the fabric of our hospitals. We have repeatedly heard that there is a failure to learn when things go wrong and that hospitals focus too much on protecting their reputation rather than on learning from terrible mistakes that might have happened—and that will inevitably happen on occasion, even with the best staff in the world, because sometimes things go wrong. Hospitals must learn from those mistakes. Finally, there is a failure among hospitals to have an open culture, so staff who have concerns are unable to raise them. The duty of candour law, to which the Government have committed, is so important, and I urge the Minister to ensure that the people to whom workers in hospitals can speak up are independent of the hospital manager and the clinical director. If workers are reporting to the person responsible for giving them their jobs, that is not a safe process. We must have independent whistleblowing procedures for people raising clinical concerns. I am sure my constituents share my anger that we have to return to this topic again and again, when we should be looking at how far we have come since the Ockenden review over two years ago. I want to touch on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) about outcomes. Black and Asian women and their babies have a far worse probability of surviving birth than white women. If that was happening in a single trust, we would have another big, important review, but because it is spread out across the country, it is being lost, so we must return to it. It is not acceptable in this country in the 21st century that ethnic or socioeconomic background is a determinant of whether having a baby is safe. We are not on track to meet our 2025 targets for reducing stillbirth and neonatal death, and those targets have not been renewed. I urge the Minister to renew them and to ensure that there is a plan in place to meet them. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester made the critical point that spending more on medical negligence than maternity services is totally unacceptable. This country cannot afford for that to continue. We must make maternity services safe, because it is better for the mothers, better for the babies and better for the taxpayer. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. There is a general problem with care in the community of all types not being there for people. We have people in places where they will not get better as quickly—in some cases, their situation may be deteriorating—because that care is not available. Mental health provision in my constituency is absolutely appalling. People register with a doctor over the border just to access better mental health care. I could not agree with him more. In conclusion, the Darzi report is shocking, but it is not surprising based on the experience of my constituents. Poor access to primary care—whether that is GPs, dentists or early mental health intervention—is leaving people in pain and distress. Long waiting lists and crumbling hospitals are leaving people unable to get back to work, with their situation deteriorating, and the crisis in social care—the elephant in the room—is depriving people of their independence and leaving them in hospital when they could be at home. The new Government must make fixing the NHS and care their No. 1 priority. Liberal Democrats will be here to provide constructive opposition to ensure that they do.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  The findings in Lord Darzi’s report are shocking, but Liberal Democrats—there are many of us here today—find that they echo the hundreds of thousands of conversations we had with people on the doorstep across the country throughout the election campaign. In too many ways, the NHS just is not working as it should, and that is a tragedy, because we all cherish the NHS and want it to succeed. It is one of our country’s greatest inventions and a great Liberal idea. It is one of the things that makes us proud to be British. We all owe so much to the NHS and the incredible hard-working staff who have kept it going under the most intense pressure imaginable. Despite their heroic efforts, there is no doubt that we have a major crisis in the NHS. Let us not forget, because it is so important—these things are intrinsically linked—that we also have a major crisis in care. The message that the British people sent at the general election in July was clear: fixing the health and care crisis must be this Government’s No. 1 priority. Before I turn to the Government’s plans, it is worth reminding ourselves of the scale and urgency of the challenge. Far too many people wait weeks to see a GP or NHS dentist, if they can find one. Far too many wait months or even years to start vital treatment for serious conditions. Far too many wait for hours in pain and distress for an ambulance to arrive. I recently spoke to a constituent, Emma, whose 11-year-old daughter Charlotte suffers from a medical condition that means she is red-flagged, or a category 1 priority patient, in the case of a medical emergency. Unfortunately, Emma and Charlotte were recently involved in a car crash. Charlotte urgently needed an ambulance, but after two hours of waiting, her father decided to take her to hospital in the back of his car. She starts her journey to senior school this autumn. Her family have had to devise their own response network to keep her safe and secure, and to allow her to attend school in confidence. Our ambulance service failed Charlotte and her family when they were in crisis, and we cannot let that continue. The problems do not stop there. Across the country, almost 6.5 million people are stuck on hospital waiting lists. That is one in every nine people in England. Two million of them have been waiting for more than six months. Over the past year, more than 100,000 people have waited more than two months to start cancer treatment after an urgent referral. In my constituency of North Shropshire, almost 20% of urgent referrals took more than 43 days and 10% took more than 62 days. The target is 28 days. It is truly heartbreaking. We know that every day counts when patients are battling cancer. Young people needing help with their mental health are waiting months and even years to access child and adolescent mental health services. There is no help for them until they are in crisis. As if all that was not bad enough, we have hospitals that are literally crumbling. There is a maintenance backlog of £11.6 billion. Buildings are decades past their use-by date. It is shocking but, as my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I know, far from exceptional. Most of these problems go back decades. The truth is that Governments of all parties have failed to put enough capital investment into the NHS. They have failed to face up to the challenge of an ageing population and, crucially, they have failed to tackle the care crisis, with one honourable exception: the Care Act 2014 was passed by Liberal Democrat Ministers a decade ago, with cross-party support. Sadly, it was ripped up by the Conservative Government after 2015. The failure and neglect of the Conservative Government left the NHS teetering on the brink. There were so many grand promises—6,000 more GPs, 40 new hospitals and cross-party talks on social care—but they were all fantasies. In Shropshire—which is not an outlier—the Royal College of General Practitioners found that the average GP is seeing 475 more patients than they were in 2016. Patients and their loved ones have been let down so badly. When the scale of challenges across health and social care is so enormous, it would be easy to succumb to pessimism and defeatism—doom and gloom—but we cannot afford to do that. The patients of today and tomorrow cannot afford for us to do that. This moment demands the same urgency, ambition and vision that drove the creation of the NHS all those years ago. We very much hope that the Government will show that ambition. I welcome the Secretary of State’s recognition of the fundamental importance of shifting more focus to primary care—to GPs, dentists, mental health practitioners and community pharmacists—for our young people.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is exactly right, and we put mental health and access to primary care and health prevention front and centre of our manifesto for that very reason. I encourage the Secretary of State to take our plans where they are complementary to his and run with them. We are happy to have our ideas plagiarised—we will welcome it. Welcome as that focus is, some of what we have heard gives me cause for concern. First, some weeks ago the Prime Minister suggested that investment can come only after reform. I warn the Secretary of State that I do not think that that will work. The reforms that our NHS needs cannot be done on the cheap. Improving access to primary care means investing in more GPs, more NHS dentists and more community pharmacists. Boosting productivity means investing in better IT systems and bringing hospitals up to date with the new facilities they need. I agree that it cannot be just more investment without reforms, but nor can it be just reform without more investment. We need that investment now. The reports that we have heard of potential cuts to spending in the Budget are deeply concerning. I urge the Secretary of State to guarantee today that they will not happen. Finally, I am afraid that there still seems to be nowhere near enough focus or urgency when it comes to care. We simply cannot fix the crisis in the NHS without fixing the crisis in care. Right now, more than 12,000 people in hospital are ready and well enough to go home but stuck there because the care they need is not available. That is awful for them and their families, and it is awful for the NHS that 12,000 beds that should be getting used by patients who need them and allowing better patient flow through hospitals are being held up because the care system is in crisis. I urge the Secretary of State again not to put this off any longer but to set up a cross-party commission now so that we can agree a long-term solution to ensure that people get the care they need, when and where they need it, and that carers are properly supported, too.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Oswestry to Gobowen Railway Line · Hansard source

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  Bearing in mind that local councils are a hair’s breadth away from issuing section 114 notices and are only likely to deliver statutory services in their area, what kind of additional funding will be available from the Government for them to be able to franchise their own bus services? I ask that because it seems to me that it is all very well councils having the power to deliver such services, but unless they have the funding to do so, it will not bring about the results that we would like to see.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Oswestry to Gobowen Railway Line · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the Oswestry to Gobowen railway line. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. This is an important subject for my constituents in the lovely town of Oswestry and the nearby village of Gobowen. Oswestry has a population of approximately 17,000 people. It is the second largest town in Shropshire and is of huge importance to the border region, but economic potential there is being stunted by poor public transport, which plagues the whole of Shropshire. People who live in Oswestry are forced to rely on a bus or car to get to Gobowen railway station just up the road to access connections to larger economic centres, such as Shrewsbury, Liverpool or Manchester. What about someone who does not have a car and works in Chester? They will need to leave home by 7 am to get to the office for 9 o’clock—a journey that takes about 45 minutes in a car. Someone travelling further afield and returning late would need to get a taxi back from the station because the buses do not run outside regular hours, and that is if they can track down a taxi, which is another problem for another debate. Oswestry was once a proud railway town. The railway station was on the main line of the Cambrian railway and, at one stage, it housed the headquarters of the Cambrian Railways Company. Unfortunately, it was a victim of the Beeching cuts, and there has been no connection to the main line from Oswestry since 1966. That is why the news that the restoring your railway fund would be used to reopen the line between Gobowen and Oswestry was so well received locally; and why the news that the Government wanted to scrap the funding, without even examining the new business case, has been such a huge disappointment. From healthcare and high streets to the environment and the economy, I cannot overstate what a transformational impact reopening the line would have on our area. Poor public transport removes opportunity. It hinders young people, limiting their options for further and higher education and restricting their access to culture and leisure. In short, barriers to mobility are barriers to social mobility. During a recent visit to the jobcentre in Oswestry, the brilliant staff there told me that the No. 1 barrier to people accessing work is poor public transport. Meanwhile, I have spoken to businesses in Oswestry that have reported real difficulties in recruiting. They need to be able to attract people to work from a much wider area than Oswestry and not just those who have access to a private car. That means we are in the ridiculous situation where employers cannot recruit and jobseekers cannot find jobs to match their skills because of the same problem of poor public transport. Let us take the outstanding Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt orthopaedic hospital near Gobowen: it has such a fine reputation that it has no trouble attracting high-quality staff, but the problem is that it cannot get people to and from their shifts early and late because there is no public transport, so if they do not have a car, the job will not work for them. Reopening the line would include a halt at the hospital. That would help to swell staff numbers and ease access for patients, many of whom are elderly, do not have access to a car and have to rely on the good will of friends to get to appointments on time. The hospital is a national resource: people come from across the country to access the excellent care there, including from the veterans’ centre, and railway access for them would be a huge bonus. It is not just me who thinks that this is a great project. Feedback from the Department for Transport on the strategic outline business case acknowledged the importance of all of this: “Oswestry is the second largest employment area in Shropshire, and unemployment in Oswestry is higher than the average in Shropshire. Productivity—the ability to match jobs with labour across North Shropshire—is a particularly pertinent issue. The growth in vacancies has been significant in Oswestry and Gobowen in recent years, which is exacerbated by the low population density and ageing populations of these areas.”

• 11 Sept 2024 · Oswestry to Gobowen Railway Line · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his really good intervention. It is true that we tend to underestimate the passenger numbers on the newly reopened lines, and the benefits are probably in excess of the business cases that have supported them. I will come to further developments on this line later, so I am grateful to him for making that point. Public transport is critical to the issue of productivity, growth and matching jobs with people who want to do them, so this line will be really important for job creation, education opportunities and economic growth in a rural area that has huge potential but is currently not meeting that potential. It will also be a huge boost to the regeneration of Oswestry’s beautiful and historic town centre. Oswestry already boasts a large number of independent shops and a relatively low number of vacant units. On the border between England and Wales, the town has a rich cultural history, a large number of native Welsh speakers and the potential to really thrive in the future. The area surrounding the station is planned to become a transport hub for the town, and the listed station building is undergoing works to ensure that it is structurally sound and fit for the future, but it will need tenants inside it. A fully operating station has the potential to unlock private investment in the area, to regenerate this important transport gateway to Oswestry, only a few minutes’ walk from the centre of town, and to provide crucial facilities, such as public toilets and a café, that would make connecting bus services into the rural area beyond much more viable. One of the big issues that local bus providers have with providing services in the area is that there is not a public toilet for their drivers to use when they stop over. That really hinders the ability for them to provide a decent bus service. People who live in Oswestry are largely dependent on their car. Linking local bus and rail services will reduce congestion and emissions and open a world of opportunity for those who, for whatever reason, are unable to access a car or drive one. As I said, it is not just me who thinks the reopening is a good idea. The DFT’s feedback on the strategic outline business case was extremely positive, saying that it was a “strong strategic case”, that the “proposal aligns to various local plans over the past decade”, and that the “appraisal outputs presented in the economic case show that all options yield ‘Very High and Financially Positive’ value for money”. Crucially, the project is expected to bring in more cash than it would cost to set up. That clear value for money is in stark contrast to the three other restoring your railway schemes approved by the previous Government last October, which were judged to offer poor value for money at best. It was the strong business case that persuaded the DFT to commit to funding the project through to delivery. To come to my hon. Friend’s point, when the business case was put together, it did not factor in the likelihood of the new Wrexham, Shropshire & Midlands Railway Company to provide a direct service on the line from Gobowen to London. If that service goes ahead—I very much hope that it will—the benefits for Oswestry will be even greater. There has been some local opposition. Some people have argued that we could just run a shuttle bus, seemingly unaware that there already is one. But the shuttle bus has not worked: it does not run in the evening or early morning; it is frequently delayed by congestion on the A5, which has to be crossed to get to the station; and sometimes it just does not turn up at all. It certainly will not unlock the economic regeneration of the transport hub in the centre of Oswestry that the rail reopening promises. It is also really expensive to travel by bus and train, because people need two different tickets. Perhaps most importantly, whether it is for an urgent appointment at the orthopaedic hospital or an overnight shift at nearby Derwen college, people cannot trust a bus that will not get them there on time. I welcome this week’s announcement that local authorities will be given the powers to franchise their own bus services. If that happens in Shropshire, we will see huge benefits across the whole of my constituency—for the many villages that have no service at all, and towns such as Market Drayton and Ellesmere, for which reconnection to the railway is desirable but not realistically possible. But we cannot pin our hopes on that. Given that the funding for all this brilliant new public transport remains unclear and uncommitted, it seems highly unlikely that Shropshire’s Conservative-run council will take on the revenue strain of start-up bus services. The council forecasts that it will balance its books this year by using up all its reserves, unless it can find a further £38 million of cuts, which would be on top of £58 million last year and £30 million already delivered this year. The ambition should also be to link rail and bus services, so that people can genuinely consider leaving their car at home because the alternative is reliable, convenient and affordable. The Oswestry to Gobowen line uses a railway line that is already there. It obviously needs to be upgraded if it is to be usable once more, but because it has not been built over, there is space for a footpath or cycle path to go alongside. The benefits of active travel are well documented, and they could be exploited here if the scheme goes ahead. The project has a capital cost of between £5 million and £15 million, and ongoing operating costs of £196,000 per annum. Critically, it is forecast to be cash-positive over the appraisal period. Local critics have highlighted the potential disruption caused by it crossing the A5, but it is important to emphasise that nobody is proposing to run a slow, steam heritage train over a major level crossing. The proposal involves very little disruption and many benefits. Indeed, it is difficult to see any justification for axing the project. The Government have said that they want to grow the economy, improve education, clear NHS backlogs and clean up the environment, but they are potentially blocking a scheme that would help to achieve all those objectives. Shropshire is one of the worst-served counties in England for public transport, with only one bus route running on a Sunday in the whole county, and the loss of more bus miles since 2015 than any other county in England. There are huge barriers in place to realising Shropshire’s potential, and the project would help to remove one of them. It would enable local businesses to find quality candidates for the vacancies that they cannot fill, it would remove a huge barrier for those without a car who are seeking work beyond the boundaries of their immediate area,and it would enable young people and those wanting to develop new skills to access a far greater range of educational provision. It would also unlock investment and regeneration in an important regional town centre. We cannot regenerate growth, jobs, skills and investment if a town is isolated from the rest of its region. That is why the previous Government promised to fund the project, and why the new Government should, too. I urge the Minister to come to Oswestry to see the wonderful potential of this historic market town and the additional value that the railway would bring to it. She should urgently reconsider the decision to remove funding from this fantastic project.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Exempt Supported Accommodation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Mark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) on securing this debate and on her excellent speech, in which she highlighted all the difficulties that we knew existed in this sector. She also provided some real colour about what those difficulties mean for residents of exempt supported accommodation units, for local residents who are impacted by some of the bad-faith actors, and for local communities. I do not want to go back over some of the ground that has already been covered, because she covered it so well, but I am afraid that I will have to. Before I go any further, however, I should declare that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. In 2022, I served on the Public Bill Committee for the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023, which was introduced by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) as a private Member’s Bill. It was an important step forward that had cross-party support from the then Conservative Government, the Labour Benches and the Liberal Democrat Benches, because the issue had become so severe. The system of exempt accommodation was well described in the October 2022 report by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee as: “a complete mess. There are many good providers, but in the worst instances the system involves the exploitation of vulnerable people who should be receiving support, while unscrupulous providers make excessive profits by capitalising on loopholes. This gold-rush is all paid for by taxpayers through housing benefit.” That is a sorry state of affairs. The then Government supported the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Harrow East, because it was seen as a good way to deal with the situation that was described by the Select Committee and by the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston today. In response to the Select Committee’s report, in early 2023 the Conservative Government said that the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 would address most of the concerns that had been raised in the report, because it would introduce national standards for support and give local authorities the powers they need to set up licensing schemes to tackle poor-quality supported housing in their area. The Act provided for local authority supported housing strategies to review the situation in their area and the availability of and need for supported housing, and those strategies were to be renewed every five years. It also required the Secretary of State to set up a supported housing advisory panel to provide information and advice about supported housing; it allowed for the Secretary of State to set standards for the support provided in supported housing; and it allowed for regulations to be made to establish licensing schemes, which would include consideration of the condition of the property, the adequacy of the care and support provided, interactions with other licensing schemes, the costs, the financial penalties and all the things that needed to go with a properly functioning licensing scheme The Act also required the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, as it is now called again, to formally consult on elements contained within it, including the licensing regime, standards and any additional measures for securing compliance with the standards. As we have heard, however, much of that has not yet happened, despite the Act going through Parliament in 2023. The Act provided for better planning regulations; it said that somebody would not be treated as intentionally homeless if they left supported accommodation; and it provided for information management and sharing powers for those involved in the provision of supported housing. All in all, it seems to have been a pretty good piece of legislation, and the problem that we are experiencing now, as the hon. Member for Birmingham Edgbaston described in great detail, is that those provisions have not been enacted quickly enough. Today’s debate is about urging the Minister to bring forward the actions that are needed now to make sure that we improve the sector. The LGA is supportive of that legislation and has been a main stakeholder working with the Ministry to ensure that the Act works for councils, providers, and most importantly, residents in supported accommodation. But the LGA has raised significant concerns about the time taken to implement the Act and about the fact that councils have limited means to challenge poor providers, other than through housing benefit claims, which is problematic. We heard from the hon. Member that Birmingham city council has actually been able to challenge providers, so it would be interesting to find out from the Minister whether that is likely to be a model in future or whether better mechanisms will be put in place. As the hon. Member said, the delayed implementation of the Act is a problem for councils that have used the SHIP payments to improve supported housing in their area. The gap in funding between the SHIP payments and the new burden spending that comes with implementation of the Act means that councils will potentially have to let go of their skilled workforce and people with good experience of dealing with the problems and social implications of poor housing. It seems that in every debate at the moment, we must talk about the funding crisis for all councils. They need long-term funding arrangements with ringfenced support for housing, because the increased pressure on council budgets from that sector means that not only are we letting people down who have an acute housing need, but we are letting down everyone else whose services are impacted by the exorbitant cost of providing housing across the whole of England, particularly in communities where the sector is out of control, as the hon. Member alluded to. The calls of the LGA are, as always, very sensible. We need to review the current funding regime for supported housing. We also need to recognise the savings to the public purse that will come from not giving those unscrupulous providers limitless amounts of public money for a very poor service that will not realise any of the benefits that supported housing should realise for its inhabitants and wider society by providing the support they need. We need to ensure that the SHIP funding is there in the interregnum between now and the new burden spending, so that councils can continue the work that they are already doing, and crucially, can retain the skilled officers who are experienced in dealing with this situation. We also need to acknowledge that a licensing scheme and its enforcement, with improved standards for supported housing, will require proper funding. Otherwise, councils will be unable to deliver on the statutory requirement that we are about to place on them. The funding is so important. I know that the Government are dealing with a financial crisis, that they have extremely difficult choices to make, and that almost all Members will standing up in every debate to ask for more money—it is a difficult position to be in—but I urge the Minister to consider that, as taxpayers’ money is wasted so flagrantly on these unscrupulous providers, it would be a good use of public money to establish a proper licensing scheme. That would mean that we were not wasting taxpayers’ money and were instead putting it into support for the individuals who have had a crisis, hopefully turning their lives around, and costing the taxpayer less in future. That would be a wise investment of taxpayers’ money. On the important issue of resource, many councils are having to let staff go because of funding pressures. We cannot enforce and practise a licensing scheme without the right people in officer roles in councils, so the recruitment and retention of those critical staff is also extremely important. I honestly do not think that I have added much to the hon. Member’s excellent speech, but I hope that I have added my voice to her cause on regulating the sector properly.

• 9 Sept 2024 · SEND Provision · Hansard source

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  Maria, in my constituency, has a son who was in a specialist placement, and in October last year that school said it could no longer meet his need. Since then, he has not been back in full-time education, while another headteacher keeps telling me that special needs provision in Shropshire is decades behind elsewhere in the country. If the Secretary of State aspires for all children in the country to have their special needs met, how is she going to ensure that happens in places that are struggling so much with funding, such as Shropshire?

• 5 Sept 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T7. Rural businesses in the agricultural, horticultural and equine sectors in North Shropshire are struggling to trade with Europe. Will the Secretary of State update us on progress on making a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement and a veterinary agreement with the EU, so that they can trade without all the red tape that is bogging them down?

• 4 Sept 2024 · Preventable Baby Loss · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I start by thanking the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this important debate. Sadly, we have revisited this issue a number of times, even in the short period since I was elected in 2021. Members’ speeches today have been excellent, and I will touch on them briefly. I thank the hon. Member for Ashfield for telling the stories of his constituents who have come along today, and I thank them for sharing their stories, which were very moving. It is tragic that they have been through such experiences. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) addressed the fact that the subject is taboo and that we need to get over that if we are to support families properly. The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge), who I welcome to this place, stressed the importance of providing support for bereaved families and of the groups in her constituency that do that. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) told us the moving story of his constituent Agnes, who felt her loss for the rest of her life. The hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) has been a pioneering campaigner on this issue. In particular, she has campaigned successfully on the issue of the birth and death certificate for a lost baby, and I am sure everybody is grateful to her for that. The importance of making memories for bereaved families is so important. The hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) pointed out the important statistics we need to consider and the importance of effective bereavement support. The hon. Member for Sheffield Hallam (Olivia Blake), who has also been an effective and tireless campaigner on the issue of miscarriage, made an excellent speech. I became co-chair of the APPG on baby loss shortly after I was elected, because of the scandal at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust and the Ockenden report, which was issued shortly afterwards. There have been similar incidents at Morecambe Bay and East Kent, and we suspect there is a similar issue emerging at Nottingham, with the review by Donna Ockenden currently under way. The fact that scandals have emerged across the country means that there are endemic failings that we need to address, rather than blaming individual trusts. The reports on Morecambe Bay and East Kent were by Dr Bill Kirkup, while the Ockenden report was for Shrewsbury and Telford. They raised very similar issues, albeit in quite a different style. The first issue was the importance of safe staffing in ensuring that babies do not die unnecessarily on maternity wards. Sands and Tommy’s have also led a campaign on that, which the APPG supported. The former Government responded quite well in trying to improve midwife numbers and ensure that maternity units are safe places to be. Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust has achieved its targets on safe staffing. We need to keep the focus on that area, because safe staffing obviously needs to be maintained; it is not a one-off thing that we can do and then hope for the best for the future. Other issues that came up include learning from mistakes, listening to mothers and their families, and doing a proper review when something goes wrong, as it inevitably occasionally will, to make sure that lessons are learned. It feels like that has not happened across the NHS as a whole. In every review, we have heard about a lack of openness and transparency with the families and about blame being passed on to mothers who have lost their babies. We have heard about a toxic environment in some hospital trusts and about a willingness to cover up what has gone wrong rather than be candid and learn from mistakes. Those issues have been highlighted time and again, and it is important that the three reports—we are expecting a fourth—do not just gather dust on a shelf somewhere. Action must be taken to ensure that those mistakes do not keep happening. The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale raised the fact that there is an obsession with natural birth, and I feel that very strongly. After having an emergency C-section, I was asked by a midwife whether I felt like a failure for having been through that emergency medical procedure. The answer was, “No, not until you suggested that maybe I ought to,” but hon. Members can probably imagine the shame, guilt and depression that followed. We must get away from this obsession with natural childbirth. It is the best option for mothers with low-risk pregnancies, but it is not great for anybody who has a medical issue. We must not let ideology lead the evidence and science. I am conscious of time, so I will not take too long. Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust has made great inroads in implementing the immediate and central actions that Donna Ockenden recommended, but I would welcome an update from the Minister on progress on the national actions. If the disparity for ethnic minority women—whether they are black, Asian or from another ethnic minority—was happening in an individual trust, we would be up in arms and would get in a professional to investigate what was going wrong. We must not lose sight of that disparity and inequality. We must deal with the terrible outcomes for some of these women, as well as with the wider situation in the NHS. Independent whistleblowing is particularly important. In Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust, the freedom to speak up guardians report into hospital management, and people frequently report that they do not feel safe whistleblowing. I urge the Government to look at safe whistleblowing and to create an independent office of the whistleblower to ensure that when people raise medical concerns about safety, they are listened to, are not closed down and do not fear losing their jobs. These scandals do not apply to a single hospital trust; there is huge variety in the quality of care across the country. I urge the Government to look at maternity care across the country and to ensure that getting safe care is not a postcode lottery but is consistent and fair for all women.

• 4 Sept 2024 · Preventable Baby Loss · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. It is good to hear the story of Agnes, and I hope that he will agree with me that sympathising with our constituents who have suffered such awful circumstances and telling their stories in Parliament is a good way to ensure that they are heard in the future.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Cost of Living: Support for Pensioners · Hansard source

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  I thank the Chancellor for her answer, but nearly 22,000 pensioners in North Shropshire are forecast to lose their winter fuel payments very soon, just as energy prices for the average household are about to go up by 10%. Many of my pensioners live in bungalows and older housing stock, which is expensive to heat. A lot of them have been in touch with me to say that they are worried sick about this winter. We know the Chancellor has difficult choices to make, and we accept that, but will she consider that the broadest shoulders are not those of pensioners who earn less than the minimum wage and are about to lose this vital support?

• 3 Sept 2024 · Cost of Living: Support for Pensioners · Hansard source

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  5. What fiscal steps she is taking to support pensioners with the cost of living.

• 2 Sept 2024 · Social Housing Supply · Hansard source

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  Recent freedom of information requests by the Liberal Democrats found that four out of five councils that responded had someone on their social housing waiting list for more than a decade, and this shocking statistic comes all while the stocks of social housing have been reducing. Will the Minister consider reforming the land conservation Act, so that local councils can buy land at current value rather than hope value and get on with delivering the social housing that we so desperately need?

• 2 Sept 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Residents in rural areas such as my constituency are seeing drastic cuts to local services despite their council tax having gone up this year. That is because councils are struggling to balance budgets. When the fair funding review takes place, will the Secretary of State commit to considering the cost of delivering services in vast rural areas, which is in excess of the same cost in urban areas?

• 19 Jul 2024 · Covid-19 Inquiry · Hansard source

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  I welcome the statement from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and was particularly pleased to hear him talk about the role of local government. Local government was instrumental in the response, and I imagine the inquiry will find that had it had a greater role, there would have been better resilience. However, as we know, local government financing is in crisis; my own local council is trying to save £100 million this year. What reassurance can he give us that local councils will be given the funding they need to have in place the resilience we need for the future?

• 19 Jul 2024 · Planning, the Green Belt and Rural Affairs · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is muttering from a sedentary position. He may wish to know that my grandparents lived in social housing, and I have no particular prejudices against it whatsoever. We are committed not only to building the homes that are so important to easing the crisis throughout the housing market, but to ensuring that those new homes are of a high standard, that they are zero carbon and that they are built alongside proper infrastructure that provides communities with the services and amenities they need. Integrating public service delivery has to be part of the planning process, so in principle we welcome the Government’s plans to streamline the delivery of critical infrastructure, including in the housing sector, in the forthcoming planning and infrastructure Bill, but we need to be clear that the current system has benefited developers rather than communities. The Bill must take that into account. Crude targets alone have led to many developments being given permission, only for affordable and social housing elements to be watered down on the basis of viability once permission is granted. That must change. We know that local authorities are best placed to make the decisions about housing in their areas, so I urge the Government to ensure that their mandatory housing targets are built from the bottom up—by determining the type of housing and infrastructure communities need, and empowering local government to build social homes where they are most needed. We need the necessary infrastructure, including GPs, schools, bus stops and bus routes, while also ensuring that there is appropriate green space and access to the countryside, which is important for health and wellbeing. Our experience is that residents support good plans with good infrastructure. Now, I imagine that we will use the term “nimby” in this debate, and it has already been used about the Liberal Democrats, but it is not appropriate to approve housing in areas that are unsuitable—for example, where there is a high risk of flooding. It is not being a nimby to oppose poor planning; it is common sense. Local authorities are under enormous pressure and we know that their planning departments are overstretched. I welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s comments on that point. They need proper funding to ensure that they make good and consistent decisions, and that their councillors are well advised.