The below Parliamentary question was asked by Edward Argar on 2015-11-16.
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what plans his Department has to hold national events to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the RAF in 2018.
Mark Lancaster
The Ministry of Defence is in the planning stage of its RAF100 Campaign and intends to hold a National commemoration to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the RAF. A full list of events and activities will be published in 2017.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Edward Argar on 2016-10-18.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to ensure the sustainability of the sea-bass population.
George Eustice
Bass continue to be a priority for the UK Government as we prepare for negotiations at EU level in December to agree further measures that will apply in 2017. Our approach will include consideration of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea scientific advice on bass for 2017 and will clearly recognise the continuing need to maintain strong action to help this stock recover.
The European Commission’s proposals, expected shortly, will help to inform our negotiating position. This will take into account the current and long term interests of the recreational and commercial fishing sectors in this important fish stock. We will be working with stakeholders, other Member States, and the European Commission in the coming weeks to inform the UK position.
At the domestic scale our review of bass measures is focusing principally on bass nursery areas. Where it is identified that action is required, this work will be further developed and, where national legislation may be required, will follow the usual legislative process. We will seek the views of key stakeholders on the way forward. Any proposed national legislation will be subject to public consultation involving stakeholders, other Government Departments and interested parties.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Edward Argar on 2015-11-23.
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the effect of the security situation in Yemen on the ability of non-governmental organisations to operate and deliver aid in that country.
Mr Desmond Swayne
Conflict in Yemen has made it difficult for agencies to operate and deliver humanitarian aid to all those who need it, particularly in the five governorates most affected by the fighting (Abyan, Aden, Al Dahle, Hajjah and Taiz). The city of Taiz, where fighting has intensified in recent weeks, is currently of particular concern. Humanitarian agencies have been denied permission to deliver lifesaving supplies and there are reports of severe shortages of food, healthcare, water and sanitation.
We continue to call on all parties to facilitate rapid, safe and unhindered access to all people in need and to safeguard key infrastructure, including airports, sea ports, fuel distribution sites and major access routes in Yemen. We will continue to fund those agencies and NGOs who have the best access and ability to deliver humanitarian assistance in Yemen.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Edward Argar on 2016-10-18.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the tree-planting rates have been in England in each year since 2006.
Dr Thérèse Coffey
The Forestry Commission collect and publish National Statistics for England on the area, in hectares, of new woodland planting. It also estimates the number of trees planted, based on the average number of trees planted per hectare in the grant supported planting. In 2015-16 this average was 1,566 trees per hectare.
Table 1 below provides annual planting area published by the Forestry Commission since 2006 and its estimate of the number of trees planted.
In 2015-16 the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) supported 546 hectares of planting and it is estimated that 165 hectares of woodland was created, without RDPE support, bringing the total created during 2015-16 to 711 hectares.
In the period April 2016 to June 2016, a further 422 hectares of woodland was recorded as being planted with RDPE support.
The RDPE figures reflect the slow initial take up of Countryside Stewardship support for woodland planting. Planting is recorded at the time the grant is paid, which means that some planting will have taken place in the previous financial year to that in which it is recorded. Approximately 1,292,000 trees were planted in England with RDPE support since April 2015.
Table 1: New planting of woodland in England since 2005-06
|
Financial Year to 31st March |
a) New planting by land area |
b) Estimated number of trees |
|
Thousand hectares |
Million trees |
|
|
2005-06 |
3.7 |
4.1 |
|
2006-07 |
3.2 |
3.5 |
|
2007-08 |
2.6 |
2.9 |
|
2008-09 |
2.5 |
2.8 |
|
2009-10 |
2.3 |
2.5 |
|
2010-11 |
2.5 |
2.8 |
|
2011-12 |
2.7 |
3.0 |
|
2012-13 |
2.6 |
2.9 |
|
2013-14 |
3.3 |
3.6 |
|
2014-15 |
2.4 |
2.6 |
|
2015-16 |
0.7 |
0.8 |
Source: Forestry Statistics 2016 (Forestry Commission)
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Edward Argar on 2015-10-19.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what plans the Government has to review the amount of compensation for losses paid to Equitable Life policy holders over the course of this Parliament.
Harriett Baldwin
The Chancellor announced in the Summer Budget 2015 that, as part of the Scheme closedown, the Government will double the payments to non With-Profits Annuity policyholders in receipt of Pension Credit. The Government has no further plans to review the payments made by the Equitable Life Payment Scheme.
The speech made by Edward Argar, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in the House of Commons on 19 October 2022.
I think I last stood at this Dispatch Box about three months ago, so it is a privilege to close this debate on behalf of the Government. I welcome the kind words from the shadow Chief Secretary, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden). I suspect, knowing him as I do, that he will be tough in his challenges, with, as we have seen, a suitably dry delivery and sense of humour, but I have huge respect for him, as he knows. I have yet to be treated to his singing voice—sadly, we were not just then—but on a future occasion he might be tempted.
I thank all hon. and right hon. Members for their contributions. The debate has understandably invited the expression of strong views on the part of all Members who have spoken. That is because economic stability is not just about abstract numbers and graphs. As the shadow Chief Secretary knows, I am nothing if not a pragmatist. This is about our constituents, our families, our friends and our neighbours, and it matters. As the Chancellor set out to the House on Monday:
“Behind the decisions we take and the issues on which we vote are jobs that families depend on, mortgages that have to be paid, savings for pensioners, and businesses investing for the future.”—[Official Report, 17 October 2022; Vol. 720, c. 395.]
Sometimes those decisions are difficult or, indeed, very difficult, as the Chancellor acknowledged. We know we need to do more to give certainty to the markets about our fiscal plans, and we have. I am clear, as is my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and, indeed, the Prime Minister, that we need to prioritise the needs of the most vulnerable, and we will.
We also know that the long-term economic wellbeing of this country relies on our achieving sustainable growth. In the coming weeks and months, responsibly and sustainably, we will continue that urgent mission. Indeed, the reason the United Kingdom has always succeeded is that, at big and difficult moments, we have taken tough decisions in the long-term interest of the country. When conditions allow, when it is consistent with sound public finances, we will seek to cut taxes to support further economic growth.
I remind the House that, since 2010, the United Kingdom has seen the third highest real GDP growth rate in the G7, increasing by more than Germany, France, Japan and Italy. The UK is forecast to be the fastest growing economy in the G7 in 2022. We have a strong labour market with the lowest unemployment rate in almost 50 years, which gives genuine grounds for optimism about our long-term prospects for growth.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend to his place. He has used the word “pragmatism.” The shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury was on the money with regard to the folly of applying ideology when the circumstances do not allow it. Will my right hon. Friend, from the Dispatch Box, give both the country and the House confidence that good, old-fashioned Tory pragmatism and common sense—people can call it Treasury orthodoxy if they wish—are back at the helm?
Edward Argar
I have just set out where we are and what the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have said about the approach we are adopting. It is my firm belief, and the Chancellor’s firm belief, that we wish to be a tax-cutting Government, but that must be done from a basis of sustainability. When taxes are cut sustainably, we see behaviours change that help to generate investment and growth, which is what the Prime Minister and the Chancellor seek.
Sir Stephen Timms
Will the Minister give way?
Edward Argar
I will make some progress on the contributions made by hon. and right hon. Members. I will address the right hon. Gentleman’s contribution, and he may then want to come back to me.
The concerns expressed by the SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), about economic turmoil are a little rich, given that his party seeks to impose the chaos, turmoil and economic cost of another referendum on Scotland, being unable to accept the democratic decision of the Scottish people in the last referendum.
On the most vulnerable, I highlight to the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, other hon. and right hon. Members the £37 billion of support that has been made available across the United Kingdom to support people with the cost of living. The SNP’s prospectus, set out a few days ago, on what independence would mean is a recipe for chaos and turmoil for the people of Scotland.
I am extremely pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) in his place. I pay tribute to his courage in speaking out so openly about his own challenges and, in so doing, doing a huge service to many people up and down this country. He is a man of great integrity and great courage, and I pay tribute to him. Although I do not always agree with him, this Chamber is always wise to listen to him. He represents his constituents passionately and well in this place. He touched on a number of things, but he specifically mentioned institutions—as did the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury—including the Bank of England and the OBR. My hon. Friend knows me well and he knows that I have huge respect for both those bodies. Before I knew I would be occupying this place and that the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East would be my shadow, he and I were on television and I paid tribute to him for his role in a previous Labour Government for setting up the independence of the Bank of England, which I believe is important and needs to be respected.
The right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) is a distinguished former Chief Secretary to the Treasury and he highlighted a number of things, particularly the benefits question and the uprating of benefits, as did the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). They will know that there is an annual process by which that is done. That process requires the statistics that were made available for the first time today—the September statistics. It is extremely important that that process is followed and I do not intend from the Dispatch Box to pre-empt a process that should be followed properly.
I listened carefully, as I always do, to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). He raised a particular point about stamp duty land tax thresholds and second homes. The increase in the SDLT threshold implemented on 23 September will remain, supporting first-time buyers and making home ownership more accessible. No one purchasing a second home or buy-to-let property will be taken out of paying SDLT entirely following the Government’s changes. The higher rate for additional dwellings introduced by the Government in April 2016 will continue to apply at 3% above the standard rate. I know that the Chancellor will have listened carefully to the points my hon. Friend made.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) raised a number of points, including one about the NHS and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s role in it. This Government have invested record amounts in our NHS; I was the Minister who took through, in early 2020, the legislation that increased by £33.9 billion the funding for the NHS. My party has a strong track record of funding our NHS.
My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) was right to highlight, as others have, the broader context in the global economy with which we are faced: the legacy of covid; and the challenges in Ukraine. During covid we did the right thing, supported by those on both sides of this House, to protect lives and livelihoods, but we should not pretend that that did not come at a significant cost.
Sir Stephen Timms rose—
Edward Argar
I am very conscious that I have only about two minutes left and I would like to address the points made by a few other colleagues, including some on the right hon. Gentleman’s side of the House.
The hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) knows that I am fond of him—I do not know whether that will harm my career or his—but I just highlight to him the challenges that have driven the headline inflation rates we are seeing, which are higher in the eurozone than here at the moment. These are not Government-driven; they are energy costs and supply-chain challenges. If he looks at the analysis by the Office for National Statistics of the figures, he will see that those rates are particularly driven by food costs and food supply chains. We also have to look more broadly at the geopolitical context.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) genuinely understands business and knows what it takes, and he highlighted the need to support the most vulnerable. That is something that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has made clear will be at the forefront of his announcements. My hon. Friend also touched on the social care levy and the social care cap, and I know that he has views on it. I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will have heard that, but I am afraid that my hon. Friend will have to wait until 31 October for announcements from the Chancellor, which I will not pre-empt.
Significant contributions have been made by Members from both sides of this House. These are challenging times and the Government will take the difficult decisions necessary to ensure there is trust in our national finances.
We will also remain completely committed to our mission to go for growth rooted in economic stability and confidence, but let us not forget that our economic foundations remain strong.
We are a Government with a record of action: we acted to support families and businesses on energy costs, we have acted to bring stability, and we will act to grow the economy. As the Chancellor said to the House on Monday, despite all the adversity and challenges we face, there is enormous potential in this country. Our job, now and always, is to fulfil that potential.
The speech made by Edward Argar, the Conservative MP for Charnwood, in the House of Commons on 15 July 2022.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees). I have had the pleasure of working with her on a number of issues since I have been in the House, and it is a genuine pleasure today to have the opportunity—now that I have returned to the Back Benches—to contribute to such an important debate and to express my wholehearted support for the Bill.
It is also a real pleasure to speak in a debate to which the newly appointed Minister will respond. Until recently, my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) was my Whip, and he managed to discharge those duties firmly but very charmingly. I am sure he will bring the same balance of charm, firmness and indeed determination to his new role, and I hope he will continue to be a Minister for many years to come. Let me add that his is an extremely good appointment in respect of this particular brief.
The hon. Lady and others have already set out the context of the Bill and the challenges with which it is intended to deal. It is a very short Bill, with only three clauses and one schedule, but it does not need to be long, because it contains in those three clauses and one schedule everything that is needed to move things forward and close this loophole.
The scale, globally, of the trade in fins has been estimated at between 16,000 and 17,000 tonnes per annum, with an estimated 97 million sharks killed annually. We know that since 2003 the landing of detached shark fins has been banned in the EU, but, as we have heard from the hon. Lady and others, that does not appear to be doing the job. As we have also heard, 143 species are under threat, and 46 species and ray are listed in CITES, the convention on international trade in endangered species.
As the hon. Lady said, these creatures are integral to the ecosystems of our oceans. They play a hugely important role in what are fragile and complex ecosystems—and our oceans’ ecosystems are crucial to the health of our planet as a whole. In January 2021, an article in Nature suggested that there had been a 71% decline in the global abundance of sharks since 1970. That is a terrifying decline in the numbers of a creature which plays such a central role in our oceans’ ecosystems. We are talking here about sharks in the context of marine ecosystems, but we should bear in mind the fact that the ecosystems of all our waters, be they oceans, seas, chalk streams or rivers, are vital to the overall health of our planet. That is why it is right that we are considering this issue today.
I am pleased that such leadership has been shown on both sides of the House in respect of animal welfare and protecting our planet. The animal welfare action plan that was published recently is hugely important, and in 2020 there was a petition debate about this very issue. I pay tribute to Shark Guardian for promoting awareness of the issue, and securing the engagement that has, I know, helped the hon. Lady’s cause.
As we have already heard, the Bill closes a loophole in banning the import and export of detached shark fins, and the fins of other cartilaginous fish such as ray, with the exception of the
“pectoral fins of a ray”.
It is well and tightly drafted, and it will do what it seeks to do. As others have said, the practice of finning, the catching of a shark, the removal of the fin and the discarding of the rest of the shark—sometimes still alive—is not only wasteful but cruel and unnecessary.
The Government have said that they do not oppose the landing of a whole shark with its fins naturally attached. I know that some would wish us to go further while others would not, but I think that the hon. Lady, with typical sense, has struck an appropriate and proportionate balance in tackling a wasteful and cruel practice while still allowing a whole shark to be landed sustainably appropriately.It strikes, as we so often need to do in this place, a difficult but necessary balance, with the various specific scientific exemptions that have been highlighted and which we would expect to see for conservation purposes.
I do not propose to detain the House longer, so I will conclude by congratulating the hon. Member for Neath on bringing forward this important Bill. She has my wholehearted support, and I wish her every success in seeing it swiftly translated on to the statue book.
The statement made by Edward Argar, the Minister for Health, in the House of Commons on 25 April 2022.
The Lords amendments before the House today relate to the NHS workforce, reconfigurations, modern slavery and the adult social care cap. In respect of amendments 30B and 108B on reconfigurations, I am grateful for the constructive debate on these issue across both Houses. This House has twice voted strongly in favour of the ability for the Secretary of State to call in reconfiguration proposals when needed, and it remains a key principle that decisions on how services are delivered should be subject to ministerial oversight. However, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have listened carefully to the debates throughout the Bill’s passage, and as a result we have proposed a series of amendments to minimise bureaucracy and ensure transparency.
The first set of changes would mean that the NHS had to notify the Secretary of State only about those reconfiguration proposals that were deemed notifiable, which we will define through regulations. We intend to align that definition with the existing duty on NHS commissioners to consult local authorities where there is a substantial development of variation in the health service. We also propose to remove the requirement for commissioners and providers to inform Ministers of
“circumstances that are likely to result in the need for the reconfiguration of NHS services”.
Taken together, these changes will mean that the NHS will need to notify the Secretary of State only about proposals that are substantive and of great importance to people.
Secondly, we will give local authorities, NHS commissioners and anyone else the Secretary of State considers appropriate a right to make representations to the Secretary of State when he has called in a proposal for reconsideration. We expect this to include any relevant provider. The Secretary of State will be required to publish a summary of the representations he receives, and we will set out in statutory guidance further detail on how local bodies, including providers, will be engaged.
Thirdly, transparency is vital to ensure that these powers are always used by Ministers in the clear interest of the people we all serve. We will therefore require the Secretary of State to provide the reasons for his decisions and directions when he makes them. Finally, we have heard throughout these debates that it is vital that decisions are made expeditiously and expediently in order to give certainty to local bodies so that reconfigurations can be made quickly to improve the quality of services received by patients. We are therefore introducing a requirement that, once a reconfiguration proposal has been called in, the Secretary of State must make any decisions within six months. We believe that this set of changes addresses the key concerns raised in this House and the other place, and I commend it to the House.
I turn to Lords amendment 48B, and the Government’s amendment in lieu, on modern slavery. We share the strength of feeling expressed in both Houses on ensuring that the NHS is in no way inadvertently linked with modern slavery and human trafficking through its supply chain. That is why the Government brought forward an amendment in the first round of ping-pong to create a duty on the Secretary of State to undertake a thorough review of NHS supply chains. I am pleased to announce today that we are going further. The Government’s amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 48B will require the Secretary of State to make regulations with a view to eradicating the use by the NHS in England of goods or services tainted by slavery or human trafficking. The regulations can set out steps the NHS should be taking to assess the level of risk associated with individual suppliers, and the basis on which the NHS should exclude them from a tendering process.
I particularly commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for his consistent and vocal campaigning on this issue. I am delighted that he has confirmed his support for the amendment in lieu. I look forward to working further with him and his supporters to bring these measures forward.
Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
I congratulate the Minister and the Department on taking this extraordinary step. The public may believe that we already do not use slave-made goods, but unfortunately we do. It is remarkable that the Department has taken this step, and it is incredibly important that we look at Xinjiang in particular, where Sir Geoffrey Nice QC determined there has been a genocide, as there was in Bosnia. The sanctioned MPs and all our colleagues in the inter-parliamentary alliance on China will work with the Department to ensure we have no Uyghur slave-made products in our NHS.
Edward Argar
I paid tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, but my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) has also taken a keen interest in this issue. The Secretary of State and I will continue to work closely with others across Government to ensure that our measures to eradicate modern slavery in NHS supply chains are effective and targeted, and reflect best practice.
On Lords amendment 29B, the Government are committed to improving workforce planning and are already taking the steps needed to ensure that we have record numbers of staff working in the NHS. In July 2021, the Department commissioned Health Education England to work with partners on reviewing the long-term strategic trends for the health and regulated social care workforce over the next 15 years. We anticipate the publication of that work in the coming weeks.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Will the Minister give way?
Edward Argar
Very briefly, as I am conscious that we have limited time.
Jim Shannon
If the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) were to pursue the matter, my party and I would be minded to support him. Although I understand from the figures in the press today that there are significant numbers of new nurses coming into the NHS, there is still a large shortfall. Will the Minister confirm for Hansard in the Chamber today that every step is being taken to recruit the nurses needed to address the issue of workforce safety?
Edward Argar
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the work we are already doing, which I will address in a moment, and the number of nurses we have recruited. I believe we have now recruited 29,000 or so en route to our target of 50,000 more nurses by the end of this Parliament.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Edward Argar
I will make a little progress, if I may—a few more paragraphs—as I am very conscious of allowing time for Back-Bench colleagues to speak.
Building on this work, we recently commissioned NHS England to develop a workforce strategy. We will set out the key conclusions of that work in due course. In addition, we have committed ourselves to merging Health Education England with NHS England to bring together responsibility for service, financial and workforce planning in one organisation. We will continue to grow and invest in the workforce. There are record numbers of staff, including nurses, working in the NHS.
Sir Robert Neill
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He will know of my interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on stroke, and he will be aware of the particular concern of the Stroke Association and others about the number of qualified therapists to provide the therapy people need after a stroke. Will he commit himself to that being part of the workforce strategy and to moving swiftly? This is already a pressing problem for stroke survivors who are not getting the care they need.
Edward Argar
I reassure my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made it clear that he wishes the whole health and care workforce landscape to be considered by Health Education England.
The growth in our workforce comes on the back of our record investment in the NHS, which is helping to deliver our manifesto commitments, as I said to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), including our commitment to 50,000 more nurses by the end of the Parliament. The spending review settlement will also underpin funding for the biggest ever intake of undergraduate medical students and nurses.
Although I might not be able to say anything sufficient to fully convince my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), I put on record my gratitude to him not only for the insight, expertise and knowledge he has brought to our debates on this issue but for the typical courtesy he has displayed throughout our interactions and conversations. I do not know what he will say in a moment, but I have tried to pre-empt him. I hope that he may be tempted to stick with it.
I hope that the House will recognise that the Government are already doing substantial work to improve workforce planning, and that placing a requirement such as Lords amendment 29B on the statute book is therefore unnecessary.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way?
Edward Argar
Very briefly, but I am sensitive to Madam Deputy Speaker’s instruction to be brief.
Kim Leadbeater
I thank the Minister for giving way. More than 100 organisations, including the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association, have expressed their support for Lords amendment 29B. Does he agree that the only way to ensure that we recruit and retain the talented staff that our NHS and social care sector desperately need is through a long-term workforce plan in consultation with the experts in the field, such as health and care employers, unions and integrated care boards?
Edward Argar
That is exactly what we are doing through the work commissioned by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, which is why Lords amendment 29B is unnecessary.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
Will the Minister give way?
Edward Argar
I fear that I cannot, but my hon. Friend may catch me during my winding-up speech. I want to make progress, as about 10 Back-Bench colleagues wish to speak.
Finally, on the adult social care cap, the Government have announced our plan for a sustainable social care system. It is fair, affordable and designed to end the pain of unpredictable care costs by capping the amount anyone needs to pay at £86,000. Without clause 140 there would be a fundamental unfairness: two people living in different parts of the country, contributing the same amount, would progress towards the cap at different rates based on differences in the amount their local authority is paying. We are committed to levelling up and must ensure that people in different parts of the country are benefiting to the same extent, and our provisions support this. Amendments 80A to 80N also make crucial changes to support the operation of charging reform, as these changes were lost by the removal of clause 140 in the other place.
Lords amendments 80P and 80Q insert a regulation-making power to amend how
“costs accrued in meeting eligible needs”
is determined in section 15 of the Care Act 2014. However, if regulations were made using this power, they would result in anyone entering the care system under the age of 40 receiving free personal care up to that age. As local authority contributions would count towards the cap under these changes, a 35-year-old with average care costs would reach the cap and not have to pay anything towards the cost of their care, yet a person who enters care the day after their 40th birthday would need to contribute towards the £86,000 cap over their lifetime. We believe this is unfair. Our plan already includes a more generous means test that means more people will be eligible for state support towards the cost of care earlier, enabling them to keep more of their income.
The changes introduced in the other place also threaten the affordability of our reforms. Lords amendments 80, 80P and 80Q would clearly affect financial arrangements to be made by this House and, as such, have financial privilege. These new Lords amendments would cost the taxpayer more than £1 billion a year by 2027-28. Ultimately, this would mean we need to make the same level of savings elsewhere, making the system less generous for other users. I hope I have been able to provide some reassurance that we believe our approach is still the right one, and I ask the House to disagree with the other place’s amendments.
Finally, I put on record my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) and the noble Baroness Morgan of Cotes for their constructive and positive engagement during the Bill’s passage on ways to strengthen co-operation between the UK Government, the UK Statistics Authority, the Office for National Statistics and the devolved Administrations, and for their passion for strengthening the Union. I am pleased we are taking forward that work, albeit outside this Bill. I am stimulated by their important work.
We have sought throughout the passage of the Bill to be pragmatic and to listen to this House and the other place in either accepting their amendments or addressing them in lieu. I hope the House recognises that this approach continues to characterise our work, save where we sadly cannot agree with the other place in respect of its amendments on both the workforce and social care caps.
The speech made by Edward Argar, the Minister for Health, in the House of Commons on 31 March 2022.
Just as I had the pleasure of giving the final speech in the final debate before the House went into recess before the last half-term, I have the same privilege today. To that end, I congratulate the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this important debate. In the short time in which she has been a Member of this House, she has taken an extremely close interest in the issues of ambulances and healthcare for her constituents more broadly. She has been assiduous in raising them in the House, as she has today, or through other means with Ministers and the Department. I pay tribute to her for that.
The hon. Lady will be aware, as she has genuinely and openly said, that there are complex causes behind the challenges faced by her constituents, and also by people around the country, with the ambulance service and ambulance response times. Ambulance services have faced extraordinary pressures, which have been particularly exacerbated during the pandemic. I am sure the House will join me in expressing gratitude, as she did, to all the ambulance service staff in the NHS for their outstanding work and dedication during this time. I recognise the very powerful individual cases that the hon. Lady cited, suitably anonymised, to illustrate her arguments and her case.
As I have mentioned, the pandemic has placed very significant demands on the service. In February this year, the service answered over 760,000 calls to 999—this is nationally, and I will turn to the hon. Lady’s local situation in due course—which is an increase of 13% on February 2020. That places very significant pressures on the ambulance service and the wider NHS, and I will turn to the broader causes shortly. She was absolutely right to highlight that the issue is often not with the ambulance service itself—the number of ambulances or the number of staff—but about handovers and the ability to do turnarounds having safely deposited a patient at an acute setting in a hospital, but I will turn to that in a minute.
A range of other issues, as well of course as demand, impact on performance, including the need for infection prevention and control measures, which remain in place in hospitals. They may not be as acute or as severe as they were at the height of the pandemic, but they are still there, and that does have an impact. There are the handover delays the hon. Lady spoke about, which are linked to capacity with those infection prevention and control measures, but also to the ability either to treat and discharge or to admit patients to a hospital. In recent months, we have also had high workforce sickness absence rates, often down to covid and covid self-isolation, with staff quite rightly taking the view that when they test positive for covid they should stay at home until they do not.
In spite of these pressures—and this is in no way to diminish the point the hon. Lady made about the impact on her constituents, but is by way of context—the average response time in the west midlands to category 1 calls, the most serious calls classified as life threatening, was maintained at eight minutes and 11 seconds in February 2022. That was despite of a 40% increase in that category of calls on the previous year and a 16% increase locally in 999 calls overall. At a national level, the category 1 response time has been largely maintained at about nine minutes on average over the last several months—so not quite as good as the performance in the West Midlands—despite a 23.5% increase in those incidents compared with before the pandemic. However, we are clear that there have been significant increases in response times in the other categories, which of course we must improve.
Helen Morgan
I just want to make the point that in Shropshire we are not seeing the same level of service that we see across the west midlands as a whole. I am calling for more granular data because I think some excellent service provided elsewhere in the West Midlands Ambulance Service area is overshadowing some of the specific problems we are seeing in Shropshire. In addition, the number of hospital admissions to the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust is running roughly at the same level as in prior years, so although the covid pandemic has provided challenges in separating out such patients when they arrive through infection control measures, it is not actually leading to a higher level of admissions.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and I will turn to her specific asks in a moment.
However, I will turn now to the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), which I am aware of. I have to be honest and say that we do not consider that the Bill would necessarily be the most appropriate way of achieving what she wants. The challenge with that legislation is that, at a time when we wish trusts to be focused on the delivery of frontline services, it is another administrative process of data collection. I would add that trusts of course operate at trust level, not at an individual station or county level, and trusts may cover a number of counties. So while I am aware of her legislation, it is not something that I believe would achieve the outcomes or be practical in the way she wishes, and she and I regularly have a to and fro across the Dispatch Box about a number of issues when she speaks for her party on health and care matters.
There is strong support in place to improve performance. At the national level, as the hon. Member for North Shropshire generously recognised, there was £55 million of investment last summer, in advance of the winter, to help increase ambulance staffing capacity to manage pressures. All trusts received a portion of that funding to expand capacity through additional crews on the road and additional clinical support in control rooms as well as extending hospital ambulance liaison officer cover at the most challenged acute trusts.
On overall staffing, which includes frontline clinical staff and the clinical support staff who work with them, our ambulance service has seen about a 38% increase since 2010—the Liberal Democrats can quite rightly take some credit for that from their five years in government—and, indeed, in the last year we have seen an increase of about 500 frontline staff. So we have increased staff and continue to increase available staff.
The £55 million was supported by an additional £4.4 million in capital investment—these are still national figures, but I will turn to her specific local circumstances—which helped to keep an additional 154 ambulances on the road during winter over and above normal levels. Call handler numbers, which are equally important, are being boosted with more than 2,400 on target to be in place by the end of March—the end of today. That is about 500 more FTE—full-time equivalent—staff compared with September 2021, with potential for services to increase in capacity further during the coming financial year.
NHS England and Improvement is also providing targeted support to the hospitals facing the greatest issues with delays in the handover of ambulance patients, helping them to identify short and longer-term interventions to reduce delays and get ambulances swiftly back out on the road. She is right that that is hugely important, and even more so in areas with large rural populations because of the distances involved. Trusts also receive supportive continuous central monitoring and support by NHSEI’s national ambulance co-ordination centre.
With clinical support in control rooms, the ambulance service is closing just over 11% of 999 calls with clinical advice over the phone, which is an increase of three quarters since before the pandemic. That helps to save valuable ambulance resources to respond to more urgent calls, with that clinical input ensuring that the advice and decisions are right.
The hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that significant local support is in place to improve response times in her county. The West Midlands Ambulance Service is working with community partners to help avoid conveying patients to hospital where there is no clinical necessity, providing alternate treatment and care at home or in the community and helping to avoid unnecessary trips to hospital, thereby freeing up resources and hopefully providing a more pleasant experience for those patients.
In raw numbers, the West Midlands Ambulance Service conveyed over 600 fewer patients to hospital in February based on the clinical advice this year compared with two years ago. It has also introduced a clinical validation team of advanced paramedics who work in control rooms and clinically triage lower urgency cases and, where appropriate, signpost patients to other services, as I alluded to. In February, that team reviewed 967 cases in Shropshire, of which 61% of were not sent an ambulance, 14% were treated on the scene and just 25% were conveyed to hospital. That was based on the clinical triage, which I am sure the hon. Lady agrees should be central to any decisions made. That has played a significant part in helping the service to tackle the pressures.
Other practical solutions include hospital ambulance liaison officers—HALOs—who are paramedics who work with bed managers to smooth out the flow of patients coming to an A&E department. They can provide a constant flow of information about capacity to the strategic command cell at the ambulance service headquarters, escalating any issues and avoiding queueing where possible. There is also joint work to cohort ambulance patients at A&E sites, where a single ambulance crew takes responsibility for three or four patients. That releases crews to respond to outstanding calls in the community more quickly.
A new same-day emergency centre—SDEC—has been opened at the Royal Shrewsbury to divert patients, as clinically appropriate, away from A&E, improving handover times. In the two and a half years that I have been a health Minister, I have discovered that there are probably almost as many acronyms in health as in the Ministry of Defence. Surgical SDEC capacity at the Royal Shrewsbury has also been expanded and all SDEC units receive ambulances directly for suitable patients.
The hon. Lady rightly mentioned hospitals, and I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) is here and made an intervention. During her seven years in the House, she has been a regular and vocal advocate for her local hospital in Telford. I pay tribute to her, because it was due to her campaigning and tenacity that there is an A&E locally at Telford. That is still seeing patients and helping to alleviate the pressure in Shropshire. She should rightly be proud of that, having successfully campaigned for it.
Action is being taken locally to improve the patient flow through hospitals by discharging patients more quickly to create bed space. The aim is not only to increase the number of discharges a day, but to bring more discharges forward to earlier in the day, when it is clinically safe to do so, to allow the effective discharge and transition back to care at home or in a care home. Health and care system partners locally are looking to create additional community and social care capacity to support timely discharge, create bed space to take patients from A&E and reduce ambulance handover times.
At a national level, we have set up a national discharge taskforce. As a Minister, I get almost daily statistics about where we are on delayed discharges across the country. It is a complex picture, with a variety of reasons behind delayed discharges. The hon. Member for North Shropshire is correct that some are about delays in getting into care homes or getting domiciliary care packages or rehabilitation packages at home. Some are also down to delays in the hospital in sign-offs and procedures, and there is more that we continue to do to drive those delays down.
Construction is also under way on a new modular ward at the Royal Shrewsbury site, with 32 additional beds in service by spring 2022. That is alongside a £9.3 million upgrade of the emergency department at the Royal Shrewsbury, delivering additional cubicles, a new and improved majors department, a new designated emergency zone for children and young people and a new clinical decisions unit. The first phase of that work is complete and all areas will be finished by spring 2022.
The hon. Lady raised a number of other issues, including the Future Fit model. We have been clear that funding of £312 million was allocated for that project, and that remains allocated. The challenge we face is that, thus far, the trust has not proposed a solution that meets that budget. We continue to work with the trust and to encourage it to do so. I hope that it will so that we can continue to drive that important project forward.
I will very gently push back on what the hon. Lady said about there being £10 billion of PPE that is not fit for purpose. She will know that that is not correct. In the statement that was made about write-downs, not write-offs, the amount was about £8.7 billion, and it was not all PPE, by any means, that was not fit for purpose. Only a tiny proportion of that was the case. A significant element of that was essentially due to over-ordering at the height of the pandemic to make sure that the frontline had the PPE that it needed. We were buying at the height of the market, and there is currently a glut of PPE, so its value has inevitably declined. Not all of it will be used, because we got more than we needed to make sure that clinicians and others on the frontline were not exposed.
The hon. Lady touched on local ambulance Make Ready stations and the changes to them. Decisions on reconfigurations and changes to that are made locally by the trust; it consults, but it makes those decisions. The Government do not have any power over those matters. The Health and Care Bill, which we debated yesterday, would give the Secretary of State greater power over such reconfigurations in the way that she asked, but her hon. Friend the Member for St Albans argued against that. I gently say that that is a matter for the local trust and the usual NHS processes on reconfigurations.
The hon. Lady touched on, I think—forgive me if I am wrong—asking the CQC to look into this issue. It is entirely open for her or others to raise it with the CQC, and the CQC will make a decision or a judgment on whether it believes that it is appropriate or otherwise to look into the matter.
In the few seconds that I have left, before Mr Deputy Speaker calls me to order, I say that I recognise and do not in any way diminish the significance of the issues that the hon. Lady raised. I hope that I have given her some reassurance that we are working through these issues and that we continue to put the support in place to help her constituents in Shropshire and more broadly.
Finally, the hon. Lady requested a meeting, and I am conscious that she has raised the issue of correspondence. I have asked for that; I believe that that has happened since Christmas, as the Department works through the backlog. There is still a delay in correspondence, but I have pulled that out and asked for it, and I am happy to meet her and her fellow Shropshire MPs, together with the ambulance trust, to discuss their collective concerns or reflections that they would like to put to me as a Minister.
I conclude by wishing the hon. Lady a very happy Easter and by thanking her for bringing this to my attention and the attention of the House.
The statement made by Edward Argar, the Minister for Health, in the House of Commons on 31 March 2022.
The Government rightly prioritised saving lives throughout this pandemic. The scale of the challenge we faced should not be underestimated. We have worked tirelessly to source lifesaving PPE, delivering more than 19.1 billion items to protect frontline health and care staff.
Global demand for PPE reached unparalleled levels at the outset of the pandemic, which resulted in huge disruption across the market for PPE.
Our fight was against a new infection and at the outset, the data to determine what PPE the health and care sectors needed did not exist. Requirement for supplies was initially forecast on reasonable worst-case scenario modelling, and we now know less PPE was needed in practice.
However, in a fast-moving world of tough choices too much was preferable to too little given this was about saving lives. We had to plan for the worst. As the orders were being placed during the height of the crisis, when the market was extremely volatile, we had to factor in the likely non-performance of contracts.
We are now in a position where we have high confidence that we have sufficient stock to cover all future covid-19 related demands, even in the face of new variants of concern such as we have seen with omicron and with cases of the BA.2 lineage rising.
Not only this, but we now have the capability to produce most of what we need here in the UK across all categories except for gloves.
Where we have surplus stock, including stock that has turned out not to be suitable for use in the NHS, we have employed a range of measures to reduce it including selling, re-using and donating both in this country and internationally, recycling, and by pursuing return or recovery of costs through the original supplier.
Where products have failed quality assurance, or if products were ordered that have not arrived, the Department is taking action to determine whether a breach of contract has occurred. The investigations into contracts where we have some degree of dissatisfaction due to our high standards of quality control, or due to clear contractual breach, relate to 176 contracts.
We are working through the dispute resolution process and we are aiming to recoup significant amounts. The Department has already reduced the supply of PPE by varying and curtailing contracts. As at 18 December, the Department had negotiated the cancellation or variation of contracts to reduce the original supply of PPE by 1.21 billion items that would have cost £572 million.
Sales
To date we have achieved the sale of 330 million masks to two private companies, and we have other deals in the pipeline.
We are also about to launch an online auction to sell PPE, so individuals and companies may bid for our excess stock. Details are available on Gov.UK.
Repurposing
There are a number of items that meet all technical requirements and are suitable for use in the NHS, but they are not the preferred option. For example, self-construct visors which take four to six minutes to build were not overly appropriate for clinical settings with high usage.
However, the items were high quality and have been used in settings which allow for less time-pressured set up, such as by dentists.
Similarly, flatpack aprons have been able to be distributed for use in social care settings.
Shelf-life extension
We are exploring shelf-life extension for items that are in demand.
The Department has appointed a third-party medical laboratory to provide testing of certain categories of PPE products to see how viable it is to extend their shelf life without the products being compromised where this fits with our overall plans.
Donations
We have donated a large number of products domestically to support this country’s road to recovery underpinned by the fantastic success of our vaccination rollout. This includes 207 million masks being supplied to our schools so that pupils could get back to learning in classrooms with their peers and 38 million to transport operators to help get Britain moving once again as we begin to live with the virus. Masks have also been distributed to charities and polling stations.
Having this stock has also allowed us to provide items across the world to support the global fight against the virus.
So far, working with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, we have donated 500,000 items to Lebanon, Nepal and Overseas Territories and are in discussions with other countries and multilateral organisations, working to finalise agreements and logistics with over 30 countries. We have also donated to Ukraine, as part of a wider package of UK Government support.
Recycling
After successful trials, we have now recycled 23 million visors into plastic food trays. We are also in the process of recycling 53 thousand pallets of aprons and eye protectors; aprons are being made into bin bags, “Bags for Life” and other high-demand products.
Disposals
Our priorities are to sell, donate, repurpose or recycle wherever we can. Nevertheless, there are some PPE products that we cannot reuse or recycle. The majority of PPE items are designed to be single use and disposed of as medical waste and so are often made up of complex chains of polymers. These items cannot be broken down for recycling. As a result, many of the products we hold are not able to be fully recycled and around half are completely non-recyclable.
We have awarded contracts to two expert waste service providers. These lead waste providers will review the feasibility of recycling each item across our excess and provide detailed options.
To reduce storage costs, we must accelerate the speed of our programme, particularly for stock that is likely to become out-of-date before it is ever used and is unsuitable for recycling. For every pallet of PPE we sell, repurpose, donate and recycle, taxpayers save on average £2.75 a week for years to come.
The amount taxpayers will save from taking this decisive action would, for example, be enough to employ around 1,850 nurses for a year.
We will work with our lead waste providers to examine wider disposal options including through “energy from waste” processes. Environmental concerns will be key, and we will be taking into consideration the Government’s waste hierarchy, prioritising recycling, and then energy from waste for that proportion of stock which we hold that cannot be recycled.
Our priorities are to keep selling, repurposing and donating the stock that we can but at the same time taking a realistic, pragmatic approach to managing stock and putting in place solutions that make sense economically and environmentally.