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  • Helen Whately – 2025 Speech to Conservative Party Conference

    Helen Whately – 2025 Speech to Conservative Party Conference

    The speech made by Helen Whately, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, in Manchester on 6 October 2025.

    Good afternoon, Conference.

    Craig is an extraordinary inspiration.

    I remember back in 2015, he turned up in an ancient Land Rover to campaign with me in a housing estate in Maidstone.

    Back then Craig had a no nonsense, pull your socks up attitude.

    He’s been through a lot since then, and he still has it.

    I asked Craig to kick off this session, not only because I knew he would do a great job, but because his attitude is what the whole country needs.

    Everyone goes through hard times.

    I am sure all of you have, one way or another.

    I bet you have always done your best to find your own way through.

    That’s the Conservative way.

    And it’s not just us. That is how most people think.

    But not everyone.

    We are here because we know we have a really important job to do – if not us, who?

    But millions of people right now, are sitting on the sofa at home.

    Millions have got themselves a sick note from the GP and signed onto sickness benefits with just a form and a phone call.

    Millions are getting benefits for anxiety and ADHD, along with a free Motability car.

    TikTok videos tell you how – and some people even pay for VIP services to boost their chances of a successful benefits claim.

    Yes, there are people with serious illnesses and disabilities,

    But one in four people now describe themselves as disabled, so what does the term even mean?

    We’ve got 10 million people of working age now claiming benefits

    1 million young people not in employment, education or training.

    Just when they should be getting going. Getting experience, and that feeling of having money in your pocket that you’ve earned yourself.

    I genuinely feel we’re at risk of a wasted generation.

    And our economy needs people – not just migrants imported to fill the gap.

    The right answer has to be: get British people into work.

    Last week I went to Teeside, and I visited a great British family business, Pickerings Lifts.

    They install lifts, all round the country, and they have a great apprenticeship scheme.

    There are 5,000 people unemployed there, in Stockton-on-Tees.

    And right on their doorstep is an estate which was in the infamous Benefits Street documentary.

    We were talking about the jobs situation, and the MD of Pickering said “Actually, we’ve got lots of vacancies, it’s really hard to get people to do these jobs – and stick at them”.

    And I’m sitting there thinking, what an earth. People tell me the problem is all the jobs now are in social care or the gig economy – or need skills people don’t have. But here you have exactly the sort of jobs people say they want, along with training, a decent salary, and good career prospects.

    So, what are people doing instead of working at Pickerings?

    The problem is, you can get 5,000 pounds more a year on sickness benefits than a minimum wage worker.

    So, no surprise that’s what many people are choosing.

    And it’s wrong. Our welfare system should be a safety net, not a lifestyle choice.

    Keir Starmer has said he wants to make welfare savings.

    Back in the summer he tried.

    But he failed so catastrophically, that instead of saving money, he ended up forking out 300 million pounds of your money to get his backbenchers to vote for his bill.

    That’s what a weak leader looks like, Keir cowering in fear from his left-wing backbenchers.

    In a few weeks’ time, Rachel Reeves will be putting up our taxes again.

    We will all be paying more because Labour MPs would rather hike your taxes than get a grip of their welfare system.

    So would the Lib Dems, the Greens, the SNP, Plaid and even Reform.

    All of them want the Government to spend billions more on welfare.

    £3.5 billion more, just to end the two-child benefit cap.

    Where will they find that money?

    And it’s not fair.

    People in work make tough decisions about whether they can afford to even start a family, and they don’t get paid more if they have an extra child.

    Believe me, I am all for encouraging people to have kids.

    But people on benefits should face the same decisions as the rest of us.

    It’s about taking responsibility for the choices you make.

    That’s the Conservative way.

    Labour doesn’t get it – and Nigel doesn’t either.

    We need a government with the courage to do what’s right, not just what sounds nice.

    That leaves us as the only party who can fix welfare.

    That’s why I’ve got my common sense plan for savings.

    Fix the ‘sick note’ system, bring back face-to-face assessments, end sickness benefits for low level mental health problems, stop the abuse of Motability, and put British citizens first in our benefits system – just living here is not a reason to get money from taxpayers.

    And that’s not all.

    We will change our sickness benefit system, so it helps those who really need help and stops turning people into victims.

    We will make the benefits cap do what it should, so that families on benefits aren’t better off than those in work.

    And we’ll tackle the massive hike in housing benefit.

    All that gives you billions of savings off the benefits bill.

    Savings that can help us balance the country’s books and money to help people into work.

    Because this isn’t just about savings, it’s about turning people’s lives around.

    And for us to succeed as a country, we need everyone to put their shoulder to the wheel.

    Conference, it’s time to return to the Conservative principles we know are the secret to our country’s success.

    Personal responsibility, aspiration, fairness, real compassion, living within our means.

    Labour have only one playbook. Handouts and higher taxes.

    Reform, in the words of their newest MP, will spend like drunken sailors.  

    The job of fixing welfare falls to us. All of us.

    I have a plan but there’s more to do.

    The hard yards, the hard thinking, the tough decisions to turn this country around.

    From stagnation to growth, from envy to aspiration, and from despondency to hope.

    Thank you, Conference.

  • Helen Whately – 2023 Speech at the NHS Confederation Conference

    Helen Whately – 2023 Speech at the NHS Confederation Conference

    The speech made by Helen Whately, the Health Minister, on 27 September 2023.

    Thank you, Layla [Dr Layla McCay] and thank you all for being here.

    I wanted to be here, even with this broken ankle, because the NHS Confederation is a very important organisation and it is a great opportunity to meet lots of you here today.

    But the topic of today’s conference – health beyond the hospital – to me, that is the clincher.

    It’s something I have been wanting to talk about since the Prime Minister appointed me. But I rarely get the chance, in public, because it’s not what most people ask me about.

    For instance, if I’ve got the joy of the notorious morning media round, notorious among ministers that is, I’ll likely be asked about acute hospital performance, A&E waits, and possibly discharge into social care, because of how that affects hospitals.

    It often feels like the acute hospital is like the sun in the NHS solar system with everything else spinning round it. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and I suspect many of you are here because you don’t believe it should be that way.

    I scarcely need to remind you of the context for this conversation. Firstly, the fact that more people are living longer with multiple health conditions. Over half of people over 55 have at least one long term condition, and that goes up to 80% of people aged over 80. And more people are living to a much greater age when they are also likely to be frail.

    There are a bit under 2 million people aged over 85. And over half of people over 85 are affected by frailty. In a couple of decades that number – people over 85 – will double.

    I don’t need to tell this audience about the challenges of an ageing population for our health system. But, as the Prime Minister said last week, governments must reckon with reality.

    This reality means we need to do healthcare differently, for the sake of individuals and for the sake of the system as a whole.

    We should start with what people want. If any of you have heard me speaking about hospital visiting, you will know that my mum has been pretty unwell this year. Even so, my mum doesn’t want to go in and out of hospital. In fact, she has to be practically dead before she agrees to going. She’s not alone in that.

    We probably all know someone who is, or has been, through this – bouncing in and out of hospital. We know that it is miserable.

    What most people want is to be able to stay at home, and have their healthcare on hand, from clinicians who understand them and what they need. Giving them control over what’s going on, and without being wheeled into an emergency department time after time.

    Then looking at our health system, we know our emergency departments are struggling with the number of people turning up. They’ve got really good at triage and developing new models like having GPs on site and same day emergency care. But it’s really hard to get care right in an emergency department for someone who’s frail with really complex care needs – and for those people, once they are in hospital, it can be so much harder for them to get home.

    Now here there is some good news: what people want and what would help our stretched acute hospitals is the same.

    Now I won’t be simplistic – ministers are always looking for the silver bullet, but I have been in this job long enough to know that there is no such thing. There is no one magic thing, but what there is, is a cluster of things that make a difference.

    Several of these were brought together in the Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan, and are already well on their way to being offered in every area – like consistent urgent community response services, which do a great job of keeping people out of hospital when there’s a crisis.

    Like virtual wards, or hospitals at home, which mean people can get the hospital-level care they need in their own home, avoiding admission or allowing earlier discharge. Like the ‘Enhanced Health in Care Homes’ model.

    And scaling up intermediate care for patients following hospital discharge, to which end NHS England has just published the intermediate care framework. Among other things, this guides systems on demand and capacity planning to make sure that the amount of step-down care commissioned in each area will be enough to meet the needs of patients, particularly as demand increases during the winter months.

    But there’s a particular approach which I want to focus on today, which to me is the next big thing we have to do. That is to put in place really good, proactive, community-based, multidisciplinary, proactive, anticipatory care.

    Many of you will have heard of the Jean Bishop Centre in Hull, but for those of you who haven’t, I’ll give you a whistle-stop introduction.

    It’s named after, obviously, Jean Bishop. For 30 years Jean paced the streets of Hull, rattling her tin, and urging passers-by to donate to charity. She borrowed a stripy outfit from Age UK and quickly became known as Hull’s ‘bee lady’ – a local legend.

    She went out in all seasons – sunshine or rain, for anyone who knows Hull. This remarkable woman raised more than £125,000 for charity. She passed away 2 years ago, but her legacy lives on: Hull’s Jean Bishop Integrated Care Centre opened in 2018.

    Now people talk a lot about integrated care. This is it in action. The centre’s team includes geriatricians, advanced nurse practitioners, GPs, pharmacists, therapists and social workers, all under one roof.

    GPs across Hull identify patients at risk of severe frailty and refer them for a comprehensive assessment. They’ll see whoever they need to see in that multidisciplinary team. And they’ll get a tailored care plan shared with them, their GP and the hospital. A plan that reflects what they want – to help them manage their own care and stay healthy.

    The centre offers the same service to care home residents too. And it works. Between 2019 and 2022, for patients aged over 80, emergency hospital admissions fell by more than 13% and A&E attendance for patients in care homes fell by almost a fifth.

    And they are not the only ones doing this. For example, the ‘Age Well Team’ in Northamptonshire, with a proactive care model and a multi-disciplinary team, have seen a 5% drop in unplanned hospital admissions.

    Another example – one that means a lot to me because it’s just on my doorstep in Kent – is the proactive integrated care provided by the Estuary View practice in Whitstable, which was one of the vanguards that informed the inclusion of integrated community health services and expanded neighbourhood teams in the NHS Long Term Plan.

    I imagine those of you here today also have some great examples in your areas, which I’d like to learn about.

    So what now? Well, I meet with James Sanderson, who you heard from just before the break, every couple of weeks, and pretty much every time we meet, I ask him about this.

    Over the last few months, James and colleagues at NHS England – working with organisations like Age UK and the British Geriatrics Society, drawing from best practice across the country and the world – have been developing the proactive care framework, focused on frailty. Which will set out the combination of things that good proactive care involves – the effective use of data, holistic assessments, personalised care, multidisciplinary working, co-ordinated care and targeted support for individual patients and their carers.

    The framework is coming soon to help systems put this into practice, and then the job will be to make it happen.

    Now, making stuff happen can’t just be by ministerial decree – me saying it is not enough. Making things happen involves thousands of people who work in the NHS thinking, and doing, something differently. And in my experience, just telling people to do something doesn’t work – at least, not very well. We need people across the NHS to believe in this, to want to do it, and then to have the support to be able to do it.

    And what I would love from you, and I recognise I am preaching to the converted here today, is to do what you can to make this happen. Because if I know anything, the answers to the problems are out there, not up here.

    Before I sit down and take your questions, on my part, I can give you this assurance. People often talk about the NHS like it’s the National Hospital Service, not the National Health Service. And when the chips are down, the focus tends to be the hospitals and what’s going on in them. But I don’t let that happen on my watch.

    I’m always the one who says, ‘Hold on – what about the rest of the system?’

    If I go back to my solar system analogy earlier, the sun at the centre actually should be the person, the individual, whose health this is all about. Hospitals, community health services, mental health services, social care providers and so on – these are all important parts of the system.

    And the future of healthcare is as much about what happens out of the hospital, as what happens in it.

  • Helen Whately – 2023 Statement on the Testing of Care Home Residents

    Helen Whately – 2023 Statement on the Testing of Care Home Residents

    The statement made by Helen Whately, the Minister for Social Care, in the House of Commons on 1 March 2023.

    The covid-19 pandemic was an unprecedented global health emergency involving a novel coronavirus that we were still learning about day by day, even hour by hour. Even in those early days, the UK Government and colleagues in my Department were clear that testing would be crucial. That is why the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), set ambitious testing targets to drive a true step change in the quantity of tests, because he knew that testing would be a vital lifeline until vaccines could be developed and proven safe and effective.

    The importance of testing was never in doubt, and there was full agreement on that in every part of Government, from the chief medical officer to the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister. But in a situation where we had the capacity to test, at most, a few thousand each day, tough decisions about prioritisation had to be made. Those decisions were taken on the best public health advice available. Thanks in no small part to the bold testing ambitions driven by the Government, we were able to build the largest testing network in Europe.

    I put on record my thanks to all those who worked tirelessly on this mission day and night, from civil servants to the NHS and, of course, our incredible social care workforce, who did so much to look after their residents. They all deserve our lasting gratitude.

    The situation in our care homes was extremely difficult during the pandemic, not just in England but across the UK and, indeed, across the world. Because of the vulnerability of residents and the large number of people who come in and out of care homes, it is vital that we learn lessons.

    It is equally vital that we learn those lessons in the right context. Selective snippets of WhatsApp conversations give a limited and, at times, misleading insight into the machinery of government at the time. The covid inquiry is important so that we have the right preparations in place to meet future threats and challenges.

    Liz Kendall

    Throughout the covid pandemic, Ministers repeatedly claimed that they had thrown a protective ring around England’s care homes and that they had always followed the evidence and scientific advice, but WhatsApp messages from the former Health Secretary revealed in today’s Daily Telegraph suggest that nothing could be further from the truth.

    Will the Minister confirm that the chief medical officer first advised the Government to test all residents going into care homes in early April 2020? Can she explain why the former Health Secretary rejected that advice and failed to introduce community testing until 14 August—a staggering four months later? Can she publish the evidence that following the advice would have muddied the waters, as the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) claimed? And can she confirm that 17,678 people died of covid in care homes between the CMO’s advice and the Government finally deciding to act? She should know, because she was responsible for care homes at the time.

    Former Ministers are touring the studios this morning claiming that this delay was simply because there were not enough tests. Where is the evidence for that? Even if tests were in short supply, why were care homes residents not prioritised when the devastating impact of covid was there for all to see?

    Nobody denies that dealing with covid was unbelievably difficult, especially in the early days, but care home residents and staff were simply not a priority. Yet the former Prime Minister and former Health Secretary were first warned about the emerging horror in care homes by my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) in March 2020. I myself raised the lack of testing in care homes with the Health Secretary on 8 April, 28 April, 19 May and 17 June 2020, long before the CMO’s advice was finally followed.

    The Minister will no doubt say that all these issues will be looked at in the public inquiry, but its findings will not be available for years. The families of the 43,000 care home residents who lost their lives will be appalled at the former Health Secretary attempting to rewrite history—an attempt that will turn to ashes along with his TV career. We need more humility and less celebrity from the right hon. Member for West Suffolk, and above all we need answers.

    Helen Whately

    It is relatively easy for the hon. Member to come to the House today and make these highly political points. Knowing how she and I worked together in the pandemic, and that she and I talked about all that we were doing to look after people in care homes, I am shocked and disappointed by the tone she has taken today, when we are dealing with extremely serious questions.

    I will turn first to some of the difficult prioritisation decisions that were made, given the limited quantity of testing we had at the beginning of the pandemic. The Government followed the expert public health advice available at the time. We had the capacity to test just 3,000 cases a day in mid-March, and I am sure colleagues will understand why the health advice at the time was to prioritise those working on our NHS frontline and, for instance, the testing of people in hospitals and care homes who had symptoms. In fact, the courts have already agreed that our prioritisation decisions on testing were completely rational.

    As we dramatically ramped up testing capacity, we also adjusted that prioritisation in line with the public health advice and the capacity, so by mid-April—just a month later—with testing capacity exceeding 38,000, we were in a position to test more widely. In fact, that is reflected in our adult social care plan published on 15 April, which made it clear that everyone discharged from a hospital to a care home should be tested even if asymptomatic, and that all discharged patients, regardless of the result of their test, should be isolated for 14 days. It is worth reflecting just what a dramatic increase in testing the Government oversaw, from just 3,000 in March 2020 to over 38,000 in mid-April, to over 100,000 by mid-May, to the point where we could test many millions in a single week. We established the largest testing network in Europe from a standing start, and the science proves that it saved lives.

    The hon. Lady asked about the content of the WhatsApp messages that have been published. I say to her that it is a selection from a larger quantity of messages. Clearly, while there were discussions and debates between Ministers and colleagues, partly on WhatsApp, there were also meetings and conversations and other forums in which advice was given and decisions made. A huge quantity of that is with the public inquiry, but I can say to her that, for instance, a meeting to discuss the implementation of the advice on testing was not referenced in the WhatsApp messages she is talking about. There is an email following the exchange to which she is referring that says, “We can press ahead straightaway with hospitals testing patients who are going into care homes. And we should aspire, as soon as capacity allows and when we have worked out an operational way of delivering this, that everyone going into a care home from the community could be tested.” As I say, she is basing her comments on very selective information.

    As I said, the hon. Lady knows how the Government, and me personally, strained every sinew, worked day and night, and did everything in our power to help people, and specifically the most vulnerable, during the pandemic. She and I spoke about it regularly during our frequent calls. In fact, at the time I appreciated her perspective, questions and insights from her own area of Leicester. I say to her that we should go about this discussion in the right way for the country. This is not the time to play political games. We should look to save lives. That is the purpose of the public inquiry: to learn lessons in the right way in case this should ever happen again.

    Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)

    My hon. Friend will agree that it was Labour that called for a public inquiry, and the Government agreed to it. It is a full public inquiry and we could not have a better judge than Dame Heather Hallett, one of our most experienced and distinguished judges. She will do a very thorough job. Does my hon. Friend agree that what we are seeing today is a bit of trial by media and party politics?

    Helen Whately

    My right hon. and learned Friend is exactly right; we are having a public inquiry and the Government are fully co-operating with it so that it has all the information required to look through all that happened, to investigate it and, rather than trying to score political points, to truly learn lessons for the benefit of the country.

    Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)

    On 2 April 2020, I wrote to the former Health and Social Care Secretary, jointly with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), highlighting the urgent need for testing in care homes for staff and residents and, in particular, for patients being discharged from hospital. I knew at the time, as did other colleagues, that without that testing, care homes in my constituency and those across the country were suffering a heavy toll of deaths of residents. Indeed, one of our care home managers died of covid in my constituency.

    Furthermore, at a session of the Select Committee on Health and Social Care in July 2021, I asked the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) why the Government had not taken up the offer from care providers of facilities to isolate people discharged from hospital before admitting them to care homes. He told me that he did not know anything about the letter, despite it being sent by Care England. Will the Minister now admit that the Department and Ministers failed to understand and to involve social care in the key decisions about the covid pandemic, and ignored letters offering help that could have saved lives?

    Helen Whately

    The hon. Lady is right about the importance of testing. It is a view that she has and that I had at the time; some of the exchanges will show how I, as Social Care Minister, was arguing very hard for testing for care homes, as Members would expect. I know that other Ministers and other people were arguing for the things that they had oversight of. Ultimately, of course, the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister had to make decisions, based every step of the way, clearly, on the scientific advice on these things, as we did. To that point, during the course of the pandemic, as the capacity allowed, millions of tests were distributed to care homes. As I have said, as the capacity increased, care homes were prioritised in that process. Specifically to address one of the points she made, let me say that the guidance set out on 15 April was not only that everyone discharged from hospital to a care home should be tested, but that they should be isolated.

    Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)

    It seems that the Opposition want to rewrite history. The fact is that at the time people did not know what was right or what was wrong. The then Secretary of State listened to a whole lot of advice and then had to make a decision. Even one of the WhatsApp messages I have seen said:

    “Tell me if I’m wrong”.

    What should happen is that the covid inquiry should deal with all these matters properly. The one question I have for the Minister is this: is it possible to get the covid inquiry to report earlier?

    Helen Whately

    I completely agree with my hon. Friend about the covid inquiry being the right place for people to go through the details of what happened—who said what and, as he said, the genuine debates that took place behind the scenes. This was a new virus and, at the time, we had only limited information about it. For instance, when it first hit our shores, it was not known who would be most vulnerable to it. We also did not know about asymptomatic transmission. There was a huge amount of uncertainty at the time, but the best possible decisions were made. As for the timing of the public inquiry, that is not within the control of Ministers.

    Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)

    The leaked WhatsApp messages from the then Health and Social Care Secretary, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), showed that, despite a shortage of covid tests in September 2020, one of the Minister’s advisers sent a test to the home of the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) by courier. This is yet more evidence that it is one rule for Conservative Ministers and another for everyone else. Can the Minister please inform the House how many other Government Ministers, Conservative MPs and their families received priority tests during the pandemic when there was a shortage of tests?

    Helen Whately

    It is difficult for me as a Minister to see WhatsApp messages from me in the pages of a newspaper. If the hon. Lady has read those, she will have seen that I was seeking a test for a member of my family and that I used exactly the same test app as everybody else to try to access a test that was needed.

    Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)

    I seem to recall that two years ago, when there was a limited supply of testing equipment, there were all sorts of calls for certain groups to be prioritised. There were also urgent calls for available beds in hospitals to be freed up to cope with the likely surge in cases. In hindsight, some of those priorities may have been wrong, but at the time it was an urgent situation. Will my hon. Friend confirm that exactly the same set of priorities about access to testing prevailed in Wales, and it took the Welsh Government two weeks longer to mandate testing for care home residents in Wales than it did in England? Why are we not seeing equal outrage from the Opposition about that?

    Helen Whately

    My hon. Friend makes an important point about the challenges that were faced around the world in handling the pandemic, and very conspicuously for us across the UK. Decisions were having to be taken in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as here in England. Had Opposition Members been in our position, in government, and having to make these difficult decisions, I am sure that they, like us, would have strained every sinew and done their very best to make the best possible decisions in a situation of limited information.

    Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)

    Even if we now know that the Secretary of State was not following the scientific advice, the Minister was in her job at the time these decisions were being made. Can she explain why she did not do the right thing then? Was she not listening to the chief medical officer either?

    Helen Whately

    I fear that the hon. Lady did not hear my previous answer, which was that the public health advice and the advice of the chief medical officer was followed. Of course there is a job to do when advice is given, and then there are the practicalities of implementation. As the volume of tests became available, those tests were used as advised, following the public health advice.

    Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)

    I will not forget the totally shameless politicking by Opposition Members during the pandemic. I specifically remember the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who is no longer in her place, and the Leader of the Opposition talking about how we had the worst death toll in Europe. They said that again and again. [Interruption.] I hear the shadow Minister say from a sedentary position that we did, but the studies now show that we were ahead of Italy, ahead of Spain, broadly in line with France and Germany, and very far from the worst in Europe. Have we ever heard any Opposition Member come to the Dispatch Box and apologise for misleading the British public about our record during the pandemic? Does my hon. Friend agree that they might seek to do that before criticising us any further for our record?

    Helen Whately

    My hon. Friend is right. The right thing for us to do as a country is to reflect overall on how we handled the pandemic, on the decisions that we made and, indeed, on how prepared we were in the first place. That is the right way to do it. Of course we regret every life that was lost; I think about the families who lost mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and grandmas. It is so deeply sad that so many lives were lost, but that is something that affected us here in England, across the UK and, indeed, across the world. But the right thing for us to do is to look at these things in the reasoned environment of the inquiry and then use the lessons learned and the reflections from that inquiry to make sure that, in the event that we ever have to face another pandemic like it, we can do better.

    Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)

    The Government entered the pandemic unprepared, ignoring the lessons from Operation Cygnus, and ran the NHS at 96% capacity. That was part of the problem. We all know that mistakes happen. We all know that it was really difficult. However, today is disappointing, because some humility should have been brought to this place. More than 17,000 people lost their lives. It is our job as the Opposition to scrutinise decisions. The former Secretary of State has thrown his colleagues under a bus because of his own vanity, but I suggest that Government Ministers need to use this time before the inquiry to ease families’ suffering by coming forward with more detail on actually what did happen.

    Helen Whately

    There has already been a legal investigation into some of the aspects that we are talking about today. Given the huge number of decisions that had to be made and the period of time that we are talking about, the right way to do this is to bring all the evidence together, in the form of a public inquiry, and have it fully examined. That is the best way to answer the sorts of questions that the hon. Lady suggests.

    Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)

    This is a profoundly serious question—literally a matter of life and death. As such, I am sure that my hon. Friend is right to say that the appropriate way to reach conclusions is through a proper public inquiry conducted by a very distinguished judge. Can she assure the House that the Government will be as transparent and as open as possible in giving evidence to that public inquiry, so that we can all be confident at the end of this that we have reached the appropriate conclusion?

    Helen Whately

    I can absolutely assure my right hon. Friend that the Government are sharing with the public inquiry a huge quantity of evidence so that it can reach the best possible, best informed conclusions.

    Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)

    The emails and WhatsApp messages expose the fact that the scientific advice was that people leaving hospital should be swabbed before going into care homes, and the Government ignored that. That shows that the Government were not following scientific advice. The Minister has said that other priorities had to be considered before the Government could implement that policy, but no one would have been more aware of the competing priorities than Professor Whitty. What was it that the Government knew that Professor Whitty did not when they decided not to follow his advice?

    Helen Whately

    It really feels as though Opposition Members have not been listening to my answers. The public health advice was followed. The situation was that we had a limited capacity for testing. That is not spelled out in those messages, because, as I have said, other meetings and other conversations were taking place. As soon as testing capacity was available, further testing was used—for example, on people being discharged to care homes. Having been Care Minister at the time, I can tell the hon. Gentleman how hard we worked across Government. We all worked—not only me, but all of us involved in this—to get millions of tests out, during the course of the pandemic, to care homes in order to help protect those residents. This was followed by our prioritising those in care homes for the vaccination because, when it came down to it, although testing was helpful, what really made a difference was being able to vaccinate people. That is what really started to provide protection.

    James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)

    Is it not regrettable, if all too typical, that the Labour party ignores the fact that when the pandemic struck there was capacity for only 2,000 tests a day—ignoring, too, the huge, successful efforts to massively increase that capacity—and instead chooses to leap on partial information to make political points rather than listen to the full facts of the public inquiry?

    Helen Whately

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right about how we ramped up incredibly fast from a capacity of just 3,000 tests a day in March 2020, to more than 38,000 in mid-April, and more than 100,000 by May. We were then able to test many millions per week during the course of the pandemic. That was the most extraordinary increase in the capacity to produce, carry out and analyse tests, and he is absolutely right to draw attention to it.

    Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)

    The Minister said that what my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) said was shocking. What is shocking is the number of people who died but who might have been saved in the first place. Is the Minister really saying that, at the beginning of the pandemic, there was no rush to get people out of hospital and back into the community without being tested?

    Helen Whately

    The questions about the discharge policy have been interrogated on a number of occasions, including by Select Committees. The hon. Gentleman will well know that in general, and in the work that we are doing now on discharge, it is rarely good for somebody who is medically fit for discharge to continue to be in hospital beyond that time. So of course it is right that when people are medically fit, they should be discharged home. The guidance of how that was done was set out on a number of occasions during the pandemic, and that guidance was updated both as we learned more about the virus and as greater testing capacity became available.

    Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)

    I am very proud of this Conservative Government’s record during the pandemic: 400 million tests, a world-leading and world-beating vaccine programme, and £400 billion spent to keep jobs and people’s prospects going. Clearly, hard decisions were made, and hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we should not be reflecting with hindsight now; we should deal with the facts at hand. Does the Minister agree that this Government will continue to take measures, and that if—God forbid—there is another pandemic, we will not let party politicking get in the way of making decisions to protect lives, fund jobs and keep our country going?

    Helen Whately

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out the extraordinary things that were done during the pandemic. I do not think that the Government should seek to take credit for that; so many people worked incredibly hard, whether in local authorities, social care or the NHS, or through their involvement in supply chains and the huge efforts to secure personal protective equipment when that was incredibly hard to get hold of across the world. I am glad that he draws attention to some of those things. He is absolutely right that, in the context of the public inquiry, we should reflect overall.

    Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)

    In April 2020, now-disappeared Government guidance in relation to hospital discharges stated:

    “Negative tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home.”

    It was later reported that the Minister then leaned on Public Health England to alter its proposed advice to care homes from ensuring that those discharged from hospitals tested negative to not requiring any testing at all. Why, at every stage, were the Government content to send people to their deaths in our care homes?

    Helen Whately

    I do not recognise the hon. Lady’s account at all. If she looks back at one of the legal cases that has looked into this question, she may find more accurate information about some of the conversations that went on behind the scenes. I can assure her that, as she would expect, in my capacity as social care Minister, I fought the corner for people receiving care—both home care and in care homes—throughout the pandemic.

    Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)

    Leaked WhatsApp messages will be partial and selective, but in reading even those I note that the Minister was doing her job on behalf of my constituents. In a message on 8 April, she spoke up for a care home in Newcastle-under-Lyme and raised it with the Government and her fellow Ministers. Everyone was doing their best. I served in the lessons learned inquiry, and there are lessons that can be learned with the benefit of hindsight, but the hindsight that we have seen from the Labour Front Bench is opportunistic. Does she agree that the Government were doing everything they could to respond to an unprecedented situation under severe pressure and severe supply and capacity constraints?

    Helen Whately

    My hon. Friend is 100% right. The context is absolutely important as part of this conversation. It was a global pandemic about which very little was known and about which we worked incredibly hard to find out more, and on which we continually made the best possible decisions in the light of the information that we had. At all times, we prioritised protecting people and saving lives, particularly those who we learned would be most vulnerable. It is extremely disappointing to see an attempt to play politics with this issue.

    Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)

    Care home residents and their families were failed not just at the beginning of the pandemic but in the months and years that followed, as families and loved ones were prevented from visiting. The leaked WhatsApps show that the Minister was arguing against the ban on visiting. Can she say why the ban was sustained for so long throughout the pandemic, and what plans she has to ensure that families with loved ones in care homes have the right to visit if this ever happens again?

    Helen Whately

    I know how strongly the hon. Member feels about this. Clearly, we are having ongoing conversations about visiting in care homes at the moment. As is evident in the WhatsApps, I was concerned during the pandemic about ensuring that families were able to see loved ones in care homes. As I have said in response to a number of questions, public health advice had to be taken into account all the way through the pandemic. Getting the right balance between protecting people from the risk of covid being taken into care homes and seeing friends and family will, I am sure, be looked into as part of the public inquiry discussions to answer questions such as his about the decisions taken on visiting. I will continue to work with him here and now to ensure that those who are currently in care homes get the visiting that they need.

    Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)

    The front page of today’s Telegraph, which reveals that the medical advice was not followed, will be heartbreaking for so many families up and down the country, re-opening the grief that so many felt about the loss of their loved ones. I have listened carefully to the Minister’s responses, and she has basically said that she is unable to compel the public inquiry to move more quickly—that it is above her pay grade. But what she could do now is commit to lobbying the Government to complete that public inquiry before the end of the year, and to doing everything she can to bring those answers forward for all those families who are today feeling so deeply hurt and upset.

    Helen Whately

    On the first point about the use of public health advice, the hon. Lady is wrong; all decisions were informed by public health advice. On her request about the public inquiry, that inquiry is independent of government, so I cannot do what she asks.

    Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)

    To reiterate the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) just made, every time there is a statement, every time there is a revelation, every time such an issue is raised, whether in this House or in the press, it triggers trauma for many people who have not healed from losing their loved ones, who were not able to go to funerals, and who were not able to seek closure. I hope that the Minister will reflect on her response in that context.

    To come back to the public inquiry, Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice said that the revelations show why the inquiry must allow the bereaved families to

    “be heard in the hearings and for our lawyers to cross-examine key people”—

    including the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock)—

    “so we can get full answers to our questions in the right setting instead of having to relive the horrors of our loss through exposés.”

    Does the Minister agree?

    Helen Whately

    As I have said, we are talking about, very sadly, people’s lives being lost—people’s mothers and fathers, grans and grandpas, sons and daughters, and sisters and brothers. We should always remember the genuine and real human cost, as well as all those who worked in health and social care looking after dying people and who had a traumatic time themselves.

    On the trauma that the hon. Lady talks about, it is Labour Front Benchers who have asked the urgent question and made this conversation happen in this forum rather than in the context of a public inquiry, which might encourage a more reasoned form of debate. I hope she will have noticed that my tone fully appreciates the points that she makes, but it is not for me to dictate who will give evidence to the public inquiry.

    Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)

    As the Minister will recall, I spoke for the Opposition on dozens of regulations to do with the pandemic, and on occasions I questioned some of the decisions that were made. The suspicion was that sometimes political rather than medical or scientific decisions were taken. What has come out overnight has caused me to question that again, and I hope she can understand why. It is an important question of trust for us as politicians but also for the wider public. Does she agree that rather than a partial and selective release of information to sell newspapers or books, the public deserve from the Government the release of all information so that we can get to the bottom of this?

    Helen Whately

    I do remember many of those SI debates. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that it was not political decision making as he suggests. At every step of the way, Ministers such as I, the Health Secretary and of course the Prime Minister were making incredibly difficult decisions but always trying to do the right thing to save people’s lives and to protect people from that cruel virus which particularly attacked those who were most vulnerable, such as the frail elderly. In doing so, we continuously took public health advice. The way to look into everything that happened is indeed through the public inquiry: that is where the evidence is being provided and that is the forum in which the reflections will be taken and the lessons can be learned.

    Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)

    My heart goes out to the bereaved families and I cannot imagine what they must be feeling again today. My heart also goes out to care workers, many of whom lost their lives having contracted covid. Many also survived but are now living with long covid and have lost their livelihoods. The Minister may be aware that advice from the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council that would give compensation to just some of those brave workers is currently with the Department for Work and Pensions. In a recent meeting with me, the Minister told me that it could take years for that to be taken up. What conversations has this Minister had with the DWP and, if it will take years, will her Department set up a compensation scheme so that those brave workers get the support they deserve?

    Helen Whately

    As the hon. Lady says, care workers were among those on the frontline during the pandemic and they had some incredibly difficult experiences. They took the risk of catching covid and, very sadly, some care workers and NHS workers were among those who lost their lives. Others have long covid. The question of compensation is currently with the Department for Work and Pensions. The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), is in his place on the Front Bench: his Department is looking at this and will respond in due course.

    Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)

    I thank the Minister for her answers. Everyone’s thoughts and prayers are with those who lost loved ones. The impact of the covid lockdown on mental health was felt most keenly in care homes. To see what the elderly people were put through, and learn that the full protections were not in place and they could not see loved ones at the end of life, is totally unacceptable. What would the Minister offer to those who lost precious hours with those they loved and adored on hearing this tragic news today?

    Helen Whately

    I reiterate to those living in care homes and their loved ones and families that the Government took every step throughout the pandemic to protect those we knew were vulnerable. For instance, we prioritised testing with more than 180 million tests going to care homes during the pandemic, and we prioritised vaccinations. I remember talking to residents in care homes at the time, and vaccination was a huge moment for them because it was the first time they had felt really protected from that cruel virus. I know how hard it was for families that they could not see loved ones in care homes, and that was one reason we put out guidance about visiting, saying that if someone was close to end of life they should be able to receive visitors. I will continue to do my utmost as Minister for Social Care to make sure that we do our very best for those living in care homes.

  • Helen Whately – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    Helen Whately – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Helen Whately on 2016-02-09.

    To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 11 September 2015 to Question 8466, how many additional extended ministerial offices have since been established.

    Matthew Hancock

    An Extended Ministerial Office (EMO) is also being established in the Scotland Office.

  • Helen Whately – 2022 Speech on Aortic Dissection

    Helen Whately – 2022 Speech on Aortic Dissection

    The speech made by Helen Whately, the Minister of State at the Department for Health and Social Care, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons, on 13 December 2022.

    What we heard from the hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark) was a shame, but I will focus on what we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham), which was one of the most powerful speeches I have ever heard in Parliament. It was also one of the most painful to hear, but I know that is not a patch on what she will have experienced in losing her son, Ben, so tragically, aged just 44. As she told us, he went to A&E to get help and was sent home, and then he died. How awful that was for her as his mother and for his whole family, including the loving wife he leaves behind and his two children. I am so sorry that she and all his family have had to go through that.

    I cannot commend my hon. Friend enough on coming to the House and talking about her experience; on doing so in the Chamber, as she has done; on coming to meet me and other Health Ministers; and on drawing on her experience, her son’s experience and her whole family’s experience to try to make things better for other people who are at risk of aortic dissection—to prevent others from going through what she has gone through, and to try to save the lives of others so that some good can come out of what she has been through. I have a huge amount of respect for my hon. Friend for doing that, and I know that many people across the country, including those who will not necessarily even know what she has done, will be grateful to her for it. I thank her myself for that.

    My hon. Friend helped to set up the Aortic Dissection Charitable Trust. She has been working with that trust very effectively to raise awareness of aortic dissection, improve diagnosis, and prevent aortic dissection in the first place, saving lives in doing so. She made several specific requests and asked several questions during her speech, which I will come to in a moment. We also heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is always so thoughtful in what he says and how he says it. He makes such valuable contributions to debates in this place, and it is so good to see him again—I think it is the third time in less than 24 hours that we have talked about healthcare.

    Jim Shannon

    I see more of the Minister than my wife.

    Helen Whately

    The third welcome I want to give is to Bob Harris, who is here today. He himself has suffered aortic dissection, and is working as an ambassador on this issue. It is very good to have him here with us.

    We have heard during this debate about the sudden and heartbreaking impact that aortic dissection can have on families. That is why it is absolutely right that we should be talking about this issue today: we should be talking about how to raise awareness of the condition among medical professionals, about how to improve diagnosis so that aortic dissection is detected as quickly as possible, and about the research we need to make sure that more people survive. Sadly, around 4,000 people suffer from an aortic dissection in the UK each year, yet still many people have never heard of the condition. It is crucial that it is diagnosed and treated urgently, otherwise very sadly, it can be fatal. It need not be.

    As we have heard today, diagnosing aortic dissection promptly is, unfortunately, not straightforward. The condition is relatively rare, which means medical professionals may be less familiar with its presentation. The symptoms of aortic dissection, such as chest pain, can be similar to other more common conditions, making it harder to accurately diagnose. Care pathways for aortic dissection vary across the country, meaning different patients often get different treatments.

    I can reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire and other hon. Members here today that I am determined to improve the way the condition is diagnosed and treated. Earlier this year, NHS England launched its aortic dissection toolkit, which sets out the steps that commissioners, providers and clinicians should take to improve the care of patients with acute aortic dissection. The toolkit covers the pathway for aortic dissection, from recognition and diagnosis to treatment.

    NHS England’s regional teams are currently implementing the toolkit within their local services, and we expect those improvements to significantly reduce delays to diagnosis and improve patient outcomes following treatment. NHS Digital has also made changes to NHS Pathways, which is a triage system used by NHS 111 and 999, to improve the recognition of chest pain likely to be associated with aortic dissection. However, I heard my hon. Friend say that the toolkit does not cover all the challenges that she is aware of in the pathway, so I will take that away and see how we can go further to make sure the toolkit is comprehensive or supplement it as necessary.

    We have also heard today about the importance of raising awareness of aortic dissection among medical professionals. The Royal Colleges of Radiologists and Emergency Medicine published a best-practice guideline last year on the diagnosis of aortic dissection in the emergency department, in response to a report published by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch in 2021. I expect that to have a major impact on the prompt diagnosis of aortic dissection. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine, which sets standards of care in all emergency departments in the UK, has also developed guidance to support the timely diagnosis of aortic dissection. However, my hon. Friend told us that a freedom of information request showed that only some EDs are using the guidelines. Again, I will look into that, as guidance should be followed consistently across emergency departments.

    Research is the piece of the puzzle that will drive forward progress and find the treatments of tomorrow. We need to understand better who is at risk of aortic dissection and how we should monitor them, we need to know how to most effectively detect and diagnose aortic dissection in emergency settings and how to improve treatment to make sure patients recover successfully. That is why the Department of Health and Social Care brought together a multidisciplinary group of experts and patient representatives in 2020 to consider research priorities for aortic dissection. That significant event identified research questions in diagnosis, treatment, care, awareness and education and, crucially, what matters most to people with aortic dissection and their families. In response to that event, the Department of Health and Social Care-funded National Institute for Health and Care Research launched a call for research on surgical treatment for aortic dissection. We await the outcome of the commissioning pool early in the new year.

    The NIHR invests around £50 million a year on research into cardiovascular disease, including aortic dissection and other heart conditions. For example, the NIHR funded a major programme of work at Barts Health NHS Trust to develop and test a novel surgical treatment for aortic dissection, which is less invasive than routine care, allowing quicker procedure times and shorter hospital stays. It is also vital that we harness our understanding of risk to help prevent aortic dissection. UK Research and Innovation, which is funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, is supporting a study on how we can use genetic and other factors to predict aortic dissection and identify people at greater risk. That will pave the way for more preventive measures, such as blood pressure control, to be prescribed.

    We know that there is interest in the academic community for a pipeline of research to improve outcomes for people at risk of and who have survived aortic dissection. I encourage researchers working in the field to harness the momentum building around aortic dissection research and to please come forward and make applications for funding.

    My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire also asked about data and called for more data on aortic dissection to be collected and made public. I will take that request away and raise it with NHS England, because she makes a really important point: the more data we collect, the more we know. Again, making it available more widely is one of the best things that we can do to improve understanding and support research into prevention, diagnosis and treatment. My hon. Friend also requested that we meet to discuss guidelines for genetic screening, which is another thing that I will take away and look into. I will get back to her on that.

    This debate has made us all stop and reflect, and I will pause for a moment as well, because I think the hon. Member for Strangford is waiting to intervene on me.

    Jim Shannon

    I thank the Minister for her very helpful response. I always ask these questions, because it is important that we share the issues. In my contribution, I asked whether we could share information with Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, because we can all learn from it. We need to collaborate on research, because we can all benefit from it, wherever it may be—in Northern Ireland in my case, and in Scotland in the case of the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar). That might be helpful for us all.

    Helen Whately

    I completely agree with the hon. Member, and we can only do better if we share information across the whole United Kingdom and internationally, as work on this condition will be going on across the world.

    This has been a really powerful debate, but it is not a patch on the pain that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire has been through. As she said so powerfully, each life lost to aortic dissection is not just one life affected. The condition affects the lives of all those around the person who is lost, be they mothers like her, fathers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, grandchildren or friends—everyone who is affected when somebody is sadly lost too soon. I thank her again for her tireless work in raising awareness and campaigning, and I assure her that I will, in turn, do what I can in Government to support her efforts and to improve outcomes for all those affected by aortic dissection across the country.

  • Helen Whately – 2022 Speech on Government Funding for Research into Motor Neurone Disease

    Helen Whately – 2022 Speech on Government Funding for Research into Motor Neurone Disease

    The speech made by Helen Whately, the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 13 December 2022.

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) for securing this debate. I too pay tribute to Doddie Weir, an incredible man who sadly passed away at the end of November. My thoughts are with his wife Kathy, and their sons, Hamish, Angus and Ben.

    I had the good fortune to meet Doddie during an online roundtable—online because it was during the pandemic—and I was inspired by his campaign for a brighter future for people living with MND. His charity, the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation, works tirelessly to raise funds for research and provide grants to people living with this cruel condition.

    During the pandemic, and again since, I also met with my Mid-Kent MNDA branch as a constituency MP. Those meetings are vivid in my mind. The first call I had with them had literally everybody on the call in tears, as we talked about the experiences of those suffering with MND and their carers—usually family members—and how they were seeing their loved ones losing a bit of themselves day by day to MND. It is such a cruel disease, as the hon. Gentleman said. I am thankful to him and to several other Members of Parliament who have campaigned for research funding and actively lobbied me and other Ministers on that point.

    Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)

    I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I am a biographer of Don Revie. This is an important debate, because Don, who played for Hull City during his playing career, passed away from motor neurone disease in 1989. Like Doddie Weir and Rob Burrow, he played sport at a high level. If the Government are going to invest in research, will they look at the fact that sportsmen seem to be more likely than the rest of the population to develop motor neurone disease?

    Secondly, I urge the Minister to tell GPs to ensure that people are tested for motor neurone disease early in their journey, because the problem is that it is one of the last things people test for. In the case of Don, he believed that the pain in his back was caused by slipped discs—tragically, it was motor neurone disease. I ask the Minister to look into those two asks.

    Helen Whately

    The hon. Member makes two really important points. As he says, several prominent sportsmen who have been effective campaigners have sadly been affected by the disease, and there is a potential relationship with head injuries. He also made a point about the challenge of diagnosis, which I will take away.

    The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East rightly talked about the tenacity of campaigners such as Rob Burrow and how effective their visible campaigning has been at raising awareness of MND. The disease affects a significant number of people, with around 5,000 suffering from it right now. Sadly, we know that people do not live very long with MND, so a really significant number of people across the country are being affected over time. It is incredibly cruel for the individuals who suffer.

    I heard the request of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East for a meeting, and I will come to some of the plans to address his calls in a moment. As I said, MND has a huge impact on those who have been diagnosed, and it is devastating for them and their families. We have made real progress in research, but we are yet to learn why motor neurones die off. There is still no cure for the disease and only one drug is licensed in the UK to treat MND, which is why the Government committed back in November 2021 to make at least £50 million available for MND research over the next five years.

    Before I go into more about research, I want to say something about how we are supporting people living with MND, which is a degenerative condition—often rapidly so—that requires complex and anticipatory care. For that reason, the majority of services for people with MND are specialised and commissioned nationally in the 25 neurological treatment centres across England. In the absence of a cure, we want to make sure that people with MND have access to the best health and care support available to meet their complex needs. It is really important for people suffering from MND and their carers to have specialised and targeted support, including devices to help people with MND to be able to continue to communicate effectively for as long as possible, as well as other types of care.

    Since November 2021, we have invested £790 million in the National Institute for Health and Care Research biomedical research centres, which bring together experts to translate scientific breakthroughs into treatments for patients. At the Sheffield centre, researchers have already pioneered evidence-based interventions to manage the symptoms of MND. In September, the Sheffield researchers published promising clinical trial results for the drug tofersen. Professor Dame Pamela Shaw, the director of the NIHR Sheffield BRC, said:

    “I have conducted more than 25 MND clinical trials and the tofersen trial is the first trial in which patients have reported an improvement in their motor function.”

    I want to emphasise that because, until now, it has been very hard to be optimistic about developing a cure for MND or even effective treatment. The trial is, in fact, grounds for optimism against this cruel disease.

    In June, the Government and charity partners invested in a £4.25 million collaborative partnership on MND, which includes LifeArc, the MND Association, the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation and MND Scotland. The Government are supporting groundbreaking research undertaken by the UK Dementia Research Institute. Seven of its 50 research programmes are dedicated specifically to MND, with world experts undertaking discovery science, translational and clinical research to drive medical progress.

    There has already been work going on to invest in MND research, but I heard the impatience of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East and have heard from other hon. Members. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer), who is here today, has also lobbied me and other Ministers on the desire for greater pace and so that money goes towards research quicker and then translates more quickly into treatments.

    To that point, yesterday, we announced at the Department of Health and Social Care, together with the Secretary of State for BEIS, how we will deliver the full £50 million research commitment, which will build on our existing investments and successes to more rapidly fund MND research. In that regard, £30 million of Government funding will be invested immediately through specialist research centres and partnerships with leading researchers. That will include £12.5 million to the UK Dementia Research Institute to support groundbreaking research specifically into MND, a further £8 million investment into early-phase clinical research for MND via the NIHR biomedical research centres and £6 million for a translational accelerator that connects the DRI capabilities with those of the Francis Crick Institute, the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the new MND collaborative partnership. We are investing a further £2 million in the MND collaborative partnership, which will specifically focus on data for MND research.

    Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)

    I am triggered by the reference to Francis Crick, who was also from Northampton, so there is quite a connection here, also given my great privilege to be the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on motor neurone disease. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) for having this debate, but particularly grateful to the Government for listening, making some really important announcements and pushing this forward. It has been received with great pleasure by the research community and MND sufferers. I hope the Minister will accept my thanks for that. I look forward to working further with her in taking this forward, now that we have the new announcements.

    Helen Whately

    It is good to hear from my hon. Friend. Credit goes to him for his campaigning, both personally and as chair of the APPG on motor neurone disease, together with that of other Members of Parliament, to push for investment to get out to the frontline on research. I look forward to working with him further so we can ensure this investment in research makes a difference for people suffering from MND and their carers, and for those in the future.

    I have just mentioned the MND collaborative partnership, which is a mechanism by which the many initiatives that I just described will come together. The first meeting of this virtual institute took place at the end of November, and I am looking forward to hearing about further progress now that the funding is in place. The remainder of the committed £50 million of MND funding is available for researchers to access via the NIHR and the Medical Research Council. Government will support researchers in coming forward with ideas for new research via a joint highlight notice between NIHR and the Medical Research Council on MND. That will allow our funding to be responsive to progress in science and ensure breakthroughs reach patients in the quickest possible time. Further to that, the Secretary of State will shortly host leading researchers and patient groups at a roundtable to discuss MND research and help researchers make the best bids as quickly as possible. That addresses the call for a meeting from the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East.

    Karl Turner

    I am grateful to the Minister and I welcome everything that she has helpfully just announced. However, my researcher spoke yesterday to the association and it still requests that meeting. It is the only ask. I accept what she says about roundtables and all sorts of other things going on behind the scenes, but the association wants a meeting with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Perhaps it is difficult to get them together, so there could be separate meetings. That is the only thing the association has asked me to ask for today, so it would be remiss of me if I did not push her to request that meeting after she leaves here.

    Helen Whately

    The hon. Member’s request is very clear. As I said to him a moment ago, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will meet researchers and patient groups at a roundtable about this issue. If that is not the same meeting as the one he wants, I am very happy to take that point away and find out exactly what meeting he wants and how we can make sure that it takes place as well as the planned meeting.

    I have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South over the past few weeks about red tape getting in the way of research, which we clearly do not want to be the case. To help cut red tape, research funders from NIHR and the Medical Research Council are working together so that MND proposals will go to the right scheme at the early idea stage and so that applications can be considered before they even have full sign-off from their universities and institutions.

    We are also building on our recent announcement of £790 million for the NIHR biomedical research centres by putting in MND funding, so that it gets quickly to the most promising researchers already working on MND.

    To sum up and return to where we started, there is no doubt that MND is a cruel disease that takes people before their time and, as it does so, takes them bit by bit from their loved ones. As yet, there is no cure. However, I say “as yet” because I have hope, and we have real grounds for optimism with the clinical trials. We also have £50 million going into MND research. I have outlined today how we are accelerating that funding to go to the frontline of research and to develop the treatments that will make a difference to MND sufferers, whether here and now or in the future.

    In no small part, that is thanks to the late Doddie Weir and his family, Rob Burrows, Ed Slater, Kevin Sinfield, and all the other MND campaigners and carers who have worked so hard to raise awareness of MND and push for more action on MND research. I can assure them that their efforts are not in vain. I personally take inspiration from all their tireless work, which reinforces the Government’s commitment to fund and support research into MND. We owe it to people with MND, future sufferers, and all the campaigners and researchers to push ahead with the groundbreaking research that will help to develop effective treatments and, indeed, cures for this cruel disease.

  • Helen Whately – 2022 Speech on Moles and Skin Tags – Testing for Cancer

    Helen Whately – 2022 Speech on Moles and Skin Tags – Testing for Cancer

    The speech made by Helen Whately, the Minister of State at the Department for Health and Social Care, in the House of Commons on 12 December 2022.

    I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) for securing this debate, and on telling us Zoe’s story so powerfully. It is a truly heartbreaking story of a young mum of just 26 with so much life ahead of her. It was harder still to hear because Zoe did the right thing and asked her GP about her mole, yet her skin cancer was not diagnosed until so late that she died just 55 days later. I pay tribute to Zoe’s family, including her mum, Eileen, who have campaigned to stop other people going through what they have gone through, and to Zoe herself. When I looked earlier this evening, more than 34,000 people had signed the petition.

    Like Zoe’s family, as cancer Minister I want to stop people going through what they have been through. I want us to get better at preventing, diagnosing and treating cancer. Although we cannot remove the risk of skin cancer in its entirety, we can raise awareness of the things that increase the risk and help people take steps to protect themselves. Most skin cancers are caused by exposure to the sun. Getting sunburnt increases the risk—especially getting sunburnt as a child—as does using sunbeds. Those who have fair skin are at greater risk. As my hon. Friend told us, the lovely sunshine of the island he represents has its downsides, as does the healthy outdoor life that he describes.

    As well as raising awareness of risks, we need to raise awareness of early signs and symptoms, and then what to do. We in Government are doing that. For instance, the NHS “Help Us, Help You” campaign has used TV advertising, social media and regional press to get the message out to people to get worrying signs checked out. We know that some people delay getting a check. That campaign has particularly sought to overcome those fears. If you are worried, it is always better to get checked out. Most people will get the all-clear, but the sooner you get a check, the better, because an early diagnosis improves the chances of successful treatment.

    I know that Zoe did the right thing and asked her GP, which brings me to the importance of accurate diagnosis. For Zoe’s specific case there has been a full investigation locally, and I know the findings have been acted on. Specifically, teledermatology is now offered by all GPs on the Isle of Wight, and is increasingly available across the NHS. It involves a specialist medical photographer taking a detailed photograph of a skin lesion to check it for signs of cancer. That is a step on the path to more tests to confirm whether someone has cancer or is given the all-clear that no further tests are needed.

    On the role of teledermatology, almost £1.5 million of our elective recovery funding has been allocated to seven cancer alliances to pilot self-referral for cancer symptoms, including skin cancer symptoms. I heard my hon. Friend’s argument for Zoe’s law to require all moles or skin tags removed to be tested for melanoma. I also heard him saying that he was not expecting an answer here and now, which I appreciate. I can assure him that I will take his argument away, look into it and then write to him with a full response on his proposal. I will also take away the suggestion from him and from other hon. Members about looking at the broader education of other people who might be able to spot something that might be an early sign of skin cancer. I recognise that people may not be able to see their back or the back of their head, for instance. Indeed, there may be opportunities to look at wider education. For sure, raising awareness overall of skin cancers and of what a person should do if they have a sign or a symptom will indeed mean that more people will know what to look out for.

    Jim Shannon

    I commend the Minister for her very positive answer and for what she said in relation to the nine centres across the United Kingdom, which is where the hotspots are. In an intervention on the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), I referred to a pilot scheme in my trust area, the South Eastern Health And Social Care Trust, which seems to be having some good results. I always believe that the exchange of ideas is good for us all. It helps us to see what is being done here and it might help the Minister to know what we are doing back home.

    Helen Whately

    I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I will look into the scheme in his area that he mentioned. One of the good things about the NHS is that all sorts of fantastic things are going on in pockets across the United Kingdom. One of the best things that we can do is find out what is working somewhere, and then spread that best practice more widely, so, indeed, I will look into what he suggests.

    We are now seeing the most incredible advances in how we diagnose cancer as well as how we treat it. An example of this is the NHS-Galleri trial, which looks for blood markers to identify cancer risk. It can identify signs of more than 50 cancers and the trial has 140,000 participants. We should in no way limit our sights as to what can be achieved in the here and now. The crucial thing here and now is early diagnosis, which much improves the prospects for successful treatment. Zoe’s family wants those who do have cancer to get an early diagnosis so that they have the chance to survive and live their lives as, sadly, Zoe did not. That is something that I want, too. I want fewer people to get cancer, those who do have cancer to be diagnosed earlier, and, in turn, to be treated successfully so that they can live their lives to the full.

  • Helen Whately – 2022 Speech on Cancer Services

    Helen Whately – 2022 Speech on Cancer Services

    The speech made by Helen Whately, the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, in the House of Commons on 8 December 2022.

    I very much thank my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) for raising the Select Committee’s report on cancer today. I know that he is passionate about this issue both as a former cancer Minister and for the personal reasons that he mentioned, as do I. The Committee’s 12th report makes valuable recommendations, and I am grateful to it for all its hard work. I assure him and hon. Members that we are working night and day, together with our colleagues in the NHS, on three priorities for cancer in particular. They are: to recover from the backlog caused by the pandemic; to get better at early diagnosis and treatment, using the tools and technologies that we have; and to invest in research and innovation, because we know that advances in such things as genomics and artificial intelligence have the potential to transform our experience of cancer as a society.

    This is my first opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend on his election as Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, where I know he will do an excellent job, bringing his expertise as well as his passion on the subject to bear. I also welcome the focus that he will bring to the Committee on cancer and prevention, as he mentioned in his remarks. I am truly sorry that he has lost members of his family to cancer, including, as he said, his father. He rightly said that cancer affects pretty much everyone in our country in one way or another.

    My hon. Friend talked about some of the challenges that we and our NHS face in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. In his time as cancer Minister, he was absolutely right to focus on early diagnosis, because we know that that makes such a difference. As he said, he set the 75% ambition for early diagnosis to be achieved by 2028, and the NHS is indeed working towards that at the moment. He talked about wanting to see the plan for achieving that ambition—I say “ambition” because, as he will know, it was intentionally set as a stretching target—and about the importance of us having the capacity to treat cancer. I think that is currently higher than it was before the pandemic, but I certainly see the need to expand it further.

    My hon. Friend talked about the importance of surgical hubs. We have 89 of them, but more are planned, with £1.5 billion of capital funding recently approved for their expansion and future new hubs. He rightly talked about the importance of cancer research and the alignment of that with cancer treatment and cancer services. He also talked about the significance of health disparities and the prevalence of risk factors such as higher smoking and obesity rates in more deprived communities. I will address some of those points during my speech.

    The hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) spoke in particular about radiotherapy as well as giving a broader perspective. As he said, we met the other day together with Professor Pryce, and he raised his concerns with me about the use of radiotherapy, the impact of tariffs, the potential for better use of radiotherapy machines, staff, and several other points in the plan. It is too soon to give him the quality of answers that I would like on those points, but I am looking into exactly what he raised and will get back to him and those others we met as well.

    My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup)—I have huge respect for her, including the work that she did as a Health Minister and the expertise she brings to the debate—is absolutely right about the importance of community diagnostic centres. We are rolling them out around the country, with 19 more just announced, increasing our capacity to diagnose cancers promptly. She also spoke about workforce pressures. I am sure she will know that the 2017 cancer workforce plan was delivered and, in fact, exceeded by over 200 additional staff. Since then, Health Education England has received additional funding of £50 million for the cancer workforce in the last financial year and this one.

    I agree with my hon. Friend that we should continue to focus on ensuring that we are training, supporting and retaining the cancer workforce that we need. That is so important to achieving our ambitions in cancer as well as the wider NHS workforce. Indeed, many of those who work in the NHS will be looking after patients with cancer, not just those who might have a specific cancer workforce label. I am sure she will know that we are well on our way to achieving our ambition of 50,000 more nurses in the NHS, with over 29,000 more at the moment.

    My hon. Friend also spoke about cancer equipment. For instance, since 2016, £160 million of capital investment has been invested in radiotherapy equipment. I will take away her call for an equipment audit. She also importantly talked about obesity and alcohol as risk factors, although I appreciated that she said we should focus on alcohol reduction after the festive season. I thank her for allowing us to enjoy a drink over Christmas.

    Grahame Morris

    I am amazed that figures are not to hand on how many radiotherapy machines are more than 10 years old. Is it unreasonable to expect that NHS England would have an ongoing audit to identify which machines need replacing on a planned basis? Will that be addressed?

    Helen Whately

    There will be huge numbers of figures on things that NHS England will be monitoring. I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash that I am very happy to look at her specific suggestion, on the extent to which the data already exists or whether we should be collecting it. That is part of what I will be looking into when I follow up on that.

    We heard from the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), who brings really valuable experience to this topic. She said that she is a former oncology pharmacist and, if I heard her right, that she also volunteers as a pharmacist in her local hospital. That is hugely welcome experience to bring to the debate. I am very happy to speak to her more about some of the challenges she raised. I will follow up after the debate to see if we can get that in our diaries.

    The hon. Lady pointed out that we are not achieving our targets on treatment rates, which is absolutely true, but she also spoke about cancer referrals. On that point, I want to share some good news. More people than ever before are being referred to hospitals by their GPs to see if they have cancer. The latest data for October this year, published only this morning, shows that almost 250,000 urgent cancer referrals were made by GPs in England, which is up about 109% on the levels in October 2019. It is 10,000 more than in October last year and over 35,000 more than in October 2020. That is thanks to the hard work of GPs, to the 91 community diagnostic centres which have carried out more than 2 million additional scans, tests and checks already, and to all the people who have come forward and got themselves checked. We know it is not always easy if you are worried that you might have something that could be cancer. We are working hard to encourage people to come forward if they are worried, so that we can improve early diagnosis. That is why we are working to raise awareness with campaigns such as “Help us, Help you” alongside targeting case-finding efforts such as targeted lung health checks. Such initiatives are successfully countering the pandemic’s negative impact on cancer referrals.

    In further important news, NHS England announced it is expanding direct access to diagnostic scans across all GP practices. That will cut waiting times and speed up diagnosis or the all-clear for patients. Since November, every GP team has been able to directly order CT scans, ultrasounds or brain MRIs for patients with concerning symptoms, but who fall outside the NICE guidance threshold. Non-specific symptom pathways are transforming the way that people with symptoms not specific to one cancer, such as weight loss or fatigue, are either diagnosed or have cancer ruled out. That gives GPs a much-needed referral route, while speeding up and streamlining the process so that, where needed, people can start treatment earlier. Thankfully, with the increased level of referrals, the majority of people referred will be given the all-clear. However, it is crucial to start treatment promptly for those who are diagnosed, while giving peace of mind to those who do not have cancer.

    On treatment, my Department has committed an additional £8 billion for the next two years, on top of the £2 billion elective recovery fund, to increase elective activity including for cancer services, because speed of treatment following early diagnosis is of course very important.

    I am looking at the time and I know that I need to try to wrap up promptly. I will skip as fast as I can to a conclusion, while answering a couple of points that were raised as we go.

    Many hon. Members commented on the pandemic. I recognise that the pandemic severely disrupted health services. The recovery of performance is a multi-year effort. The NHS is working very hard with a delivery plan specifically to tackle the covid elective care backlog. Under the plan, reducing the number of patients waiting over 62 days for treatment is a top priority.

    Many hon. Members are interested in the progress of the 10-year cancer plan. We are reviewing the responses we have received on the call for evidence to that plan. In parallel, I am closely scrutinising holding the NHS to account on its elective recovery plan, a major part of which is cancer care, as well as looking to the future and making sure we drive forward research and innovation, including, for example, with our recently announced life sciences cancer mission which will invest over £22 million in a vaccine taskforce approach to cancer research.

    I would like once again to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester for securing this debate today. I look forward to working with him and other hon. Members on improving cancer outcomes.

  • Helen Whately – 2022 Speech on Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month

    Helen Whately – 2022 Speech on Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month

    The speech made by Helen Whately, the Minister of State at the Department for Health and Social Care, in the House of Commons on 8 November 2022.

    I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this important debate, and for his work as chair of the APPG on pancreatic cancer. He is right: we should talk about pancreatic cancer; we should talk about how to improve survival rates and diagnosis rates; and we should talk about how we can raise awareness of pancreatic cancer. As we do so—including in this very debate—that in itself will make a difference, and if we do not debate this now, during Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, then when? I believe in seizing the moment.

    I welcome the speeches from the hon. Members for Strangford, for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan) and for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) and my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) and for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn), who also seized this moment to speak about pancreatic cancer. The hon. Member for Strangford spoke movingly about Rebecca Buggs, whose children were just eight and nine years old at the time she had surgery. I am very glad that because she was diagnosed early, she was able to have surgery, but we know that, sadly, her experience is the exception not the rule.

    The hon. Member spoke about the importance of raising awareness of symptoms such as stomach and back pain, indigestion, unexplained weight loss and jaundice, and the importance of getting those symptoms checked if there is no explanation. He also spoke about research as the key to earlier diagnosis. On one of his questions, I will answer straightaway that, yes, I would be delighted to join him for a meeting with Pancreatic Cancer UK. I will come to his other questions as I go through my speech.

    My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud mentioned that she wants to help everybody and, knowing her well as a colleague, I know that that is absolutely true. She also mentioned the catchphrase, “The clue is in the loo,” as mentioned by other hon. Members. She spoke movingly about one of her constituents, a young woman who spent five years going to and from her GP with symptoms, including fatigue and bloating, which brought to life how hard this cancer is to detect. She also talked about the PERT treatment, which I will come to in a moment.

    It is very good to see the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire, a former chair of the APPG, here and to hear her speaking so eloquently in this debate. She spoke about Barbara, a PE teacher, and about the healthy life she lived. Barbara went many times to get a diagnosis, but it took almost 18 months to get one. Again, sadly, that brought to life how hard this cancer is to detect.

    I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington for acknowledging the work that the Government have done, particularly on raising awareness for pancreatic cancer. He talked about the importance of the workforce, which I will come to. He also asked me to visit the Royal Marsden, of which he is rightly proud, and which I would be delighted to do.

    The hon. Member for Upper Bann spoke about the importance of access to GPs. She called for more funding into research, and said, rightly, that time matters.

    I will come to many of the points that hon. Members have raised, but first, I believe in saying it as it is. Nearly 10,000 people a year are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and that figure has steadily increased since 2013. Diagnosis rates increase with age, and from the mid-40s onwards pancreatic cancer is more common in men than in women. Just under a quarter of pancreatic cancers are diagnosed at an early stage, so three quarters are not. About 40% of diagnoses follow an emergency presentation. The one-year survival rate is just 27% and the five-year survival rate is only 7.8%. Although those figures have improved in the past 10 years, they are still bleak for anyone who receives a diagnosis and for their loved ones. That is why it is right to talk about pancreatic cancer.

    As with many other cancers, early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is crucial so that there is the opportunity for successful treatment. One of the Government’s healthcare priorities is to improve early diagnosis of all cancers, and to achieve 75% diagnosis at stage 1 or stage 2 by 2028, compared with the current rate of about 50%. We have opened 91 community diagnostic centres, which have carried out 2 million extra scans, tests and checks, including cancer tests. We are rolling out non-specific symptom pathways so that people with symptoms such as weight loss or fatigue are either diagnosed or have cancer ruled out. We are encouraging people to go and get their symptoms checked. The NHS’s “Help Us, Help You” campaign tackles the barriers that prevent some people from getting their symptoms checked, such as fear about what might be found.

    The hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark) talked about waiting times, and I assure her that we are tackling them. This August, more than 19,000 patients saw an upper gastrointestinal specialist, compared with 17,600 last August, and 17% more patients have seen a specialist within the two-week performance standard. That said, I recognise that the NHS is still not hitting the standard for enough people—it is currently 83%, compared with the 93% standard—so we will continue to support the NHS’s efforts to tackle waiting lists and backlogs.

    On treatment, credit is due to hard-working NHS staff who have increased cancer treatment levels to 107%, compared with pre-pandemic levels. The cancer drugs fund has helped more than 80,000 patients, and we are investing £5.4 million in five new national clinical audits of cancer, one of which is focused on pancreatic cancer.

    As several hon. Members said, the key to making a big leap forward in survival rates for diseases such as pancreatic cancer is research—research into tests that will achieve earlier diagnosis and research into treatments. The Government spend £1 billion a year on health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research. The NIHR has funded seven research projects for pancreatic cancer since 2019, with a committed spend of about £3.6 million. That is about 5% of the NIHR’s total funding for cancer research, which is over £73.5 million.

    Jim Shannon

    I referred to the fact that Pancreatic Cancer UK has raised £10 million for research every year, and one of its requests is that the Government match that. I thank the Government very much for the £3.6 million that is going to pancreatic cancer, but is it possible for that extra bit of effort to be made and for the Government to match the charity’s £10 million? I do not want to put the Minister on the spot, but I really do think that is an important issue.

    Helen Whately

    I absolutely hear the hon. Gentleman’s request, which is for match funding for the funding contributed by Pancreatic Cancer UK. I will say two things about that. Another function of the NIHR is to support research where the funding comes from other organisations; it already does that. In fact, it has supported 70 pancreatic cancer-related studies that have been funded by others.

    The other point, which the hon. Gentleman may be aware of, is that the NIHR does not actually ringfence funding for specific diseases. That is similar to his match funding point. The NIHR is ready to fund research. It looks at applications for funding from the research community and then allocates that funding by looking at the merits of the proposal. We should encourage more bids for funding for pancreatic cancer research and more bids to go into the NIHR, which would then enable it to allocate more funding. I am assured the NIHR stands ready to fund pancreatic cancer research; it is about getting those applications in to carry out that research. I could publish a highlight notice to flag to the research community the importance of pancreatic cancer, which may go some way to achieving what the hon. Gentleman seeks.

    My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud spoke about PERT and asked why it is not prescribed for more people. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guideline NG85 recommends that PERT be offered to patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer, and NICE includes PERT in its quality standard for pancreatic cancer. NICE guidelines do not replace clinical judgment. They are not mandatory; they are guidelines. However, it is clear that PERT should be discussed between a doctor and a patient so a clinical decision can be made. I heard what my hon. Friend called for and I will look into whether there is evidence that such discussions between doctor and patient are not happening.

    My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington spoke about the importance of the workforce and, as the daughter of two NHS doctors and a former Minister for the NHS workforce, I agree with him. In essence, the NHS is its workforce, and I am proud that we are on track to achieve our ambition of 50,000 more nurses. Talking specifically about the cancer workforce, the workforce plan published in 2017 set an ambition to increase the workforce by 1,500 full-time equivalents by 2021. That has been achieved and, in fact, exceeded by 226 staff members.

    Since then, Health Education England has been taking forward the priorities in the cancer workforce plan, with an additional £50 million of funding in the last financial year and this one. Also, a significant proportion of the elective recovery funding—£8 billion in the next two years—will be spent on workforce, both on capacity and skills. I assure my hon. Friend that, as the Minister with oversight of cancer care, I will look carefully at whether we have the necessary workforce coming on track now and in the future to achieve our ambitions and aspirations for cancer care.

    The hon. Member for Strangford and several others asked about the 10-year cancer plan, and I know hon. Members are keen to hear about progress. More than 5,000 individuals and organisations responded to the Government’s call for evidence. The Government are considering the responses and the next steps, so I may have to disappoint some colleagues who may want to know more, because that is as far as I will go today. I assure hon. Members that I know how strongly they and their constituents feel about the matter.

    I have welcomed this debate as a chance to talk about all the work going on to improve cancer diagnosis, treatment and survival rates, and crucially, to talk specifically about pancreatic cancer. Not least because raising awareness of pancreatic cancer is, in itself, an important step towards improving people’s chances of survival, raising awareness of the symptoms and, in turn, encouraging people to contact their GP and get themselves checked. I pay tribute to everyone involved in Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, particularly to Pancreatic Cancer UK and to everyone taking part, whether that is walking 30 km this month or doing their own thing to raise funds and awareness. I thank them all for what they are doing. In turn, I will do what I can in Government to support all those efforts and to improve the chances for anyone suffering from pancreatic cancer.

  • Helen Whately – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

    Helen Whately – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

    The tribute made by Helen Whately, the Conservative MP for Faversham and Mid Kent, in the House of Commons on 9 September 2022.

    On behalf of my Faversham and Mid Kent constituents, I echo the moving words that we have just heard from King Charles III: to Her late Majesty the Queen, I say, “Thank you. May you rest in peace”—a rest truly earned through a lifetime of service.

    Most of us across the country cannot remember a time before Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth. She has been a constant in a changing and often dangerous world, a source of strength and steadfastness, and a leader by example with the courage to carry on, whatever the storm. She showed us that strength and courage need not be at the expense of kindness or humour. She touched the lives of so many people, old and young alike, in the UK and around the world.

    I am sure that when visiting primary schools, we have all been asked, “Have you met the Queen?”—more often, in fact, than, “Have you met the Prime Minister?”. Sadly, my answer to the first of those questions has always been “No”, but I do have something that I am very personally grateful to her for. During the pandemic, Her late Majesty the Queen addressed the nation. It was a dark time, and I remember her address well, not only for the compassion and hope she expressed, but for one particular detail.

    As Care Minister, I endeavoured to get social care staff thought of and talked about on a par with NHS staff. When I heard that the Queen was going to make an address, I sought to get a message to her. To this day, I do not know if it reached her, but what mattered is that when she got to the section of her address about healthcare staff, she spoke of health and social care staff in the same breath. She realised how important her words would be to care workers across country, and that brought tears to my eyes. After the bleak time of the pandemic, she then brought our communities together for her jubilee, a joyful celebration of what we have in common.

    As a nation, we mourn her, but first and foremost in my thoughts are her family, who mourn a mother, a grandmother and a great-grandmother. I wish them strength and solace in a life so long and well lived. Our thoughts are with our new King. We know that he will serve with passion and dedication, and on behalf of my constituents, I wish him strength and good fortune as he takes on the responsibilities of our Head of State. Long live the King.