The pace of life at Westminster continues to keep me on my toes, with key hearings on the Public Accounts Committee on NHS matters amongst others. The annual winter pressures on A&Es across the country is challenging us all to consider how we use our healthcare services for best value for money to the taxpayer, who foot the enormous bill of over £100 billion per year. As a former governor of Northumbria NHS Healthcare Trust, I have seen at the sharp end the pressures which fall on the accident & emergency services, but too often this is with a caseload which should not be ending up at the acute end of the health provision spectrum in the first place. Some commentators declare that GPs are overworked or lazy, not working hard enough or filling in too many forms to be able to see patients – the war of words seems to fill the airwaves.
But a key part of the problem is demand management – and the best people to help expedite this and improve the access to the right care when patients need it is us. My challenge to everyone I meet is whether they are actually choosing the right level of care intervention for their needs, or have we lost our resilience and self-management skills to too great a degree? Our pharmacists are hugely underused and undervalued, our GPs are seeing too many patients whose ailments could be managed through self-treatment and rest, and we need to find constructive ways to encourage all our citizens to reduce their reliance on getting someone else to make a decision for them, leaving more space in the NHS system we all value so much for those whose need requires highly skilled medical intervention.
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The process of setting the Brexit wheels in motion has taken some huge steps forwards this week – first, the Supreme Court determined that Parliament must decide to trigger Article 50, that is to say that Parliament must authorise the Prime Minister to write to the EU to tell them that we are leaving the club. The PM yesterday laid the Bill before the House and we will debating it for the next two weeks. Our sitting times have been extended to ensure that everyone who wishes to debate the question can do so. The old-fashioned late nights at Westminster return! The PM also confirmed in PMQs on Wednesday that she will present a white paper to the House with the proposals for our exit as set out in her Lancaster House speech. We live in exciting times.
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This week we debated the Homelessness Bill, a Private Members Bill which is being supported by Government & I am actively supporting as we have some real challenges for families and individuals in Northumberland when they become homeless. The Bill changes the point at which a person is classed as being threatened with homelessness from 28 days before a person is likely to be homeless, to 56 days. A new duty is placed on local housing authorities to take steps for 56 days to relieve homelessness by helping any eligible homeless applicant to secure accommodation. Provision is also made for certain care leavers, to make it easier for them to show they have a local connection with both the area of the local authority responsible for them and the area in which they lived while in care if that was different. I hope that this will really be a step change for those in priority need.
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Next week:
On Monday the Commons debates the Second Reading of the Pension Schemes Bill. Those of us campaigning for fair transitional arrangements for WASPI women, a cross-party group had hoped to table an amendment to the Bill, and force the government to listen to the campaign call to redress the pension inequalities imposed on women born in the 1950s. Frustratingly, the SNP have just told us they will not work with the cross-party group or support the amendment, so our first real opportunity to actually force the Government to stop ignoring these women is over before it has begun. I am extremely disappointed by the SNP’s partisan behaviour which is now actively undermining the aims of the WASPI campaign.
The process for triggering Article 50 will begin as the House debates the second reading of the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill 2016-17 and then goes into Committee on the floor of the House. We have been told that we will be sitting late into the night to ensure everyone gets their say.
Next Thursday I have been granted a full day’s debate by the Backbench Business Committee on the Armed Forces Covenant, a major area of my national campaign work to improve welfare matters like housing quality, schools admissions, healthcare transfer and veterans support for our military Service personnel and their families, and the veterans’ community.
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