Helen Whately
MP for Faversham and Mid Kent · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Every holiday period, Kent and my constituency of Faversham and Mid Kent is brought to a standstill, and that has become much worse with the introduction of the EU entry-exit system, despite the fact that our ports and Eurotunnel have invested in the technology.”
“The situation could be horrific this summer: imagine people, including children and elderly people, and potentially pets, waiting in their cars in this heat for around 12 hours. It is a disaster. I implore the Minister to involve the Prime Minister—and, most likely, the right hon.”
“I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She is making an important point about the fact that we need not just the minimum but the maximum. We need really strong commitments. The Cleve Hill solar development in the village of Graveney in my constituency is huge. It has obliterated 900 acres of agricultural land and marshland.”
“On the point about considering the community benefit, what counts as a community is really important. In some circumstances—this has come up in my local area—a large geographical area is considered as a community, even though the number of households that are very substantially affected is very small.”
“I associate myself and those on the Opposition Benches with the Secretary of State’s comments about the outgoing permanent secretary of the Department for Work and Pensions. I am sorry that this may be my last exchange with the Secretary of State, as we await the coronation of the king in the north and the appointment of his new team.”
“I heard no commitment from the Secretary of State that the benefits bill was going to come down any time soon. Labour can change its leader, but it is still the same old welfare party. The right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) told us this morning that he is going to bring “Manchesterism” to the whole country.”
The complete record
Every one of 603 lines we hold for Helen Whately, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 10 of 13.
“However much someone loves somebody, there is a huge demand on them when they are caring for somebody with dementia. It can be very difficult, very distressing and absolutely relentless, however much they love them. I pay tribute to all carers who are doing that. My right hon. Friend spoke first about Lisa Rutter, who very sadly lost her mother, who was living with dementia, during the pandemic—in hospital, if I heard my right hon. Friend correctly. I thank Lisa Rutter for the work that she is doing as the founder of Dementia Club UK. It is fabulous to be supporting other people to look after loved ones with dementia, or indeed those with dementia themselves. My right hon.”
“At the moment, it is estimated that around a quarter of the beds in hospitals are being used by patients with dementia, so ensuring that people receive the right care when they are in hospital with dementia is really important, as is doing our utmost to avoid unnecessary admissions and ensuring that people are discharged from hospital on a timely basis. It is really worth emphasising the point that my right hon. Friend made about dignity, and the fact that every single person counts, at whatever stage of their life. There are challenges to ensure that people living with dementia have that dignity, particularly when they are in hospital. I, too, pay tribute to the many unpaid carers who are looking after their loved ones with dementia. I know what a huge burden and challenge that can be.”
“I sincerely thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) for securing this Adjournment debate, and for her powerful speech. She really brought the subject to life through the examples from her constituency of people’s experiences in hospital. They were very difficult stories to hear, and I am very sorry to hear of times when it sounds like the care for people’s loved ones has fallen short. My right hon. Friend made some powerful points that I want to address, starting with the fact that, as she said, there are many thousands of people living with dementia, and the number is only expected to increase; indeed, there will be more than a million by 2025. Many people with dementia will also be living with other health conditions.”
“We will ensure that we get all the necessary care in place outside hospital, which avoids unnecessary admissions; support people to be discharged from hospital quicker; get ready for the arrival of new dementia treatments; and raise awareness about the significant proportion of dementia cases that can be prevented or at least delayed by looking after our health. In fact, the risk factors for dementia are similar to those for heart disease and other things, and there is relatively low awareness of that. We will see more people with dementia in the years ahead, but we can do more to raise awareness of how people can maintain their health and stave it off.”
“That is really important, because having a diagnosis helps people—the individual with dementia and their carers, for example—to access the support and back-up that they should be receiving. I am conscious of the clock ticking, so I have tried cover some of the territory that my right hon. Friend set out in her speech, which I thought was very powerful in raising these significant issues for those with dementia receiving care in hospital, their carers and loved ones. I completely agree about the importance of dignified treatment and treating those with dementia with dignity at all times. I know that that can be particularly challenging in hospital, but we have to ensure that that is the case.”
“We are waiting to hear whether they are approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. In the event of approval, NHS England is taking steps to be ready to put in place the levels of diagnosis required to be able to support those treatments. That goes hand in hand with the work that we are doing with NHS England to improve the diagnosis rate for dementia. We have a target dementia diagnosis rate of 66.7%. That dropped during the pandemic because dementia services and assessment had to be closed, but it has been gradually building up, and I expect NHS England to get back up to that level during the course of this year.”
“They receive that care and are able to recuperate at home, avoiding the risk of a longer hospital stay and deconditioning. My right hon. Friend talked about dementia research and the new treatments coming onstream. The Government have committed to doubling our investment in dementia research during this Parliament, and we are on track to do that with our dementia mission. We are also working very closely with NHS England to be ready for the breakthrough treatments lecanemab and donanemab coming onstream. I should be clear that we know very well—I have received clinical advice on this—that those treatments have quite significant side effects, so they will not be suitable for everybody and I put a note of caution there.”
“Clearly, some people should be—absolutely must be—in hospital for the treatment they need, but we know that patients with dementia in particular can deteriorate in hospitals, so we are doing more work with the national health service and social care to avoid admission when it is not truly necessary by putting in place alternatives or, at the other end, supporting earlier discharge through the roll-out of the Hospital at Home initiative, or virtual wards, under which we committed to at least 10,000 hospital-at-home beds or equivalent as part of emergency care recovery plans. The NHS has over-delivered on that, so we now have more than 11,000 Hospital at Home beds, which help people who would otherwise be in hospital receiving acute care.”
“I have very little time, so I am afraid I will not give way. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet talked about the social care workforce, another subject close to my heart. We have a strategy for the care workforce. We are building care as a career, in particular to boost recruitment and retention among our home-grown workforce. We recently published the first ever national career structure for care workers, and we are launching a new national qualification to boost the supply of care workers. Avoiding admission is another priority for me.”
“I am just coming to a close. I thank my right hon. Friend for securing the debate. I will continue my work to pursue the topics that we have discussed this evening. Question put and agreed to.”
“A year ago we set out a plan to improve urgent and emergency care, and the plan is working. Performance this winter has been better, with ambulance waits down by nearly a third, and we are learning the lessons from this year to make further improvements in the year ahead.”
“I am delighted that Stepping Hill Hospital will soon have a new emergency care campus, with all the benefits that that will bring to my hon. Friend’s constituents. I know that she is a great campaigner for her local NHS and has already met the Secretary of State about the concern she raises. As well as making her argument so clearly in Westminster, I would encourage her to continue discussions with her local NHS integrated care board, which is responsible for local decisions on capital investment.”
“I commend my hon. Friend for her hard work on supporting the new hospital, for the leadership she is providing and for her work on encouraging residents to have their say in the consultation. I cannot prejudge the outcome of the consultation but I agree with her that the new hospital will be great for patients, with its modern facilities. She is right to say that an urgent treatment centre can provide excellent emergency care for the majority of people who attend A&E.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on his successful campaigning for healthcare in Northampton, which is, as he says, benefiting from upgrades to the children’s A&E and the main emergency department and will soon have one of our 160 new clinical diagnostic centres. He will know that his local NHS integrated care board will decide whether to fund a new urgent treatment centre, and I have every confidence in his ability to persuade it of doing so.”
“I know that the hon. Gentleman is a great campaigner on this issue; he has worked very hard on it with me in the past, and he now does so with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Health and Secondary Care. I assure him that we are in the process of revising the draft strategy, taking on board feedback from patients, their families, charities and the NHS, and we will publish the strategy in due course. I thank all stakeholders for their continued efforts.”
“Across the country, ambulance response times have come down by a third. We have worked very hard, particularly with areas that face greater challenges, including Shropshire. I have spoken to leaders in the local health system about the ongoing challenges. We are learning lessons about what has worked over the past year, and from where we have not made so much progress, to ensure that we do better in areas such as the hon. Lady’s over the year ahead.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to talk about the whole health system. One thing we are doing as part of our work on urgent and emergency care is preventing people from being admitted to hospital unnecessarily, or from being brought to A&E in the first place. Primary care is part of that. In our investment in expanding medical school places, we are particularly encouraging medical schools, such as the new Kent and Canterbury Medical School near me, to train students to work more outside hospitals, including in primary care.”
“I am not going to pre-empt the publication of targets for the coming year, but, as I have said, we will continue to learn lessons from the progress that we have made this year, including on ambulance response times, which are down by over a third. Anyway, I will take no lessons from Labour, because we know the state of the NHS in Wales.”
“We are making great progress on our 10-year vision for adult social care reform. We have introduced the first ever national career structure for care workers, and we have introduced new assessments by the Care Quality Commission, which will shine a light on how well councils are delivering their social care duties.”
“My hon. Friend is right about the importance of the social care workforce: social care is its workforce. I can assure him that we already have a plan for the care workforce, set out in the “People at the Heart of Care” White Paper, and now we are putting it into practice. Our care workforce pathway is already being implemented, our new accredited qualification for care workers will be launched later this year, and we are backing social care with up to £8.6 billion in extra available funding.”
“We very much want everybody who needs care to get it and everyone who is eligible for financial support should get it. That, of course, is assessed by local authorities. We are introducing Care Quality Commission assurance of social care commissioned by local authorities, to make sure people get the care they deserve and to shine a light on where local authorities are doing a really good job and where others could do better.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his important question on concerns about the cost of care and how much it costs some people. As he may know—I remind him—the charging reforms were delayed in 2022 by the Chancellor after we listened to local authorities.”
“I recognise the challenges in the hon. Gentleman’s area, although nationally vacancies in social care have fallen by over 20,000. We are reforming adult social care careers to make care a career for the UK workforce. We are putting extra funding into social care—up to £8.6 billion over two years—and introducing CQC assurance to make sure local authorities are doing their best on social care. I would encourage the hon. Gentleman to talk to his local authority and make sure it is paying a fair rate for the care it commissions.”
“Care is a skilled profession and I want care workers to get the support and recognition they deserve. In January we took the next step in our ambitious care workforce reforms, launching the first ever national career structure for the care workforce alongside our new nationally recognised qualification.”
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we are grateful to all who work in social care, including those who have come here from other countries to care for our loved ones. We also agree that international migration is not a long-term answer to our care workforce needs. That is why we are reforming social care to work as a career, and we are backing that with extra funding—up to £8.6 billion extra for social care over two years.”
“As I said a moment ago, vacancies have fallen and the care workforce grew by more than 20,000 last year. We are seeing better retention of care workers as well, but we need to go further. That is why we are reforming social care careers, introducing the first ever national career structure for the care workforce and new qualifications and training.”
“I am grateful to international care workers who have come to the UK to look after loved ones. Their work has contributed to reducing vacancies and increasing the supply of social care, but we need to get the balance right between international recruitment and our homegrown workforce. We are carrying out ambitious reforms of our adult social care workforce, and therefore it is right, alongside that, to ensure that we have the right numbers of people coming here from overseas for social care. That is why we have worked with the Home Office on changes to visas.”
“I work closely with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions on the recruitment of people looking for jobs in social care, and I will raise that point with my colleague in the Department.”
“Let us be honest, Labour has no plan for social care. Whatever the shadow Minister says, it is unfunded. There is no funding committed to it and it is not meaningful. Those of us on the Conservative side of the House are reforming adult social care. We not only have a plan, but it is in progress.”
“We are grateful to international workers coming to support us in social care and improving supply, but we have to get the balance right between international recruitment and our domestic workforce. In England, we are reforming social care careers to make social care work a career for our homegrown workforce, and I encourage her to make sure the SNP does the same in Scotland.”
“As the hon. Lady will have heard me say earlier, we are grateful to international care workers who come to care for our loved ones in this country. We need to get the balance right between international recruitment and our home-grown care workforce. On the question specifically on dependants, I say to her that every care worker who comes here to do work in the UK has a choice as to whether to come here or not.”
“I am very sorry to hear about what happened to the hon. Gentleman’s constituent. I send my condolences to her family and loved ones. Clearly, it is very important that discharge decisions are led by clinicians, who can make a clinical decision about whether somebody is medically ready to be discharged. I have no doubt that the family may well take up that decision with local NHS organisations.”
“How sad that that came after his death and after all the suffering that he and those close to him must have gone through. I thank the hon. Lady for bringing Tom and his family’s situation to my attention. I commend her for her powerful speech and how clearly she put across the concerns. I look forward to speaking about this further outside the Chamber.”
“They need to be involved in the ramifications of whatever decisions are made. That should take place, but let us investigate further outside the Chamber whether that is working as it should be, together with the points she made about transparency and trying to ensure that people are involved when continuing healthcare is being assessed and considered. I receive a significant amount of correspondence about continuing healthcare. The NHS has a challenging job to ensure that the decisions go the right way. I know the process can be long and hard for those involved in it. I want to ensure it works as well as it possibly can, so that those who should be eligible receive such care. I understand in Tom’s case that, after the appeal, the decision was made that he should be receiving continuing healthcare.”
“Sometimes assessment in hospital will lead to delays and a longer stay in hospital, and to what is called over-prescription, with somebody ending up living longer in a care home when they might have continued at home. In general, discharge to assess is a good thing but, as I say, I am happy to look into the specific question of whether there might be circumstances, such as when somebody has had a very serious injury, when the process works differently. I will take that away. The hon. Lady made a point about the involvement of patients in decisions about their care. It is fundamental that patients should be involved in decisions about their care, as should families and carers. In many circumstances, the patient and those around them will be the experts on what they will need.”
“Lady raised a point about discharge to assess and how it did not work for someone with a catastrophic injury. Again, we should pick that up in a conversation outside the Chamber. In general, the purpose of discharge to assess is a good one: to avoid people having long and unnecessary stays in hospital, where we know that frail and elderly people, in particular, are likely to decondition and live less independently as a result. She knows that well from the work that she does on social care. Once somebody has been discharged home, they are often able to live with more independence and regain mobility in a way that was not clear when they were assessed in hospital.”
“Lady mentioned, the initial decision was that he was not eligible. I am happy to make some inquiries. As a Minister, I cannot make a call on any particular decision that is made on an individual, but clearly I want always to be assured that the right process has been followed. It is probably helpful if, with the help of officials, I try to seek some further information outside the Chamber from the hon. Lady to see what I can do to understand fully what happened and to be assured as to whether there is anything we need to do to make the process work better, particularly in the circumstance that she has described, where somebody such as Tom has clearly had some severe injuries. I am also happy to meet her and Tom’s family to understand this process better. The hon.”
“Anyone, whether a young person such as Tom or someone of old age, wants to live as independently as possible, whatever their health needs at home. I also heard about the experience with discharge to assess. Clearly, a process is in place for accessing NHS continuing healthcare. The intention of the process is to consider the individual’s clinical needs, the combination of those needs and how they come together, and therefore to assess whether somebody is eligible. The intention is to design a package of care around the individual to support them where they wish to live, be it at home or in a care home. First, a checklist is used, which leads to someone having an eligibility assessment. If I understood it correctly, Tom experienced and went through the eligibility assessment, but, as the hon.”
“She described how he was considered for continuing healthcare and the experience of the eligibility assessment, and how Tom and his family felt it did not take into account his injuries and health conditions, and did not take full account of his medical records. She described how he and the family were then told that he was not eligible. They subsequently and rightly appealed, and I heard how difficult the hon. Lady said that process clearly was for the family and for Tom, with the lack of transparency, the uncertainty, and the feeling that meetings happened without them and their involvement. I heard how Tom felt under pressure to move into a care home, when he really wanted to live well at home. All of us can completely understand that.”
“Particularly in her summing up, she talked more generally about care for people with spinal injury, which can have such a devastating impact and can mean that a person needs a great deal of care from multidisciplinary NHS teams. I could go into the way NHS England commissions services for spinal cord injuries—there is a national specification and a range of support—but I think I could make better use of the time today by picking up on the question of continuing healthcare and the discharge situation, which the hon. Lady outlined. She described how Tom’s family feel that the system failed him and his clearly complex health needs as a result of his injuries. She described the long time he spent in hospital and the long-term rehabilitation he needed, which meant he needed significant ongoing clinical care.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for securing this debate and for her powerful speech telling us about Tom Lazarides’s experience, his tragic accident and his injury. I welcome his family, who the hon. Lady said are here in Parliament today. I offer them my sincere condolences on the loss of Tom, who sadly died in November 2023. I listened carefully to the hon. Lady’s speech, although I did not have advance sight of her comments, and I will do my best to respond. I assure her that I am happy to write to her with further details about the points she has raised this afternoon. I am responding as the Minister with oversight of continuing healthcare and discharge, so I will be able to say more on those points.”
“Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who called a moment ago for a care workforce pathway. I know he is relatively new to this role—we have not done that many debates opposite each other—so I ask him to go take a look online. He will see our care workforce pathway programme, which we have published and which we worked closely with the sector on to develop this national career structure. We did so exactly because it was one of the things we knew was missing from social care, and because when people come into social care, they want to see that they have an opportunity to progress in that career. We are also developing national training that will be recognised across different employers. Those are just two of the headline policies of a truly ambitious reform programme for the social care workforce.”
“We have been clear about that as a Government, and I have been clear about that personally. That is one of the reasons why, on the NHS side, we have our long-term workforce plan, investing in training our home-grown healthcare workforce. On the social care side, we have a 10-year vision for social care, which includes ambitious workforce reforms, which are in progress, including the first ever national career structure for care workers and new national qualifications. I am determined that care workers—indeed, care professionals —be recognised for their skills and supported in their work and career. I would say to the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan), that she should read up on these care workforce reforms, as should the shadow Minister, the hon.”
“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) for opening the debate and setting out some of the challenges we face in international recruitment in health and social care. I pay tribute to our international health and care workers, who play an important part in our health and care system, looking after people and bringing their skills, equipment and compassion to look after loved ones. We benefit enormously across the UK from their knowledge and skills. In return, it is imperative that employers, whether in health or social care, provide a safe and supportive environment for their staff to work in. I want to be clear that international recruitment is not the long-term answer to our health and social care workforce needs.”
“On the NHS side, we have achieved our manifesto commitment of 50,000 more nurses. On the social care side, we have over 20,000 more care workers in the care workforce. We have seen vacancies come down and retention improve, so we have been making progress on both the social care and the NHS workforces. While international recruitment plays an important part, it goes hand in hand with our work as a Government to build up our home-grown workforce both on the NHS side, with our NHS long-term plan, and the social care side, with our ambitious social care workforce reforms.”
“Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale that that increase in supply, thanks in part to the extra funding, has helped to speed up discharges over the past year and reduced some of the delays, and we have seen an increase in the number of people being discharged both overall and particularly with social care support. We have made progress on that point. I come back to this point in closing. I want to be categorically clear, in the light of this debate, that no member of staff in health or social care should face abuse of any kind, and illegal and unethical international recruitment and employment practices will absolutely not be tolerated. Internationally recruited staff play a really important part in caring for people across health and social care. They have helped us to build and increase our health and social care workforce.”
“That is why we put in an extra £600 million in funding to support discharge over the past year, and there is another £1 billion coming this year. We have also put in an extra £570 million of funding to support social care. Just this morning, I was talking to a number of directors of adult social services from local authorities who assured me that that funding has made a meaningful difference to social care funding and supply. I know that there are still significant financial pressures, and the national living wage increase puts an additional pressure on care providers and local authorities for the coming financial year. While that increase is a good thing for those at the bottom of the pay scale, it also places financial pressure on employers and those funding social care. I assure the hon.”
“Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). He mentioned the connection between social care supply and delayed discharge in his local area, which is something that I have done a huge amount of work on over the past year. I want to be clear, particularly on this topic, that social care does not exist just to discharge and support the discharge of patients from hospital. Social care is absolutely an end in itself, supporting both older people and those of working age with care needs. We know that there is a connection between discharge delays from hospital and social care, because some people who are delayed in hospital, when they are medically optimised for discharge, are in need of social care packages.”
“There is a specific example relevant to this debate. East of England has commissioned Unseen to run seminars and provide one-to-one support for care providers on safeguarding and spotting signs of exploitation. I continue to work with those leads to get the best possible insight on the ground on the extent to which internationally recruited workers may face difficulties. That could happen if someone has been brought here for a job with a particular sponsor who loses the licence to employ them, and the leads are working hard, trying to support recruits in that situation. I am also setting up a meeting directly between our regional leads and the Home Office and UKVI, to ensure that they share their intelligence directly, making the most of the leads’ work and insights. I want to come briefly to some of the points made by the hon.”
“Another safeguard is that we are restricting sponsors to CQC-registered care providers. At the moment, as long as someone is providing social care, CQC-registered or not, it depends on the sort of care provided. The Government do not have all the answers at the centre, and I feel strongly about that. That is one reason why, as we have introduced the care worker visa, we put £15 million funding into regional partnerships of local authorities, to have established leads around the country for international recruitment, to support employers and recruits. I meet our regional leads, to hear what it is like in their areas, and to discuss what they are doing on the ground to support employers and social care staff. For instance, they are supporting providers with legal and HR advice on recruiting and employing international staff.”