Juliet Campbell MP: speeches

Speeches

• 11 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will not push it to a vote, Sir Roger. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. — (Bambos Charalambous.)

• 11 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. The word “demonstrably” could produce that weight. It could add to every other part of the Bill that a person must be able to demonstrate to health and social care professionals that they understand what assisted dying is and understand the process that will be gone through. The person needs to be able to demonstrate to other professionals that they understand. A written report by a health or social care professional is not enough; the person themselves will have to demonstrate that they have a full and clear understanding.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 30 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q My question is to Professor Preston. I will go back to something you said in your last answer, when we talked about how people are treated, and the differences and inequalities across society but also within our healthcare systems and how things are done. This was highlighted specifically during the pandemic. How do you think these inequalities will undermine the principles of the Bill? Professor Preston : I think it is about having that additional consideration. When additional consideration for, perhaps, social deprivation or about people from minority groups is in the training and is at the forefront of people’s thinking, they can address it. I will give you an example. We did a study looking at access to palliative care. I know you have heard a lot about there being a postcode lottery and things like that. One of our areas is one of the most deprived coastal communities in the country, and yet it had equal access for people across all areas of society, because they brought in people to target anyone from those socially deprived areas. Equally, at the beginning of the first wave of the pandemic, at one of the big London hospitals, we analysed the data because we were concerned about access to palliative care services. Were people accessing it during the pandemic? We also looked by ethnicity. What we found was that not only during the pandemic, but pre-pandemic, if you were non-white, it took—I don’t know—three or five days longer to get that referral. We had an idea that from some of the research we had done on social deprivation, people are making assumptions. It is not about people making horrible decisions, but they are making assumptions: “Oh, they will have a big family—the family will look after them. This will happen or that will happen.” The nurse consultant, Claude Chidiac, went in and did training for the staff and said, “Don’t assume that just because people come from an Afro-Caribbean family that they have got this big family.” Within a year, when the second wave happened, the difference had gone. It can be at the forefront of training and you can make people really think about it. I would say—I think someone said it yesterday—that there is almost an inverse inequality, because I think those families and those communities will be really trying to protect people from even thinking about going for it.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q My question is for Professor Shakespeare and Dr Griffiths. Clause 4 of the Bill offers the opportunity for clinicians to instigate the discussion on assisted dying. Could you both tell me your view on that, please? Professor Shakespeare: It is natural and right that somebody should discuss their wishes with a doctor who supports and treats them. I do not think there is a problem there. Marie’s suggestion that there should be a wider body to look at this is very relevant. At the moment, doctors refer women for abortions, and that does not stop them also supporting pregnant women. I do not think that women would distrust their doctor because they are sometimes involved, at some point, with an abortion decision. That is quite obvious. As my colleague Yogi Amin said, the Bill covers what the terminal illness is, and why we should support people to voluntarily exercise their choices. Lots of doctors will not be in favour of this, but they will be clinically professional and they will discuss with the person. I do not have a concern about that. You are more likely to be kept alive against your will than you are to end your life under this Act. Dr Griffiths: My first point is that, for me, the Bill raises concerns because it relies on doctors’ interpretations of prognosis. If a doctor assumes that you have six months left to live, and is therefore going to start having a conversation with you about the possibility of assisted suicide, that draws into question how we allow assumptions to be made about whether an individual has six months left to live. That is particularly the case given that we have evidence that shows that, with certain interventions or mishaps surrounding prognosis, individuals can live for months, years and decades longer. The idea of bringing in the conversation from the point of view of the medical practitioner could, arguably, accelerate one’s death—if you take into account that their idea of prognosis might be flawed. It also, I think, raises problems, because we know that many individuals with health conditions and impairments—irrespective of whether we want to create this false line between disabled people and people with terminal illness—do not have access to advocacy or representation in these kinds of processes. Having a conversation where there is extreme credibility and validity that rests on the medical practitioner could exacerbate issues around coercion. We could take a moment of reflection. When we were going through the pandemic, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman highlighted how medical practitioners could think about “do not attempt resuscitation” orders and how they were utilised in the disabled people’s community. That has parallels with the issue we have here, where medical practitioners will be making assumptions about whether conversations or applications should be made. Yogi Amin: Can I just raise one point on representation? I point Members to paragraph 10 in my written submission, which tries to make the important point that if we are involving courts, individuals need access to justice. They need access to advice, and that means legal aid. I point in that paragraph to the provision of non-means-tested legal aid, just like in the case of parents of children and the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. Those current rules are in place for parents, and a similar arrangement could be put in place for individuals who are brought before the court in this matter.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q So rather than going straight to “I have made this request, or this has been suggested to me, and this is the path we are going down,” there is something that should happen in between. Professor Ranger: Well, you would not really want any clinician to push this view on any patient. It has to come from the person themselves. That is the key thing around capacity and autonomy. I do not think that people should ever say to a patient or an individual, “Is this something you have considered?” It has to be led by the patient.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you both very much for being here today. Throughout this whole discussion, for many months, there has been a lot of talk about palliative care and pain management, which can lead patients to come to a decision or to consider assisted dying as an option. If a doctor has suggested to a patient that assisted dying is an option, or a patient has said that they are considering assisted dying, do you think that they should be referred to another clinician? Or do you think that there should be an independent organisation—a non-clinical setting—where a patient can go to have further discussions before taking the assisted dying route? Professor Ranger: I think there is something really important about having a big difference in the beginning with regard to palliative care and assisted dying, and pain management. It is essential that those two things are slightly separated, because it would be heartbreaking to think that pain management was the primary reason that someone wanted to be assisted to die. We should be able to control and support someone’s symptoms and pain. I think the primary thing with regard to being referred to another organisation is autonomy. I absolutely agree with what was said earlier: you would want anyone who is considering assisted dying to be slightly separated out of their normal clinical pathway, so it is not part of mainstream care for someone in a hospital or an organisation. There is something really important about separating that out, both in the discussions around the decision making and in any care involved in assisting them to die. I think those two things do need to be separated.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I have a question for James Sanderson and one for Dr Clarke. They are quite similar, but I will refer to things you have said. James, you said: “Sadly, only half the people who need palliative care receive it.” In your opinion, who are the people who receive palliative, and who does do not? My question to Dr Clarke is similar. You have talked about the population being “carved up into two groups…those who deserve to live and those are expendable”. Could you expand on that quote and the two groups you referred to, as well as the impact that has on their treatment and care? James Sanderson: You draw a really important point about not just the provision and totality of palliative care across the country but the inequity of access. Unfortunately, we find that the diversity of people who are accessing care in hospices across the country is less than those who are dying in hospital—43% of people currently die in hospital. One of the things we really need to do is move to a new ecosystem of palliative care that looks at supporting people in different settings. We need specialist provision in hospices to support people with significant needs, but increasingly hospices are reaching out beyond their walls into the community, and 80% of Sue Ryder’s work is in people’s own homes. People tell us that they want to die at home, so supporting people in their own homes enables us to access more diverse communities and get to people in their own setting. Increasingly, one of the things we feel is necessary is the provision of support inside hospital. Alongside wards, we would bring support to that 43% of people who are currently dying in hospital, to ensure there is equality of access in all places, both in in-patient settings and in the community. You draw a really important point that we have to look at the totality of provision and ensure that, when someone is offered palliative care—the Bill talks about that provision being available—there is universal access, in terms of the type of palliative care available and the access for everybody in society. Dr Clarke: My comment refers to the fact that there is an immense gulf between the theory of the NHS being a cradle-to-grave service—or a service that cares for us at the end of life as it does at the start—and the reality. The reality that I see every day at work in my hospital is patients coming into the emergency department from the community sometimes in utter, abject misery, in agony, with a lack of dignity. They have been forgotten completely. They are not getting healthcare or social care, and no one cares about them. Even in the hospital, patients who have a terminal diagnosis are sometimes cast out into the corners of the hospital. There are hospitals, and mine is one currently, where we do not even have a 24/7 palliative care service face to face. Every night in my hospital, and every weekend from Friday to Monday, you cannot see a palliative care nurse or doctor, despite the fact that for a number of years that has been an NHS standard. That is an absolute disgrace and it shows how little people who are dying are truly cared for in a civilised society. It does not necessarily have anything to do with assisted dying, except that if we do not address that simultaneously, some of those people will “choose” to end their life, because we as a society do not care about them enough to give them the care that might make life worth living. Surely that is a travesty for Britain.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

• 12 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  In addressing welfare and support for families, the shadow Minister has focused on pensions, but what are his thoughts on wider issues such as childcare and education, which we should also be thinking about?

• 10 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q A few of the witnesses today have spoken about “relevant family members” and the fact that that has not been defined in the Bill. Why did the Bill not adopt the existing armed forces covenant definition, which may have made it a little easier? Luke Pollard: The Bill itself is not a stand-alone piece of legislation. It might be useful for hon. Members to understand that, effectively, it inserts legislation into the already existing Armed Forces Act 2021, which includes a section—I think it is section 340—that already includes the armed forces covenant. However, we did not want to specify the relevant family member in primary legislation; we wanted to be able to take more time to have conversations with stakeholders and define that through secondary legislation. If the definitions were to change in the future, that could change. We have seen that the question of what a family is has changed. For me, a family is the most important unit of society, but what and how it is will be different for every different family. We are trying to find the right definition. I imagine the commissioner will have a view on that, and they can then make recommendations on that basis. That is why there is the option of being able to revise the definition via secondary legislation, which is an easier process than undertaking primary legislation—and the Armed Forces Bill comes round only once every five years.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you very much for joining us. In part of your introduction, you spoke about the number of complaints that you receive. Clearly, the number of complaints that you receive is lower than the number of valid complaints that probably should be made. How do you think that this role will encourage people who might not have actively come forward, such as people from LGBT backgrounds and non-UK personnel, and enable them to come forward and make those complaints? Mariette Hughes: I think it will allow people who are experiencing an issue that affects a wider group or a demographic to bring forward that complaint as a whole. There is a lot of onus in service complaints on the resolution of individual grievances. You cannot bring a group complaint; it has to be an individual’s complaint with a named respondent. We are doing as much as we can to make sure that that system does not feel onerous, combative or scary, but some people are simply not comfortable putting their name down and saying, “I want to complain about my employer because of this.” This new role has a wider focus on welfare, so you could form really good links with some of the networks to say, “Okay, when people come to you for advice, what are the things they are worried about? What are the things they are scared about? What policies are affecting them?” If those people are still not comfortable raising individual complaints, we need to ask what issues they are facing and whether we can cast a light on them. I want everyone to feel safe to come forward, but equally, if we know there are problems, it should not take the individual coming forward. If we know there are problems, we should be able to go and shine the light on it for them, so that they do not need to do that.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q That leads on to my second question, which is about patterns and trends of complaints and whether this role will enable people to look at them, rather than waiting, as you said, and think, “Oh, I have got to be the person who comes forward.” How would you be able to address any patterns or trends that you see in complaints? Mariette Hughes: I think it is key to look at the front end of complaints. By the time things come to us, they have been all the way through the process, they are still unhappy with it and they are asking us to fix it. It is really important that we can fulfil that function, but the thing that went wrong for that individual happened maybe 12 months ago, so we have to see what people are coming to welfare for, what people are coming to the networks for, and what people are using “Speak Out” and the “Call it Out” hub for. When people are saying, “I am seeing certain behaviours and I’m having an issue,” where can we get the sources of data to look into it? It will be really important for the commissioner to try to get ahead of some of those issues. It is really important that, when things go wrong, people can use the formal system, but ideally I would like to stop them going wrong, to be able to look at where the hotspots are and to really focus welfare work on them.

• 18 Nov 2024 · Armed Forces Commissioner Bill · Hansard source

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  I welcome the introduction of the Armed Forces Commissioner Bill and the cross-party support for it. The Government could not have introduced the Bill at a more prudent time, as our service personnel have made it clear over many years that they are not getting the quality of support that they need, whether because of poor responses to concerns and complaints, the quality of homes or the treatment of women and other minority groups. The Ministry of Defence’s most recent attitude report showed that morale amongst service personnel fell for the third year in a row. Only around a third of military personnel reported feeling valued by their service, despite the vital defence role they play. Pay satisfaction, which last year was at its lowest recorded level, had increased by only 1%. It is time that those concerns were addressed. We know that the Government have already announced the largest armed forces pay increase in 22 years, and the introduction of the armed forces commissioner represents even further investment in the welfare of our forces. This vital support is not only incredibly well deserved but long overdue. Ten units are stationed at Chetwynd barracks in my constituency of Broxtowe, and the establishment of an armed forces commissioner will transform how the concerns and needs of our armed forces personnel and their loved one are addressed. In an ever-changing defence landscape, it is key that the Government ensure that our armed forces have a dedicated spokesperson and advocate to ensure that their voices are heard at the highest levels. It is time that we create an infrastructure to establish that long-needed sense of security and support within the military community. Let us move forward with this important legislation and reinforce our commitment to the welfare of our service members. In doing so, let us ensure that those who serve and their families are given the support that they so rightly deserve. Let us establish an armed forces commissioner so that we can better serve those who nobly serve our country.

• 13 Nov 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  I welcome the establishment of a flood resilience taskforce, because in my constituency of Broxtowe, unprecedented flooding has affected many of my constituents. There is rising concern and significant financial insecurity for many; they face distress, trauma and fear in their own home. What other measures is the Prime Minister taking to improve flood resilience? What support will be available to my constituents in Broxtowe?

• 5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source

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  It is an honour and a privilege to be making my maiden speech in this Budget debate. Our plans for the NHS and public services give me hope, and a sense of pride that they will once again be here, ready for all of us. I make my maiden speech today with a sense of gratitude and humility, and I thank my Broxtowe constituents for putting their trust in me to represent them here in this esteemed place. I pay tribute to my predecessor, Darren Henry, for all he has done for the residents in Broxtowe. Darren worked hard to establish banking hubs and continued the efforts of Anna Soubry in working with local groups to fight for our railway services. Their work in securing step-free access to Beeston station will give everyone the opportunity to visit our brilliant constituency. I look forward to expanding upon Labour’s legacy in Broxtowe, where Labour last made its mark under the tireless efforts of Nick Palmer. Nick represented Broxtowe from 1997 to 2010, bringing about reform through many successful Bills. I would like to thank my family for their support and encouragement, particularly my son, my daughter-in-law and my brothers. I would also like to thank all the members in Broxtowe who have been a tremendous help to me. To those who have gone above and beyond: you know who you are, and I will never forget your kindness and generosity. I began my career as a civil servant before moving into the NHS, where I worked my way up to become a senior manager, but it was education that brought me into politics. In 2011, I set up a not-for-profit organisation that focused on dyslexia, and I sincerely hope that what I advocated for—reform of the teacher training curriculum with regard to SEND provision for dyslexic students—can make it into the education reforms soon. I was elected as a councillor in 2018 and my cabinet brief was quite varied. It included public health and wellbeing, equalities, refugees, violence against women and girls, and community safety. I wanted to be part of the change that this country so desperately needed after almost a decade of austerity and decline that hit every single community in this country. Broxtowe is a wonderful, thriving constituency of two halves. In the north, I have a particular soft spot for Eastwood, as it borders Bilborough, where I was raised. Eastwood, of course, is the birthplace of one of the most popular English novelists of the 20th century, D. H. Lawrence, who showed a much more clandestine side of British society. As well as risqué classic novels, Broxtowe has a beautiful and diverse landscape that hosts the brilliant Attenborough nature reserve. Located in the southernmost part of the constituency, it spans 540 acres of conserved land, wetland, woodland and lakes. Visitors may spot 250 species of bird, including several nationally rare species of heron and rail that have been spotted there over the years. Broxtowe is also home to businesses, from the small and independently run to the headquarters of large international companies such as Boots, Worldline and the UK arm of Raleigh. I have had the pleasure of visiting Caunton Engineering, a steelwork company with an excellent apprenticeship scheme that offers brilliant opportunities to young professionals. Broxtowe also hosts Forever Stars, a baby loss charity that supports families who lose their children during pregnancy or shortly after birth. Its sensitive and innovative work with hospitals is truly inspiring. At the heart of my constituency is Chilwell, home to the impressive Chetwynd barracks, which has resisted closure three times in the past 10 years. Chetwynd is home to a reserves training and mobilisation centre that specialises in engineering. My dad is an engineer who received his training in Nottingham through the Territorial Army, and I am committed to ensuring that the voice of our armed forces is heard here in Parliament. I stand here today as the youngest of five children, born to parents who migrated to the UK from Jamaica in the 1960s. My parents brought me up to believe that I could do anything I wanted, and that the only barriers in front of me were those that I chose to notice. I took notice of none of them. Too often, factors such as class, race, gender and disability can be perceived as hurdles in the pursuit of ambition. They should not be, and I have dedicated much of my career to challenging and advocating for the removal of barriers, so that all have the opportunity to reach their potential. Reflecting on my journey, I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed my varied career, but today, as I give my maiden speech in this great House as the Member of Parliament for Broxtowe, I think this is my best role yet.