Barry was back pressing experts at the Environmental Audit Committee, focussing on bathing water. Barry zoned in on how often bathing water in our rivers is tested and agreed with Barry describing the Secretary of State’s actions in encouraging people to bath in our rivers despite the amount of pollution and lack of safety in them as prehistoric.
To watch the full exchange click below
In his role as Chair of The Democracy Forum, Barry took on his usual role of summing up the webinar. This time the webinar was entitled- ’Myanmar coup: a blow to democracy’
Barry said he saw Myanmar between “a fallen angel and the devil himself”. Barry speaks about whether he sees any reason for optimism in Myanmar and the importance that the young generation will have in the future of the nation.
You can watch Barry summing up the webinar below.
Many constituents have contacted Barry in recent weeks concerning the disproportionate effect the pandemic has had on people with dementia and their families. Dementia is an illness that Barry has had personal family experience, and he will take part in a fundraising marathon walk to raise money for dementia care with the Alzheimer’s Society. The link to donate is at the end of Barry’s response to his constituents below.
This is something that is very close to my heart. I have personal family experience of dementia and know the strain that caring for parents and loved ones can put on a family. So I recognise only too clearly the disproportionate effect the pandemic has had on all of us who are coping – or trying to cope – with this horrible disease.
Despite the best efforts of care workers, NHS staff and unpaid carers, this pandemic has exposed the underlying problems with our social care system. For too long, it has lacked the priority, attention and funding it deserves, and care workers have been undervalued and underpaid.
Here in Brent the local Council acted promptly and with great foresight at the very start of the pandemic, and in February 2020 they funded PPE for care homes out of the Council reserves. They also set up temporary residential care provision for elderly people discharged from hospital, so they could isolate before they came back into their own care home.
Sadly the government – who later claimed to have “put a protective ring around care homes” did not wake up to the need to provide PPE or such interim facilities to avoid direct discharge until much later and indeed after I had raised it as a question in the House of Commons. Mistakes were made: care staff were left without personal protective equipment (PPE), thousands of older people were discharged from hospitals directly back into care homes without tests, and Ministers did not ensure that social care was given the focus it needed.
The way out of the pandemic has been provided by our scientists and our National Health Service which has enabled the success of the vaccine rollout. However, I share your concerns that so many care home staff have still not been vaccinated. Ministers should work with care home providers and local councils and do everything possible to improve uptake and ensure the easiest possible access to jabs in the local community. Again, I am pleased to say that Brent Council has been commendable in pursuing this.
On visiting arrangements in care homes, residents are now allowed one regular indoor visitor. Yet thousands of families have been prevented from seeing their loved ones, many for almost a year. I support calls for legislation to enshrine residents’ rights to visits and end the practice of blanket visiting bans. This is particularly important for care home residents with dementia - whose health can deteriorate quickly if their routines and family connections are lost.
Our social care sector entered this pandemic after a decade of cuts to local government, with £8 billion lost from adult social care budgets. Councils now face £6.6 billion in extra costs due to the pandemic, yet the Government has repeatedly delayed setting out its plan to fix social care. Indeed, there was no mention of social care in the Chancellor’s recent Budget.
We need a long-term plan of far-reaching reform to establish a properly funded social care system. People who need care, and those who provide it, cannot afford to wait any longer.
Barry Gardiner
P.S. As I said, Dementia is very personal to me from my own family’s experience. In June this year, I will take part in a fundraising marathon walk to raise money for dementia care with the Alzheimer’s Society. If you wish to donate to this cause, please follow this link- https://justgiving.com/fundraising/Barry-Gardiner-Trek26
Many constituents have written to Barry asking his opinion on the caging of pigs. Barry has long been advocate for animal rights, and has written his response to constituents worried about this issue below.
I am committed to ending the ‘cage age’ of outdated farming practices that cause animals distress and restrict natural behaviours. I back our British farmers and want to see meaningful support for farmers moving to higher welfare standards.
In 1999, the then Labour Government banned cruel sow stalls that kept pigs caged for the entirety of their pregnancies. However, it is still permitted for female pigs to be kept in restrictive farrowing crates before they give birth and until their piglets are weaned. I believe this must change.
I support introducing a ban on sow farrowing crates with a reasonable phase-out period and replacing these with safe, free-farrowing systems.
In February 2020, the Opposition voted to include in the Agriculture Bill a phased ban of farrowing stalls, and for financial support to be made available to farmers with the capital costs of this process and for those who take interim measures to improve the conditions of farrowing sows. Disappointingly, this was voted down by Government MPs.
I support the Pig Husbandry (Farrowing) Bill by Sir David Amess MP, which would require the phasing out of farrowing crates for pigs by 2027 and would prohibit the installation of new crates across England.
I have had many constituents contact me about the government’s review into whether “COVID-status certificates” could play a role in reopening parts of our economy, including restrictions on social contact. The review is expected to report before 21 June 2021. As a proposal it raises fundamental issues of fairness, power and liberty which I will weigh very carefully before coming to a conclusion.
First let me say that I firmly believe that vaccines are the most effective public health intervention against COVID-19. Vaccines protect us as individuals against the virus and they protect society by enabling restrictions to be lifted.
Approval is only given to a vaccine in the UK if the regulator – the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) – is satisfied that the vaccine is both safe and effective. I am convinced that the vaccines currently authorized for use against Covid-19 are an important weapon in our fight against this disease and I believe it is important that everyone who is offered a vaccination should take it for their own sake and for the sake of their wider community.
BUT Vaccines are not mandatory. Nor should they be. The Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, which applies to England and Wales, is clear that any health protection regulations “may not include provision requiring a person to undergo medical treatment”. This includes vaccinations. So the Covid status-certificates issue raises important matters of autonomy.
I may disagree with someone who refuses to be vaccinated, but I respect their right to control their own body and their own health regime. Equally I am concerned that their right to refuse medication that might safeguard them, does not give them a right to expose other people to greater risk of infection because of their personal decision. People who choose not to be immunized against a dangerous and communicable disease have a corresponding obligation to ensure that they are not putting others at increased danger.
Issues of fairness are vital. Not everyone has been offered a vaccination. I think especially of young people who have been at least personal risk of getting the disease but have been some of the most disadvantaged by the lockdown. It would be particularly unfair if they were now to be doubly penalized and have their social lives curtailed yet further when they have not been given the opportunity to be vaccinated. Others, such as pregnant women have been told on medical advice that they should not be vaccinated. It would be wrong to discriminate against those who would be at risk medically from having the vaccine and exclude them from the workplace, public events or other social settings where people congregate. This would not be “getting life back to normal” it would be entrenching discrimination into our lives in an entirely unacceptable manner.
Those who argue for Vaccine status-certificates claim that they could provide businesses with the confidence they need to reopen and resume operations. However, they might also be used by employers as a mechanism for discriminating unfairly amongst members of their workforce. This is why the consultation must address issues of power and control. Our world is increasingly becoming dominated by data and the issue of who controls it. Personal data can help us to take more informed decisions and manage our own lives better, but if that data is used by others as a mechanism of restricting our freedoms then we face an increasingly dystopian future.
The idea of a vaccination passport suggests – falsely – that immunity is a binary matter. Vaccination is not a one-off event: immunity fades over time and people will need booster vaccinations and new vaccinations against new variants of the virus. This means the simple fact of being vaccinated is not a guarantee. It is also clear that supplies of the vaccines may not always be able to keep pace with the need to keep everyone’s immunity levels up to date. This could lead to certain already disadvantaged groups in society becoming further discriminated against.
Our government is becoming increasingly authoritarian. It has sidelined parliament and I am deeply troubled by recent measures on Covert Human Intelligence, Police Powers and the undermining of the Refugee Convention. If government introduces a two-tier system in which those who are not vaccinated are blocked from essential public services, work, or housing then the balance of power in our country will have definitively shifted in an alarming way.
Whilst I believe it right to listen carefully to the arguments put forward during the consultation period. I have tried in this email to indicate some of the issues which I consider any such scheme for Covid-Status Certificates must be able to answer satisfactorily. At present I am not persuaded that such answers are available.
As excuses go, “I was just following orders” became bankrupt in 1945.
So it has been extraordinary to hear health chiefs claim (wrongly) that they have no option but to do what NHS London tells them, and rubber stamp the take over of 48 GPs surgeries in London by the American owned company Operose Health Ltd.
Most patients will never have heard of Operose. They will probably not even have heard of the company AT Medics, which currently provides their GP services in Brent through the Wembley Practice in Chaplin Road and the Burnley Practice in Willesden; and in another 46 practices in 18 other London Boroughs. Yet without public consultation last November a decision in principle was taken to allow the transfer of the medical services contract by the Brent Primary Care Commissioning Committee (BPCCC) at Part 2 of its meeting. The Part 2 is important: it is the secret part of the meeting. And this Wednesday NHS London have told them they must ratify it in the open session of the meeting to make it legally binding.
They should refuse.
They should reject this sell-off of London’s primary healthcare and fulfil their obligation to conduct appropriate scrutiny over the transfer and award of contracts that will affect hundreds of thousands of Londoners. The Committee should ask whether a company that has acquired a reputation for ruthlessly exiting contracts, including one in Camden where a practice was reputedly run down and closed with patients given only four weeks’ notice to find another GP, is fit to be a trusted provider for vulnerable patients here in Brent.
The other matter the Committee should be concerned about is the financial backing of the company whose accounts appear to reveal losses of almost £6.5million. Operose’s American parent company, Centene, have invested more than £9milllion into Operose despite it showing year on year losses since 2017. This of course could be an extraordinary generosity and concern for the welfare of British citizens; but some might suspect that it is a way of paying no tax in the UK whilst offsetting these losses against the global income of the US company for American tax purposes. If this were indeed the company’s objective then it would constitute a very unreliable partner for Brent patients indeed.
I have made my views clear to Dr MC Patel as Chair of the CCG and asked him to facilitate a conversation with the lay Chair of the Committee ahead of the meeting on Wednesday. I pay tribute to all those on Brent Patient Voice who have raised this matter with me and believe that it is essential that those who can see what is being done to our health service do not just “follow orders” issued by NHS London, but honestly weigh up the likely repercussions of such creeping control over our healthcare by American companies with no ultimate loyalty to the health of British patients.
The old structure of Primary Care Commissioning Groups (PCCGS) is being done away with – the government would say “consolidated” -- and so this will likely be one of the last critically important decisions the Brent PCCG will take before it is “consolidated” into the new North West London grouping. That means nobody will be left to carry the can for the decision they take.
They must not let this abomination be their legacy.
Barry was once again grilling witnesses at the Select Committee for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with regards to Askham Bryan College.
Askham Bryan College currently hold controversial plans to shut down and sell Newton Rigg in Penrith to which Barry said they had played a “three card trick” on the people of Cumbria when Newton Bryan acquired Newton Rigg in 2011 when the ‘asset deed’ that Cumbria County Council originally insisted upon to ensure facilities had to remain there for further education purposes, was nullified when Askham Bryan purchased it.
Barry also suggested that Askham Bryan had run down Newton Rigg so it could be sold to raise money that belonged to Cumbria County Council and then use it to prop up a financially failing college.
The full exchange can be viewed below
Barry joined fellow Brent MP’s Dawn Butler and Tulip Siddiq as well as councillors and leaseholders in a meeting on the ongoing Leasehold scandal.
Barry would like to extend his thanks to all that attended, and especially Lucie Gutfreund of Brent and Camden Cladding Action Group for organising and hosting the meeting.
Barry outlines where he thinks the system is breaking down- at the level of building control. He provides the example of the Capitol Way developments in Brent North, and says the most important thing leaseholders can do is continue to make noise so the Government can recognise what is needed.
Unfortunately, as is often the way with virtual meetings there was a technical issue which affected the end of Barry’s speech. You can watch the whole zoom meeting here and Barry’s contribution below.
Barry joined speakers including Professor John Knox, former UN Special Rappoteur on the Right to a Healthy Environment and Delchen Palmo from the Tibet Policy Institute. A 2019 IPCC report found that the ‘Third Pole’ region was warming at a rate three times that of the rest of the world, predicting that 2/3rds of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau will be gone in the next 80 years unless global temperature rises are curbed. Coupled with China’s destructive tactics, including as highlighted in the discussion the use of dams to prevent water flows and contributing to major droughts in South East Asia, the crisis in the region is upon us.
Barry focused his closing remarks on three areas. Firstly, he stressed the importance of not divorcing climate and environmental struggles from human rights struggles, citing the need to secure land rights frameworks at national and local level and working in consultation with local communities on environmental solutions. Secondly, Barry argued for transparency from companies and Governments not only on their climate risks but also wider environmental risks and impact in their supply chains, highlighting the need for mandatory sustainability reporting as a driver of change. Finally, Barry touched on the importance of this year’s COP15 and COP26 conferences on Biodiversity and Climate respectively, highlighting the importance of cooperation between China and the international community to secure our common future.