MailOnline can confirm that key committees for health are being avoided by Labour MPs to aid the country recover from the Covid pandemic.
Minutes show Labour representatives sitting on the Health and Social Care Committee have attended just On average, half its meetings were held in the past six months.
The sessions will include evidence sessions to clear the Covid-fuelled NHS Backlog, get vital cancer service back in operation and question the Government about its response.
The 11-member committee — headed by former Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt — has four Labour MPs on it. The two Labour MPs on the committee have seen only nine meetings in the past 16 years, and the remaining two have shown up at six.
One senior Tory stated that “it is disappointing that any committee should have people who regularly don’t turn up, particularly when it comes to matters they are covering.” [that matter as]Much as Covid.
The data shows that Tory MPs participated in 82.5 per cent oral evidence sessions which are led by Conservative party members, over the six-month period. The committee’s lone Scottish National Party member was represented at 63%, while Labour members were present for only 47%. Rosie Cooper, a Labour member, and Barbara Keeley were present at 56% of meetings. Sarah Owen and Taiwo Owatemi from the party attended less than 4 in 10. While Mr Hunt attended all meetings, Dr Luke Evans and Paul Bristow, Tory MPs, were more than eight times as many. Conservative members Laura Trott, Dean Russell and Dr Luke Evans attended around 70% of the meetings.
The data shows that Tory MPs have attended 82.5 Percent of all oral session meetings in the six-months since January.
Meanwhile, the single Scottish National Party MP in the committee was at 62.5 percent. However, she had been a member only since May 25, so her effective percentage went to 76.1 per cet.
Rosie Cooper (Labour member) and Barbara Keeley (Labour member) attended 9 of the 16 meetings held since May, when the Government started the third phase of its lockdown easing plan.
Fellow party MPs Taiwo Owatemi and Sarah Owen showed up for just six.
Labour didn’t respond to our request for information on the reasons its members were not attending more meetings.
Chairman Hunt attended all meetings.While Dr Luke Evans and Paul Bristow, Tory MPs, attended 13 and 14 meetings respectively,
Conservative Party members Laura Trott, Dean Russell and Dean Russell attended 12 and 11 meetings respectively.
Although the eleventh member joined just last week, he has attended every meeting since.
This committee examines the government and the health services. Examining policy, administration and spending.
The committee is often populated by MPs who bring up concerns from their constituents. For example, they may not be able to get critical care.
This committee was also known for grilling Dominic Cummings. He described the Government’s poor initial Covid response and called on Matt Hancock, then the Health Secretary to be fired.
Both committees probed Mr Hancock’s handling of care homes and particularly about the decision to admit untested patients into care homes in spring last year.
The sector’s crisis has been attributed to it.
The two sessions that Mr Cummings and Mr Hancock held in May were attended by all MPs of the Health Committee. They took place in June.
About 25% of meetings over the past six months were focused on clearing out the NHS backlog due to the pandemic.
The report will be prepared by MPs and it will include information about the current level of demand for the health system as well as recommendations on what needs to change within the institution to address the long waiting list.
And the inquiry — which involved quizzing NHS England bosses Amanda Pritchard and Professor Stephen Powis — will determine how much cash and staff are needed to clear the backlog, including in elective surgery, A&E, general practice and mental health.
The cancer services inquiry was another quarter of the meeting, and it investigated why England’s cancer outcomes are worse than those in other countries.
Professor Mike Griffin, a surgeon who specializes in cancer, stated that the NHS’s impact on cancer survival rates may cause cancer survival rates to slow down over the next ten years. Professor Pat Price, a consultant clinical-oncologist and cancer surgeon (pictured left), said that doctors of the NHS have been instructed to ensure that a tenth are available for redeployment to the NHS frontline in winter.
This committee will determine how the pandemic affected cancer services, and recommend what should be done to get caught up.
As part of evidence sessions top doctors informed the committee that cancer survival rates may stall in the next ten years due to the effects of the pandemic.
MPs heard from oncologists how they were forced to clean out Covid wards of their patients or redeployed to be’mortuary advisors’, instead of caring for them.
However, no Labour MPs attended the recent meeting on cancer care where these topics were raised.
Another meeting was on lessons learned from the coronavirus. This resulted into the report, that exposed the Government’s failures during pandemics, which led to thousands of unnecessary deaths.
It also castigated the ‘chaotic’ performance of the £37billion test and trace system and found ministers were blinded by ‘groupthink’ among scientific advisers, who wrongly wanted to manage the spread of the virus, rather than suppress it.
Another meeting on the support of people with dementia produced a shocking report showing that those suffering from it will incur care costs of tens or thousands of pounds before the Government introduces its health and social levies in 2023.
According to the report, there should be’significant extra investment’ within weeks and a bold financing reform and long-term strategy’.