Author Archives: Paul Burstow MP

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Paul Burstow MP writes: Mental health, no excuses

By Paul Burstow MP | Fri 27th July 2012 - 11:50 am

Over the past few days Channel Four has been highlighting mental health with its #4goesmad series of programmes. With the aim of debunking the myths and stigma surrounding mental health, they are well worth a watch.

I watched both Ruby Wax and Jon Richardson programmes. Both told powerful and compelling stories of people coming to terms with their mental health and talking openly about it often for the first time. One such moment was when a successful chef told his restaurant staff that he had, quite recently, contemplated suicide. Getting this confession out into the open was a symbol of that …

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Posted in News | Tagged mental health, nick clegg, paul burstow and time to change | 2 Comments

Paul Burstow writes: Have Your Say on Care and Support

By Paul Burstow MP | Tue 24th July 2012 - 4:53 pm

A fortnight ago I wrote about how the Care and Support White paper and draft Bill signalled the biggest overhaul of social care in over 60 years.

The media storm triggered by that announcement inevitably focused on a single issue – namely who pays for care.

And while of course that issue is very important (and is something I care deeply about), it doesn’t address the urgent problem of fixing our broken system of social care.

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Posted in News | Tagged care | 2 Comments

Paul Burstow MP writes… Let’s talk about poo

By Paul Burstow MP | Tue 31st January 2012 - 2:24 pm

I never really thought I’d be giving interviews on the topic of poo, but that’s exactly what I was doing yesterday.

It’s all part of a drive to encourage more people than ever before to spot the signs of bowel cancer. So on Monday I launched the Government’s first ever national bowel cancer awareness campaign, in the hope that we can save lives across the country.

Of course, nobody actually wants to talk about poo, but we need to get over that little bit of embarrassment and make that trip to the GP.

At the moment, most of us …

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Posted in News | 5 Comments

Paul Burstow MP writes… Want to know how we can improve three million lives?

By Paul Burstow MP | Fri 20th January 2012 - 11:23 am

If I said the words “telecare” and “telehealth” to the person on the street it’s likely they wouldn’t have a clue what I was on about. They’re hardly phrases which just trip off the tongue.

But dig under that jargon and you’ll find that these are really very simple technologies which can help elderly people and those with long-term conditions right across the country.

Yesterday I hosted a launch of the Three Million Lives campaign. Very simply this campaign is a public declaration of how Government and industry will work together to make sure millions of lives are transformed. And because the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged telecare and telehealth | 9 Comments

Paul Burstow MP writes… Time to Care: patients not paperwork

By Paul Burstow MP | Wed 11th January 2012 - 12:53 pm

Being a nurse is a tough job, and we all admire those who have a calling to care for others. But when a loved one is sick in hospital we quite understandably worry and want the best for them.

One of the most important tasks of government is to ensure that good standards of hospital care are maintained wherever people live and whatever their needs. To make progress on this key issue we must free-up nurses from red tape and allow them to carry out the work they’re trained to do.

As a Liberal Democrat health minister I have seen and heard …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged NHS, releasing time to care and royal college of nurses | 11 Comments

Paul Burstow MP writes… A Future-proof Health Service

By Paul Burstow MP | Fri 9th December 2011 - 11:53 am

The Liberal Democrats have always recognised that if we want the best health service in the world, we must continue to innovate and invest.

That is why I want to highlight how new funding announced on Monday will ultimately support life-saving research and help to protect millions of vulnerable people living with long-term conditions at home.

I have long championed the benefits of telecare and telehealth (home-based alarm and monitoring devices), so I want to highlight the fact this high-tech equipment will now be accessible to another three million people over the next five years.

This week I met a care …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged life sciences and NHS | 7 Comments

Paul Burstow MP writes… Give carers a break, not a breakdown

By Paul Burstow MP | Thu 1st December 2011 - 4:52 pm

Whenever I meet a carer I am humbled by their dedication and touched by the love they show in the face of daily adversity. To be a carer you have to be a pretty special person. It is also likely that you feel your tireless efforts to care for a family member or friend generally go unnoticed.

But the Liberal Democrats want to make sure this silent army of carers is recognised. Every year unpaid carers save our national services an estimated £119 billion a year, which is why we included a manifesto pledge to provide guaranteed respite care for …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged carers | 11 Comments

Paul Burstow MP writes: The hidden potential of early diagnosis

By Paul Burstow MP | Wed 23rd November 2011 - 11:53 am

To be told that you or a loved one has cancer is likely to be one of the most gut-wrenching moments of anyone’s life. To be further informed that the chances of survival are low is devastating. But if more people knew they could live a fuller life for longer, we could ease the impact of that devastating time.

Last week I commissioned health officials to conduct a scoping exercise into early diagnosis across the health service. The plan is that research will help us to understand what, if any, evidence exists as to the extent of delayed diagnosis and its …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged cancer, dementia and early diagnosis | 3 Comments

Paul Burstow MP writes: Getting better at waiting

By Paul Burstow MP | Mon 7th November 2011 - 12:53 pm

Most of us know what it feels like to sit in a hospital waiting room, and it is not often a pleasant experience. The time spent waiting can be worrying, stressful and uncomfortable. Indeed, waiting for any kind of treatment is never going to be easy – which is why the Liberal Democrats are committed to keeping waiting times low. We aim to do this while engaging in the difficult task, set in motion by the last Labour Government, to find £20 billion of efficiency savings by 2015.

Last year I said that people needed to be seen and diagnosed …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged nhs future forum and waiting times | 2 Comments

Paul Burstow MP writes: Let’s end this silent scandal

By Paul Burstow MP | Wed 2nd November 2011 - 12:53 pm

1,800 people with dementia are dying every year having been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs, and I am determined to end this silent scandal.

For more than a decade I have been campaigning to reduce the number of people whose lives are cut short thanks to the routine long-term prescribing of drugs by GPs. These drugs have sedative effects which makes it easier to ‘manage’ dementia patients. But they are effectively a chemical cosh which have side effects and can have devastating consequences.

Last year, as minister for care services, I set an ambitious target to reduce the number of patients routinely given anti-psychotic …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged dementia, dementia action alliance, general election manifesto, medical research council, mental capacity act and national institute for health research | 5 Comments

Paul Burstow MP writes: Mental health – changing attitudes, tackling stigma

By Paul Burstow MP | Wed 19th October 2011 - 3:52 pm

At our party conference in Birmingham, I was asked the question; “what issues can we campaign on at the next general election?” Given that this was during the health Bill Q&A session, I imagine most people in the audience expected me to focus on NHS reform. Instead I talked about mental health, and in particular our party’s long standing campaign for parity of esteem between mental and physical health. There are many obstacles to overcome but we are making progress …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged duke mckenzie, mental health, mind, rethink mental illness and time to change | 3 Comments

Paul Burstow MP writes: Lifting of lifetime gay blood donation ban – progress, but not the final word

By Paul Burstow MP | Fri 9th September 2011 - 2:16 pm

The lifetime ban on men who have had sex with men (MSM) is an issue that our party has always felt uncomfortable with. Superficially it looks little more than a discriminatory throwback to the 1980s stereotypes associated with gay men and increased risk of sexual disease.

Yesterday the Government took a significant step in changing their position by announcing the lifting of the lifetime ban on MSM from giving blood. So let me give you the detail about how that decision was reached, and what it means for men wanting to donate blood.

The previous Government had also questioned the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged gay blood ban, gay men fighting aids, national aids trust, sickle cell society, stonewall, terence higgins trust and uk thalassaemia society | 7 Comments

Paul Burstow writes… Labour shouldn’t play party politics with the NHS

By Paul Burstow MP | Wed 16th March 2011 - 9:50 pm

On Saturday I gave a guarantee to every party member that I, along with other Liberal Democrat members of the Government would listen to every word that you had to say. I completely stand by that. If there are ways in which we can amend the Health and Social Care Bill then we will work to do it. But what we won’t do is to allow our Spring Conference to be hijacked and used as a political tool by Labour. And that’s exactly what they tried to do today.

Today was one of Labour’s designated days in Parliament when they are …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged emily thornberry, labour party and NHS | 61 Comments

Paul Burstow writes: I will be listening to members on NHS at #ldconf

By Paul Burstow MP | Thu 10th March 2011 - 2:00 pm

This is the first spring conference since we entered Government. In all the years I’ve been a Liberal Democrat I’ve never known of such a potentially explosive spring conference. Or at least that’s what the media would have you believe. Debating policy is part of our DNA. And it shouldn’t change now that we’re in Government. This spring conference we’ll be debating the coalition’s proposals to update the NHS. And unlike in the media, it won’t be a case of who shouts loudest wins.

I understand why people are so concerned. Every time I meet party members …

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Posted in Conference and Op-eds | Tagged #ldconf and NHS | 12 Comments

Paul Burstow writes… A few facts about the NHS

By Paul Burstow MP | Thu 20th January 2011 - 10:25 am

The greatest enemy of truth is not the lie but the myth. This could have been written with our health proposals in mind. Let me start with the myth that our plans are ‘revolutionary’. The ‘revolutionary’ label embodies neatly what many people wrongly envisage to be untried and untested changes to the NHS. Swamped by all the myth, misunderstanding and mistruths, the facts have struggled to get heard. So let me give you a few of the facts.

Under the previous Labour Government healthcare spending increased significantly. But where Britain spent big, other countries spent better. That is why Britain has …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged NHS | 127 Comments

Paul Burstow writes… Healthy lives, healthy people

By Paul Burstow MP | Tue 30th November 2010 - 6:14 pm

Britain is now the most obese nation in Europe. We have among the worst rates of sexually transmitted infections on record. Rising levels of harm from alcohol, and over 80,000 lives lost every year because of smoking. These are the public health challenges the Coalition Government faces.

And what of Labour’s public health legacy? Under Labour inequalities in health and life expectancy between rich and poor got worse. As a result people in the poorest areas can expect to live up to 7 years less than people in richer areas.

Under Labour huge amounts of money was spent on public …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged NHS | 12 Comments

Paul Burstow writes… We are taking radical action to deliver better health and care

By Paul Burstow MP | Tue 9th November 2010 - 11:05 am

Much has been made of the tough choices Liberal Democrats have had to make since we entered government. But not enough has been made of the victories we’ve gained. Unlike the last Labour administration, this coalition is delivering on its promises to reform health and social care for the better.

Let’s start with social care. The funding of care and support is one of the most urgent of all social policy issues we face as a society. Make no mistake; the way we organise and pay for care for older and disabled people is a broken. That’s why we’re taking action …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured and NHS | 16 Comments