All-Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness
|
|
||
|
All-Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness Date and Time: Tuesday 5th July, 4.00 –5.00pm Location: Committee Room 15, Committee Corridor, Palace of Westminster Chair: Malcolm Bruce MP Contact: Jonathan Isaac, Director UK Council on Deafness
and Clerk to the APPG on Deafness Verbatim Record The meeting started at 4.00pm MALCOLM BRUCE MP: Ladies and gentlemen. First of all
welcome to this, the Annual General Meeting for the all-party group on
deafness which is required because of the General Election. Having actually
only set ourselves up less than a year ago we are now having formally
to re-establish ourselves, and I should advise you that, because of booking
arrangements at the House of Commons, this room is only available for
one hour. We had initially provided for 2 and, as you all know, John Low
the chief executive from the RNID will give us a presentation. Because
of the compression of time I am just going to be formal on the A.G.M.,
to which you are just witnesses, so that we can give John to make his
presentation and for you to ask questions or make comments. JONATHAN ISAAC: We will have a list of apologies in
the minutes. MALCOLM BRUCE MP: Chairs review of the year. I think
all I want to say is that we established a group and its just about a
year since we set it up. The first visit we did, which I unfortunately
was unable to attend, was a visit to Oak Lodge school facilitated by James
Gray, whose wife was the host. I understand it was a good well worthwhile
meeting. We had a meeting with Stephen Carter (the chief executive of
OFCOM), a meeting with Maria Eagle (the minister of disabled people) which
I was unable to attend but I have had a meeting with Anne Macquire, her
successor, who is happy to meet with the group at a convenient date. We have tabled E.D.M.s who set up a group website and contacts with
organisations supporting deaf people. I regard these as extremely valuable
in giving you an opportunity to interact with us, come to Parliament and
engage with us and be able to lobby and question us, which is part of
an important dynamic of the group. We will obviously need to have a meeting
to determine the program for the coming year but I am going to suggest
that what we do now is proceed to elect the officers. Those officers once
elected can meet and discuss a program for the summer recess. If I am
in order, which I think I am, and I think Jonathan has established that,
we lost 2 of our officers to the varies of the election process. We will
obviously need to try and replace them. But as things stand at the moment
the existing officers eligible for re-election are Chair, Malcolm Bruce,
Vice chairs, in no particular order, Tom Levitt, Tim Loughton, James Gray
and Baroness Wilkins. We have vacancies for a Secretary, another Vice
Chair and the geographical omission. What we lost were members from Wales
Scotland and Northern Ireland. I propose we try to get members from those
3 parts of the United Kingdom because that will give a good geographical
spread. All I need to say formally is can we agree that the officers are
formally re-elected? Okay. So, that puts us in a legitimate footing and,
in case there is anything that you wish to feed into the group, you know
that Jonathan is the contact point. Therefore I am not going to spend time now, because I want John Low
to have time for the presentation. Just to say that Jonathan has helpfully
identified that there are issues relating to education, health, employment,
sign language and communication support for deaf people who do not use
Sign Language, as some topics that we would like to explore in more depth.
What we need to do as officers is explore what is the most interesting
and useful way to take those issues forward. If those represented here
have other ideas of issues that you think you would like the parliamentarians
to take forward, communicate it to Jonathan and we will be happy to take
those on board. My objective will be that the officers meet in the next
week or 2 and start setting in train some plans so that when the house
returns in the autumn hopefully we will have at least a couple of good
interesting worthwhile events organised. So, that is having been done,
unless James there is anything else JAMES GRAY MP: No. MALCOLM BRUCE MP: I think the A.G.M. is duly recorded
and we can now move on to the event, which is John Low's presentation.
John can I say first of all thank you very much for agreeing to be here
and also for not objecting to the fact that you were messed about in terms
of getting the date right, I am sure you understand these things. JOHN LOW: I appreciate that. I was asked if I would
come and speak to the group on the progress that has been made in the
modernisation of NHS audiology services over the past 5 or 6 years. I
put some slides together which I hope are helpful in leading us through.
It also means we have slides that we can put on the website afterwards
so there is some sense of the record. I think the first thing to say is before 2000, The NHS was fitting low-cost
analogue hearing aids and these were often manufactured overseas. There
was a plant built by Siemans in China to supply the NHS. These were low-cost
low performance products which the NHS was paying quite a high price for.
The result was not only were they low quality but they were fitted in
a rushed way and only two thirds of people that had one actually used
one. By this year, over 4 hundred thousand patients have been fitted with
digital hearing aids in a modernised service. The evidence shows a 40
per cent improvement in hearing benefit has resulted. We will go into
that in a little more detail. The key barrier at the beginning was the cost. These hearing aids were
being sold privately. A typical price was £2500 for each hearing
aid. If you had 2 you would pay £5000. We had evidence of people
paying more than that for a good quality digital hearing aid. Today those
products are available on the NHS for £55 to £65. Let's not
believe that these are low performance hearing aids. The one that is currently
purchased by the NHS £55 is manufactured by Siemens. It’s sold in
Boots today for £1500. It’s sold by Specsavers for £1200,
competition there. You might be able to do a deal in Boots I don't know! These are not low-cost hearing aids made especially for the NHS on some
kind of special basis. These are regular hearing aids available in the
high street; the prices are coming down even on the high street. Before 2000 audiology departments were under resourced, they were ignored.
Most chief executives of NHS trusts were unaware that they even had an
audiology department, let alone knew where it was or what it did. It’s
a Cinderella service. You think of Cinderella as the girl that went to
the ball. Frankly audiology was the kitchen maid in rags with no possibility
of going to the ball. And even the Department of Health officials involved
described it as a Cinderella service. That tells you how far it had gone.
Some of the conditions were very poor indeed. I was told by one audiologist
was that a common experience when somebody first had a hearing aid fitted
they said what is that noise, and it was water dripping in a bucket dripping
from the roof because it was the lowest accommodation delivering a modern
service. A lot of this came primary because of parliamentary action, and we must recognise the role that MPs and peers played. Working with us as we campaign vigorously to see these changes occur in the NHS. Fifty thousand post cards were sent to MPs and ministers by our members raising the profile, raising the understanding of the issues and pushing forward change the E.D.M. In the last Parliament we had 233 signatures and although it’s not significant the other E.D.M that achieved that number was the one on fox hunting. So there it was, right up the top of the agenda. Those efforts, questions that were asked, debates and constant pressure lead to an investment of over £125 million in the service in England. What kind of results were actually achieved? Well, to our surprise, as we push this process through, the Department of Health, the ministers responsible, asked RNID to manage the modernisation process. This is very unusual - for a government department to ask a charity to come in and modernise a run down bit of the NHS. Did we have experience of modernising the NHS? Of course not. Maybe they did not know where else to turn. Maybe they felt that if it was a failure we would be able to share the risks. I don't know. The fact is that we were asked to do it. We believed it was better to get involved and try to tackle something of which we had no firm experience because we had a heart for it, it was important to us. It was the top of our agenda and we knew it would affect huge numbers of lives. Through this process Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland were not ignored. Extra investment was earmarked. Scotland about £17 million to date. Wales £5 million and Northern Ireland £2.5 million, and that is on going. Wales was ahead of England, Scotland is doing it now; Northern Ireland is in the middle. The key was procurement of hearing aids. The procurement processes in
the department of health, the structures that were being used, did not
deliver the necessary negotiated prices that the NHS was capable of achieving.
They were, by far, the biggest purchaser of hearing aids in the world
- more than 2 and a half times the purchasing power of the equivalent
American organisation and 5 times the capacity being bought in Australia.
By far the dominant buyer in the world. And we were able to use that along
with capacity to purchase in the NHS to drive prices down to these seemingly
incredibly low levels. They are very close to what the NHS was paying
for analogue hearing aids, which gives some sense of the poor place we
were in at the beginning, as well as the opportunities that had not been
grasped. And through this process a whole raft of thing had to happen.
IT systems were installed to program the hearing aids to record patient
records, staff had to be trained, resources were reallocated. Audiologists
spent less time doing things like administrative work and more time with
patients. The patient journey was redesigned, the way people interacted
with the service, the outcomes were measured. We were producing a good
job for patients and those outcomes were used for quality so that we could
be on an ever increasing spiral. I updated this slide because I checked yesterday; 420 thousand people
have now received digital hearing aids in England since the program started,
580 thousand aids fitted. That is 1 third of people getting 2 bilateral
fittings. In Wales we have a modernised service that is routinely providing digital
hearing aids and work is under way in Scotland and still progressing in
Northern Ireland. The results are very clear; not only are more people
getting good hearing but they are using their aids for longer and getting
more benefit from them. I think this is quite significant. I spoke to
one gentleman who had an analogue aid and I said, “how is your new digital?”
He said “I don't like it that much, it’s a bit different from the old
one”. I asked “are you hearing a bit better?” He said “a bit better”.
Okay the next question. “Are you using it?” He says “I put it in when
I get up in the morning and I take it out when I go to bed at night”.
So he moved from a situation of only using his analogue hearing aid for
a couple of hours per day to using it to 14 hours. Then your final test
is you turn to his wife and say “is he hearing better” and she says “of
course, he is. No longer do we have the stresses and strains in the house
because we are constantly at tension with each other.” Frankly it is hard in healthcare, or anything that government is providing,
to see a better example of the benefit per cost per capita compared to
this. 41 per cent have an improvement in benefit, people function better
in the work place and within the families and socially. Available for
less than the cost of one night stay in hospital without treatment, less
than the cost of being in an old people's home for one week. The benefits
to the whole of public expenditure and the moral case for individuals
is just overwhelming. This is an interesting graph, I am not sure that it tells you a great
deal. It shows that over those 5 years 6 years, how the number of people
who have benefited continue to increase. You can see that this is continually
increasing slope, which is saying that the capacity of the NHS has progressively
built up over that time. Today, digital aids in England are across the
whole of the NHS, 350 clinics and 167 NHS trusts and are routinely provided.
This is a huge capacity delivering a lot of benefits to many people. An example: “I am better at my job because my concentration has improved.
I can listen to what people mean instead of spending all my time and energy
trying to simply hearing what they are saying.” Catherine from Birmingham.
The institute of hearing research, that is part of the Medical Research
Council, are an advocacy group independent of the NHS Department of Health,
and they measure using reports from patients in a structured way. This
41 per cent improvement in hearing benefit compared to analogue hearing
aids fitted in the un-modernised service. A substantial improvement. But frankly, there are challenges ahead which almost seem insurmountable
at times, until you look back and you see the journey we have already
been on. The majority of patients, 2 million people, are still waiting
to switch over. They want to switch over because the demand is built up
and the benefits understood. People who benefit from a hearing aid tell
their friends, many of whom have been struggling with it for years. They
want to try it as well. Instead of having a negative image of what the
NHS service provided, there is a positive one and people want to seek
the outcome for themselves. The scientific research shows that over 3 million people that don't
have a hearing aid could benefit from one. These are people with a significant
hearing loss who are simply struggling by. Over 3 million people, a huge
waste of resource and a loss on the economy of this country. Waiting times are still unacceptably long in many areas, I know that
this vexes MPs in particular, as their constituents come to them and say
we are being told that we have to wait very very long times before we
can access this service. So, I think it’s important to say that it’s possible to increase capacity;
from 2003 onward a system was put in place that allowed the private sector
to provide hearing aids of the type the NHS provide to NHS patients free
of charge, through a partnership between public sector and private. This
has delivered very real benefits. I would like to draw attention to a
situation on the south coast, in Bournemouth, where there were very long
waiting lists, something of the order of 7500 people waiting to receive
a digital hearing aid. Over a very short period of time, about 12 months,
that waiting list was reduced by over 5000 people and that extra capacity
came from the private sector. So it’s possible to tackle the backlog and
boost capacity very quickly. Hearing direct is another initiative which,
instead of having people come back to the audiology department for a follow
up visit, it can be done on the telephone. The independent research on
this shows that 80 per cent of people do not require a further visit and
therefore they get the rehabilitative support they need on the telephone,
freeing up capacity in the NHS to fit more new patients. I believe that
we do need more capacity in the NHS, and expending the engagement with
private sector is one way of doing that. I think, looking to the future, what might be possible. The Government
has set a target of 18 weeks for referral by a GP to hospital treatment.
This is going to be implemented over the next 2 or 3 years, certainly
in the lifetime of the current Parliament. And the idea is to tackle unacceptably
long waits and have control over them. Because a hearing aid is provided
by means of a GP referring to an NHS trust, and in hospital that treatment
a hearing aid is fitted, hearing aid provision audiology services will
come under this criteria. However, the important thing is that this target
will not actually have an impact if it’s not clearly 18 weeks from the
GP referral to fitting a hearing aid. As opposed to 18 weeks from GP referral
to be tested and then waiting another year or something for hearing aids
to be fitted. So extra money has been invested on audiology services. Which will allow
these changes to continue. But one of the concerns is that from the beginning
of April, this money was not ring-fenced. And it was in general allocations
to the NHS trusts. And as a result it is possible, at different stages
along the way, for the money to be diverted into other priorities and
not actually reach front line service. One of the things that MPs have
been particularly supportive on is tackling local trusts to ensure that
the front line services do receive the money that is being made available
at the top end of the system. That is one of the things that we can ask
the all-party group on deafness to do, to push the 18 week target to be
from referral to being actual fitting of hearing aids, to lobby PCTs and
trusts to ensure that funding levels are maintained, and if waiting times
are long in a particular constituency, to bring pressure to bear in the
PCT to take up the capacity building initiatives which as I described
earlier are so able to tackle the problem of long waiting lists. We at RNID are able to set up visits to give advice and to allow individual
MPs to see for themselves where the problems lie. It’s not a case of fighting
your way through the system, it’s rather we can direct you to key people
and the key areas. Better hearing aid services mean people are in employment for longer
and can remain independent for longer. Imagine how it is to hear the front
door ring but to be afraid to answer because you might not be able to
cope with the person speaking when you open the door. Fear of being on
your own, fear of going to the post office or to the shops a reluctance
to take friends into the house for visits. A huge difference, an enormous difference can be made to the lives of
literally millions of people at a very low-cost per capita. And it’s vital
that the progress that has been made is not lost, that we don't rest.
That would be unforgivable. We must not go back to that out of date neglected
service that I described at the very beginning and we must boost capacity
but we must do this, not by fitting people more quickly and rushing things
through, but by ensuring that the standards of care have been established
are continued to be met. Now I hope that gives you some sense of where it’s possible for progress
to be seen but also to see what more could be done and how this group
can be supportive. MALCOLM BRUCE MP: Thank you very much indeed John.
And first of all can I say Tom Levitt has joined us. Thank you for coming
along, one of our vice chairs - re-elected the vice chairs. TOM LEVITT MP: Thank goodness for that. MALCOLM BRUCE MP: Obviously I am happy to take questions
and comments. One thing that we discussed at the RNID itself, it seems
strange that I look around the room and I see people wearing spectacles
and we routinely go and have our eyes tested, expect our prescription
changed etc. Yet we don't treat our ears in the same way and essentially
the beginnings of this campaign starts obviously with people who are profoundly
deaf, but also a huge number of people whose hearing deteriorates. I am
told that the average waiting time from the onset or beginnings of an
awareness of hearing problem to the first attempt to do anthing about
it is ten years. This is absurd considering the way we look after our
eyes and that in many ways we under estimate what our ears do for us and
the social contact that hearing brings. So, I think this has been a very great campaign but John's closing comment,
so far so good but there is a lot hanging in the air, means there is still
a huge amount to do and a huge amount of money and its up to us. Anyone
like to raise some comments or questions? TONY MARKSON: I came wearing mine. As a trustee of
a small charity, in fact, I have 2 new NHS digital hearing aids, they
are brilliant. I endorse as a user every thing you said. If I talk to
my friend, there is a reluctance to show and talk about them, there is
a stigma. We all should be encouraging demystifying and shaping people's
views - these are what you get when you get as old as me, and when you
need them you should have them. MALCOLM BRUCE MP: A very fair comment. Actually again,
on the back of that, the strange thing is that spectacles have become
a fashion statement; maybe we should have hearing aids that are a fashion
statement. JOHN LOW: There is an exhibition opening at the end
of July in the Victoria and Albert museum of very progressive hearing
aid designs, created by someone from some of the leading design consultancies
in Britain. These are not real hearing aids but are great creative ranges
almost fantasising about what the future could look like, and challenging
the idea that it’s acceptable to wear an Ipod or a Bluetooth device for
your mobile phone but not acceptable to wear a hearing aid. We are beginning
the process of changing people's thinking. TOM LEVITT MP: I have 2 Primary Care Trusts in my constituencies.
Thameside and glossip(?) and High Peak and Dales. Thameside and glossip
was one of the early ones on to the scheme of the rollout of the digital
aids and the other one was later. But the one that was early on the scheme
has now got problems with the long long delays and I am seeing them on
Friday morning to talk to them about this. I am grateful for a copy of
your presentation John. I also have an organisation called hidden hearing
in my constituency which has opened the biggest training centre for hearing
aids technicians in the country. That one centre is training more technicians
than the NHS over the course of the year. So, there is good practice and
there is a desperate need, it seems to me, to make sure that good practice
is disseminated. But its not just shortage of audiologist that has always
been the pinch, it’s a combination of factors. How can we go about disseminating
good practice in this field? JOHN LOW: I believe that the good practice within the
NHS is well shared. There are systems where trusts that have got particularly
strong staff and processes are sharing with those that are still learning.
So, if you like, there are learning sets between NHS trusts. And some
very good professional mechanisms are getting stronger within the NHS
around the profession. We also know that the audiology is moving from
a technician grade position to a degree based position. That is a very
good in terms of standards as its challenging in terms of capacity to
train people. So, very important issue there. I believe that one of the keys, to developing good practice is to ensure
that we use all the tools that are available to us, so that we use the
telephone based follow ups, the private sector in the appropriate way
so that we don't need waiting lists of the time that you are describing.
As I gave that example in Bournemouth they were you know heavily criticised
in public and here in the commons. And they grabbed the problem, they
invested. They put the right contracts, relationship in place and in 12
months they took over 5000 people off the waiting list which is huge.
So it can be done. Probably limited by money in the end but very small
amounts of money per person. GRAHAM SUTTON: Graham, I am here representing the
professional body for audiologists and I thought I would chip in here.
I mean I think that practitioners on the ground do appreciate the enormous
transformation of hearing services that we have seen and it would be very
nice to recognise as well the commitment and enthusiasm of professionals
who implemented the changes on the ground. As others have said, there
are things that we could do to share good practice - nationally, and as
a professional body we are trying to make sure that we do that and implement
things. I fully support what John says about making sure that we use these
18 week targets to - in a sensible way so that we don't get into playing
games with what is treatment. It would also be helpful to make sure that
we maintain the Quality of Services as well because inevitably we will
see huge pressure on services cut corners and reduce the level of what
is provided in order to get numbers through. JOHN LOW: I am greatly encouraged by the creation of
the British Academy of Audiology unified body, representing those that
work in the NHS as audiologists and I hope that in time they will gain
in stature and self confidence and be recognised by the public at large.
I would like to see people in school aspiring to be an audiologist as
they go through their school years, instead of being something that is
thought about at a later point in life. I would want to encourage the
British Academy of Audiology to push forward standard, Continued Professional
Development and in sharing good practice and take a lead in maintaining
those high standards of cares that have been established. MALCOLM BRUCE MP: Thank you. What I would say, so far
as the campaign is concerned, is in what John has told us is how much
has been done. But that there is a risk that if we don't keep the momentum
going we can slip back. I am fairly confident that the RNID, and for that
matter BSHAA and other organisations in the private sector, are fairly
determined to ensure that we don't slide backwards and my understanding
is that there is more communication between the private sector and government
taking place. As John said, we need to use all of the technology and all
of the professional skills we have got, whether in the private or public
sector to find mechanisms. But I would like to think that people will
arrive at a situation where they don't have to wait when their hearing
deteriorates, and that we appreciate that giving people the best technology
to cope with the deterioration in hearing is regarded as just a high priority
as we do with eyes. I will not even mention teeth in this context. JOHN LOW: I think the least figure I heard was 15 years
delay on onset and receiving a hearing aid. The equivalent for glasses
is 4 years. People struggle with their eyesight for 4 years on average
before doing something about it. 33 million people have a pair of glasses
in this country that is not sun glasses. So as you rightly say it’s a
major fashion accessory and yet we are still ashamed to wear a hearing
aid. MALCOLM BRUCE MP: I am surprised how often I speak
to people who acknowledge they have a hearing problem. I say audiology
has improved, you should go along, and they say oh I had a hearing aid
its no use. They need to understand that technology has moved on and they
should be going back. TOM LEVITT MP: I was going to ask, they said at one
point that half of all hearing aids live in drawers rather than ears.
Is there evidence to suggest that is not happening with digital aids?
JOHN LOW: Yes absolutely, I can't remember the exact
figures but its something like 4 hours per day extra use on average. 4
hours is a lot, if you think about your waking hours, of extra use of
a hearing aid compared to what was happening before. In a way, people
tell you about hearing aids and the evidence seems to be they are using
it, and they will only use it if they get benefit from it, so the answer
is yes. Those are the measures that have been done by the Medical Research
Council. RUTH MYERS: I would like to point out that sometimes
people need to be encouraged and helped to use their hearing aid. And
I think in that way there is a role for volunteers to perhaps be roped
into help the audiology services, and encourage people to use their hearing
aids. Where my husband and I are concerned we have been told because we
had a new hearing aid 2 or 3 years ago it’s absolutely use less, we still
have to wait another year or 2 before we can get digital hearing aids.
That is totally unsatisfactory. JOHN LOW: If I may chair. There is a real challenge
for the NHS here. They were faced with an impossible dilemma; they had
a certain capacity to fit hearing aids. Yet the demand far exceeded that
capacity. Because everybody wants - everybody that has a hearing aid that
has got to that point wants to hear better. And there was this real challenge
that said, do we change over people who have had a new analogue hearing
aid recently or do we deal with new people and those that have not had
a new hearing aid for many years first and the waiting was put on the
later. It seems unfair, it seems unreasonable to those that have to wait.
But, many departments have chosen to put everybody on their waiting list,
regardless of how long they have had their current hearing aid. Acknowledge
the size of the problem, others have chosen to deal with it in a different
way. There is a backlog and it’s going to take sometime to deal with. MERFYN WILLIAMS: My name is Merfyn. I am now involved
with Primary Care Trusts and the PPI group and I think its very useful
that local grass root users can be involved in kind of organisation. The
question I would like to ask John Low is, is it useful for local deaf
people to be involved in that particular group in order to educate people
within that trust about the need of using hearing aids? JOHN LOW: There can be no doubt, that the more pressure
that is brought locally on commissioning authorities and those that deliver
the service, the more likely it is that a high quality service with sufficient
capacity will be made available. The current policy in health is to devolve
responsibility for budgets to the lowest possible level so that local
communities can make decisions about the type of healthcare that matter
within the community. This means that increasingly, it’s not possible
for ministers or Department of Health to control the budgets in the detailed
way that they did once. And the only way to influence local healthcare
providers and the system is to become engaged with it. It’s very important
that groups are formed, its not just those that have particular concerns
about heart disease or cancer, or mental health, that become involved
but also people with hearing loss are there at the table explaining the
importance, keeping it on the agenda and keeping it in line. I said at
the beginning that chief executives of most trusts who had audiology services
were unaware that they had them. Or where they were located or the purpose
of them was. The campaign has ensured that they are aware of them, but
they are still not very high up on their priority list, so yes, what you
are doing is vital and we would encourage any one who had a interest or
the drive or the ability to do so to get involved and we are willing to
support in any way those that want to do so. MALCOLM BRUCE MP: I should have welcomed one of our
colleagues. Rosie Cooper you also have a comment or question. ROSIE COOPER: May I apologise for being late. I really
wanted to add to the gentleman's question in that both of my parents are
deaf. My father was born deaf and my mother deaf when she was 4. I have
a knowledge of deafness. I too have to wear hearing aids but in Liverpool
I was chair of a hospital, and I had to work so very hard to get deaf
people to get involved at all. They saw it as another job to do, something
not for them. And in fact, the hospital (Liverpool's women's hospital)
has a membership council and a profoundly deaf person is on that, but
that was not easy. And so, not only will I encourage you to do it, but
I would really encourage the community every where, no one knows what
you need better than you do. If you are not there saying it then its tough
to complain that you are not getting looked after and I really would just
beg you, get in there and do it for yourself, you can do it and make people
listen, but not if you are not at the table. MALCOLM BRUCE MP: I am going to say thank you very
much, any one else have any questions, we have to be out of the room in
4 or 5 minutes and I know we usually have a chat on the way out and in
the corridor. First of all thank you to John for that presentation. I
think its fantastic, what is being done. I think it is a unique example
of how a charity and government can work in partnership to actually crack
a problem and maybe it’s an example that can be taken up in other ways.
I said at the beginning and I can assure you its very much the case, its
our desire as an all-party group, as MPs to co-operate and campaign on
behalf of deaf people, on the issues that you want us to take forward.
But also to have this kind of exchange of information and to be frank,
your participation is hugely important and we appreciate it and I hope
that you feel its beneficial, as I said earlier on, if any of the organisations
have ideas about things you want us to take up feel free to contact through
Jonathan. And communicate to us. We will have to prioritise but we are
happy to consider what any body has to take forward. Thank you very much
for coming. I hope you can be assured that the group has been reconstituted
and I know we have had a few colleagues here and there. But the number
that are active and supportive and will continue to be so. Once we have
a program, after recess we will communicate it to you as soon as we finalise
it. Thank you very much indeed. The meeting ended at 5.00pm |
|
|
|
|
