Commons Sense

House of Commons · Westminster Hall

Covid-19: Effect on People with Learning Disabilities

15 December 2020 · 6 other contributors · 9,877 words

Opened by Chris Matheson Lab City of Chester

Responding minister: Helen Whately

Social CareMental HealthNHS

Summarised by AI from the official record, so it can contain mistakes.

Read the full transcript on Parliament.uk

At a glance

Chris Matheson raised concerns about covid-19: effect on people with learning disabilities in Westminster Hall. A government minister responded.

Key points

  • Health inequality for people with learning disabilities led to three preventable deaths every day before the pandemic.
  • The pandemic exacerbated existing issues by reducing access to care, increasing isolation, and highlighting digital exclusion.
  • During the pandemic peak, 21% of cases required reasonable adjustments that were not made, leading to higher hospital mortality rates.

Key requests to Government

The Government should clarify exemptions for cross-border travel to ensure access to valued activities and care. It must review guidance on hospital visits by carers and address the issue of non-verbal cues missed during remote consultations. The Minister should commit to providing adequate support to improve understanding of learning disabilities across healthcare staff, ensuring face-to-face consultations and prioritising specialist training.

How the debate unfolded

MPs spoke in turn to share their views and ask questions. Here's what each person said.

Opened the debate

Chris Matheson Lab City of Chester

Health inequality for people with learning disabilities has been evident for decades, leading to three preventable deaths every day. The pandemic exacerbated these issues by reducing access to vital care and support, increasing isolation and loneliness, and highlighting the digital exclusion faced by this group. During the peak of the pandemic, 21% of cases indicated a need for reasonable adjustments that were not made, resulting in disproportionately high hospital mortality rates among people with learning disabilities. The lack of awareness about these individuals' needs, diagnostic overshadowing, and wrongful denial of life-saving treatment further complicate matters.

Other contributors (6)
  • Jamie Stone Lib Dem Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross

    Mr. Stone highlighted the challenges faced in his constituency due to poor connectivity for people with learning disabilities. He shared personal experiences of technology empowering individuals and stressed the importance of IT training for carers and a coordinated approach between governments to address this issue.

  • Jim Shannon DUP Strangford

    Jim Shannon highlighted the challenges faced by children with special educational needs during lockdown, including disruptions to routines and lack of specialist support. He cited cases from his constituency where schools provided emergency day placements for disabled children and noted that parents of autistic children felt at breaking point due to a lack of support while schools were closed. Shannon also mentioned economic impacts such as increased use of food banks by families experiencing financial pressures, with 180 families seeking assistance between March and September. He stressed the importance of rebuilding and restoring support for vulnerable individuals and their families.

  • Kieran Mullan Con Bexhill and Battle

    Mr Mullan expressed concern about the economic consequences of the pandemic on job opportunities for people with learning disabilities. He highlighted that before the pandemic, there was a significant gap in employment rates for those with learning disabilities, and local organisations fear their ability to secure ongoing employment will be affected due to employer concerns over health risks and financial constraints.

  • Lisa Cameron SNP East Kilbride, Strathaven and Hamilton West

    Ms Cameron thanked the hon. Member for City of Chester and all other hon. Members who participated in the debate. She highlighted issues such as access to healthcare under the Equality Act 2010, where one in four nurses reported that people with learning disabilities were not allowed hospital visitors due to covid restrictions. She also mentioned a disturbing increase in physical restraint use by over 150% during the pandemic and called for more guidance on allowing accompaniment in hospitals and ambulances.

  • Olivia Blake Lab Sheffield Hallam

    Blake expressed concerns about the impact of the pandemic on people with learning disabilities, noting higher death rates and poor health outcomes. She criticised the initial neglect by healthcare services and NICE guidelines which seemed to discriminate against admitting those with learning disabilities into intensive care or life-saving treatment. Blake highlighted issues such as difficulties in accessing education online, lack of hydrotherapy access, withdrawal of therapeutic interventions from schools, and delays in the publication of SEND review.

  • Rushanara Ali Lab Bethnal Green and Stepney

    Ms Rushanara Ali expressed concern about the challenges faced by children with special educational needs during the transition to remote learning due to the pandemic. She highlighted that only 6.5% of parents of children with SEND found their online home learning platforms accessible according to a National Education Union report. Furthermore, she pointed out that people with learning disabilities were up to six times more likely to die from covid-19 during the first wave, underlining the need for increased support and protection measures.

Government Response

Helen Whately

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I thank the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) for securing a debate on this very important topic. The pandemic has impacted everybody, but many of those with learning disabilities have been particularly hard hit. We commissioned Public Health England to analyse the information about deaths for people with learning disabilities in order to understand the impact of covid-19 and ensure that we could take every possible step to protect people. Its report estimated that, in the first wave, people with learning disabilities had a mortality rate from covid-19 that was between 4.1 and 6.3 times higher than the general population. We have worked continuously to protect people throughout the pandemic. That has included introducing the infection control fund, now totalling £1.1 billion, to ensure that care settings are covid-secure. We are providing free PPE for adult social care providers until March 2021 and extending asymptomatic testing not only across care homes but to domiciliary care staff. The Care Quality Commission is looking into the concern about inappropriate DNACPR recording in patient records. I am working with Health Education England and Skills for Care to develop mandatory training to ensure that all staff have the skills and understanding they need. We welcomed the news of a vaccine against covid and shared with the JCVI the latest evidence on people with learning disabilities and covid, including the Public Health England work. The JCVI's advice stated that people on the clinically extremely vulnerable list, including those with Down's syndrome, should be in priority group four for vaccination. We are continually looking at the evidence and at what more is possible to do to keep people safe. I have asked the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies care working group to consider the findings in the Public Health England and LeDeR reports to help us develop further targeted actions. The Department has commissioned research to better understand the impact of the pandemic on the wellbeing and lives of people with a learning disability, which is being led by the University of Warwick and Manchester Metropolitan University. We advised care homes to use rapid tests that we are providing, together with PPE and other infection control measures, to enable safer visiting. The clinical advice is very strong on saying that those returning to a care setting after a visit out should quarantine for 14 days because there may well be people who are clinically extremely vulnerable in the setting.

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