Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Poulter Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
T3. I am sure that the Deputy Prime Minister will agree that for far too long there has been an emphasis in NHS mental health services on crisis management rather than on the prevention and the community support that patients require. Will he outline what steps the Government are taking to address this problem and properly to look after patients with mental health problems in the community?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. I hope he has noticed that the operating framework recently published by the Department of Health for the NHS in England sets out priorities for the NHS that, for the first time, stipulate the expansion of access to psychological services as part of the overall commitment to the full roll-out of the improving access to psychological therapies programme by 2015. I know that the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), has dedicated a lot of time to this. I say to Members on both sides of the House who spoke in that very moving debate recently on mental health that they played a remarkable role in breaking down some of the taboos by speaking about an issue that afflicts one in four people in his country and which has often been kept in the shadows, leaving people to suffer in silence. It is finally being talked about in a more grown-up and open way.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Poulter Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
Yes, of course fully; I support a fully elected second Chamber. The right hon. Gentleman’s party achieved precisely 0% of election to the other Chamber. I modestly suggest that if we achieve 80%, that will be better than 0%.
Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister will be aware that the greatest barrier to reform of the other place exists in the other place. Will he be prepared to use the Parliament Act, if necessary, to drive through this very important reform and to bring greater democratic accountability to the democratic process?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As the Prime Minister himself has said, the Government will support this Bill as they support any Bill. That is in the coalition agreement: there is an unambiguous commitment that we will pursue this Bill as forcefully as we can. That means that the Parliament Act would be invoked in the normal way, if it were to come to that, but I hope that it will not. I hope we will be able to build consensus across all parts of the House in favour of meaningful reform. That is precisely why the work of the Joint Committee, which will report by the end of March next year, is so important.
House of Lords Reform (Draft Bill)
Dan Poulter Excerpts(14 years, 10 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman says “now”, but we have been criticised in the past for pushing forward with changes too quickly and not subjecting them to sufficient scrutiny. What we are doing now is moving very deliberately, very methodically and as consensually as possible, presenting a Bill with our best guess of what would work legislatively; keeping the options on some key issues open in the White Paper; and then inviting a cross-party Joint Committee to subject that to full scrutiny in the months ahead. I do not think that we can be criticised either for moving too fast or for seeking to escape from proper scrutiny.
Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the hereditary principle is wrong in principle? Whatever comes out of these reforms, will he ensure that people do not take part in the democratic process as a right of birth, and that people should be either elected or appointed to that Chamber?
The Deputy Prime Minister
That is exactly what we propose: that either by election or appointment, but not by heredity, people will be represented in a reformed House of Lords.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Poulter Excerpts(15 years, 5 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
The principal innovation we are seeking to introduce is to allow electoral registration officers to compare their databases of who is and is not on the register with other publicly available databases. We are piloting that in a number of areas, and we hope it will enable officers to see who is not on the electoral register but is on other databases so that they can then, possibly literally, go and knock on their door and say, “You’re on one database but not the other; have you thought of getting on to the electoral register?” I know there has been a lot of polemic around this issue, but I hope we will be able to work on a cross-party basis. Many Members will know from their own areas of the best innovations in getting people on to the register. I am actively looking at ways in which we can create a cross-party forum where we can compare best practice to get more and still more people on to the register.
Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
T9. Does my right hon. Friend agree that having an open and frank discussion about the British voting system as part of the alternative vote referendum is an excellent way to help re-establish faith and trust in British politics?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I certainly hope so. It will be the first nationwide referendum we have had since the early 1970s, and we should be open about the fact that, including in this Government, we do not agree on the best outcome. However, we all agree that it should be for the people to choose. That is why I urge those Members who are dragging their feet somewhat in allowing the proposed legislation to pass its various stages in this House and the other place to realise that we should try not only to subject it to the necessary scrutiny, but above all allow the people outside this House to have their say and so help restore some public trust in what we do.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Dan Poulter Excerpts(15 years, 6 months ago)
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Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to make my first formal contribution to the debates of the House. As many right hon. and hon. Members are aware, Sir Michael Lord, the previous Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, and a long-standing Deputy Speaker, was gravely unwell during the summer, and I felt it inappropriate to make my maiden speech while he was so ill. Members will be pleased to know that he is now making a good recovery and I am sure they will join me in passing our best wishes to Sir Michael for his continued recovery and for his retirement.
Sir Michael Lord was first elected for the then constituency of Central Suffolk in 1983. He was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the right hon. John MacGregor in Margaret Thatcher’s Government and then, as many Members are aware, for 13 years, he served with great distinction, alongside Sir Alan Haselhurst, as a Deputy Speaker. In Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, Sir Michael will be remembered as a hard-working and diligent constituency MP.
The constituency of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich was created in 1997 from the then Central Suffolk constituency, taking in wards from what was then Suffolk Coastal and the northern wards of the Ipswich constituency. It is a constituency of great diversity. Central Suffolk boasts agriculture and a growing tourist trade. I am privileged to represent a very diverse population in North Ipswich, which includes the local Sikh temple and a Sikh community as well as a large Caribbean community.
As there are more than 100 parishes in my constituency, I shall not talk about each in detail, but I will outline some of the main concerns that affect both my constituency and Suffolk as a whole. Members may be aware that before my election to the House I was a front-line NHS hospital doctor. That experience has stood me in good stead in representing my constituents, particularly the health care concerns that they face. In the NHS we have a key battle before us to ensure that we keep front-line services at Ipswich district general hospital. Under the regionalisation agenda of the previous Government, we saw the loss of vital cardiac and cancer care services at the hospital. It is important that we fight to restore Ipswich hospital to its former glory and make sure that once again we provide the vital services that the people of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich need.
In a predominantly rural constituency, Hartismere is a vital community hospital that unfortunately was closed during the last three and a half years of the previous Government. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and his team when he was shadow Secretary of State for working with me to help reopen the hospital, which provides essential services to the older people, families and pregnant women who live in our rural communities.
It would be wrong of me not to draw attention to the fact that throughout Suffolk, thanks to the previous Government’s out-of-hours contract, we were left with only two GPs to look after 650,000 people. That is something we shall look to the new health care White Paper to put right.
Other challenges that face Central Suffolk and North Ipswich include the need to improve broadband services and access. Other Members may take access to broadband and high-speed broadband for granted—particularly if they represent more urban areas—but even if under current plans high-speed broadband is delivered to 90% of the UK, two-thirds of my constituents will still not have access to it. All Suffolk MPs will be working together to help deliver those services.
Many of my fellow East Anglia MPs believe that more attention needs to be paid to infrastructure in our area, particularly roads and rail, which have been badly neglected over the last few years. Indeed, for many years Central Suffolk and North Ipswich received only 80% of the average national spend per head of population. That has taken its toll on a road and rail infrastructure that badly needs investment.
My constituents, like many people throughout the country, will welcome the Bill. It will help us to give the country a clear legislative programme, with certainty about what the Government can do over a five-year period. There is so much to do in terms of welfare and education reform and delivering a new White Paper on health care, and in particular dealing with the profligate economic record of the Labour Government. We must make sure that we have a clear five-year programme in which to do that. A fixed-term Parliament can only be a good thing.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Poulter Excerpts(15 years, 9 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
It is clearly a complex problem or, I assume, the hon. Lady and her Government would have done something about it in the past 13 years. I think that individual electoral registration is the absolute key, but as we said in the debate here on another occasion, it is crucial to make sure that individual electoral registration is properly resourced and is conducted with care. If it is done too quickly and is not resourced properly, she is right that there is a risk of making the problem worse. That is something that we must avoid at all costs.
Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
T8. I welcome my right hon. Friend’s review of the workings of the upper House. Does he agree that perhaps the time has come to consider the fact that the hereditary principle is wrong on principle?