Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Mann and Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Nicola Blackwood)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her dogged campaigning on this issue, on which she is a true champion. I have not had a chance to read the report in detail, but I have seen a number of its recommendations and we are taking action on some of them, including the publication of the chief medical officer’s low risk guidelines and Public Health England’s One You campaign, which runs over Christmas and the new year. We are embedding alcohol measures into the NHS health check and we have introduced a national CQUIN—Commissioning for Quality and Innovation—because evidence shows that intervention by a health professional is the most effective way of disrupting problem drinking.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

T4. Zac from Worksop is three years old, wheelchair-bound, unable to speak and blind, and is regularly admitted on an unplanned basis to Bassetlaw Hospital’s children’s ward. As the people of Bassetlaw are standing with Zac in opposing the proposed overnight closure of the children’s ward, which will create chaos for his small life and that of a number of other very poorly children like him, will democracy prevail, or are the Government going to pick a fight with Zac, me, and the people of Bassetlaw?