Dementia
Nigel Evans Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
After Mr Burstow has finished his contribution, I will announce whether there is to be a time limit, and, if there is, what it is.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. We are going to be brave—or foolish—and start without a time limit on Back-Bench speeches, but it would be helpful if Members aimed to speak for 10 to 12 minutes. Anything beyond that would not be helpful.
NHS Funding
Nigel Evans Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Grahame M. Morris
Probably not, in the very limited time available, but I can tell my hon. Friend that proton therapy is a form of advanced cancer treatment.
My argument is that the money the Department is proposing to spend on those incredibly expensive machines would be far better spent on advanced radiotherapy machines such as the stereotactic body radiation therapy machines that the hon. Member for Stevenage mentioned. There are other forms of therapy that are far more cost- effective. I might add that we in the northern region have no access to such therapies. Indeed, whole regions of the country do not.
The one remaining proton machine in Germany is at the university of Heidelberg, and it treats a maximum of 1,200 patients each year. The German Radio-oncology Society has said—[Interruption.] I hope that the Minister will listen to this. The society has said that
“for the vast majority of cancers there is no proof that proton therapy is more beneficial than other forms of innovative radiotherapy that are one hundred times less expensive”.
This proton debacle highlights the perversity with which the Government are running the NHS budget, and these questions lie at the very heart of whether we can trust Conservative promises on the NHS.
The Prime Minister tells the public that by April next year every cancer patient who needs innovative radiotherapy will get it, while at the same time the Secretary of State for Health starves dozens of hospitals and cancer networks of vital money needed to buy innovative radiotherapy equipment. We now know that money is being redirected into those two highly dubious projects. The Secretary of State needs to cancel those projects now and redirect the money into radiotherapy machines that will help tens of thousands of people in my constituency and across the country. This has the potential to be a monumental scandal and a waste of public money. I urge hon. Members who share my concern to sign early-day motion 773, to lobby the Health Secretary and ask him to reconsider his spending priorities in relation to cancer therapies, and to support the motion on the Order Paper.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I call Jim Shannon. I am not putting the clock on him, but he must resume his seat by 4.44 pm.
Regional Pay (NHS)
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Mr Anderson
Clearly, there are issues about foundation trusts, but the Government can do what they want—or they can as long as the Liberal Democrats help them. Tonight, however, the Liberal Democrats have a chance of stopping the Government doing what they want, by doing what their party wants, and what the people they represent want—by throwing out the proposal, and voting on the clear principle that national pay bargaining should happen in the national health service, and nothing should be done to undermine it, including supporting the amendment.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I call Sir Nick Harvey, who should resume his seat no later than 3.40.
Health
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the Minister. I wish him and those Members not staying for the other debates a happy and productive recess. We now move to a short debate on foreign and commonwealth affairs, after which we will proceed to a debate on the environment, food and rural affairs. Members listed under other topics will then be taken in the general debate. We still have the five-minute limit on speeches.
Adult Social Care
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. To accommodate as many Members as we can, a five-minute limit will be introduced, with the usual overtime for two interventions.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Adult social care is probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, challenges that we as politicians and policy makers face. We have heard thoughtful contributions from Members on both sides of the House explaining why it is so difficult. If people are fortunate, they never need to access adult care. If they are unfortunate, they do need to do so, or members of their family do. As we heard from the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), it can be a cruel lottery. One of our purposes should be to minimise the extent of that lottery and maximise entitlement and support for all individuals.
One of the most humbling experiences I have had since becoming Member of Parliament for Scunthorpe was going to visit a constituent in his home last week on this very issue of care and support. He is a similar age to me. When he was younger, near the end of his training in the medical profession, he went out into the sea and suffered a terrible accident. As a result, he was paralysed from the neck down. Since then, he contributed to society in a number of different ways. He retrained in higher education until he was advised by his GP to retire because if he did not, in the GP’s words, “the wheels would come off” and he would no longer be able to contribute to society.
After going to see my constituent, he wrote to me—this is about individuals and real people’s lives—about the publication of the draft social care bill:
“I have just been reading the latest on social care funding on the BBC website—it would seem that meaningful cross-party dialogue re Andrew Dilnot’s recommendations has broken down and that the government wants to put decisions off until the spending review late next year.
My suspicions about kicking into the long grass appear justified!...I have already contributed over £60000 towards my care package and seem to be paying more and more each year—despite the fact that North Lincolnshire council reduce the value of my care package every time there is a review.
My condition has not improved. I am, in fact, starting to suffer more and more of the long term complications that inevitably hit ageing tetraplegics.”
The worry and concern are there. When visiting my constituent in his home, I observed that the people who were providing the care were brought in at his expense. Resources were not adequate, because that cost was being taken out of his small pension from working in higher education, which went up by 5% a couple of weeks ago, although the contribution to North Lincolnshire council went up by 25%. What is the incentive to do the right thing in difficult circumstances when those sort of things happen?
What I have described was additional care. The core care was provided by my constituent’s mother, who was in her mid 80s, and his sister, who travelled for two and a half hours to spend half the week helping to care for him. As politicians, we need to step up to the plate. It is about leadership—cross-party leadership—and being able to do the right thing for people, such as my constituent, who suffer misfortune. Had that misfortune occurred, as he said to me, in a car crash, he would have received insurance compensation, which would have paid for his care package. Because it took place in a situation of utmost tragedy—nobody was responsible for it, but it was a total misfortune—there is no underpinning support from the state, which should properly protect him and his family from having to pay more and more money. My plea is for us to show the leadership across the parties—
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) was kind enough to say that people of a pensionable age can sometimes make useful contributions. He is very kind to me—I am the only Member of a pensionable age to speak in the debate. I am 37 in my mind, but with a son of 42, that is rather unlikely.
The Government have failed at the core of the White Paper on the question of funding. This is about money, not leadership or consensus or saying nice words in the Chamber. I am very pleased that Labour Front Benchers have accepted Dilnot. His proposals are not perfect, but he goes a long way to proposing a free national care service, which my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and I want.
I know Andrew Dilnot well—he is a fine, highly intelligent and compassionate man. He went to great lengths to tailor a precise scheme that could be accepted by the Government, but at the last minute, they have buckled and not committed to it. The problem is the Treasury—the worst Government Department of all. It has failed the country over and over again with terrible mistakes. The European exchange rate mechanism destroyed the credibility of the Conservatives, but the Treasury has done lots of other bad things. It is a dreadful Department. I hope that Ministers now tell me how wonderful it is.
There has been almost no mention of the royal commission on long-term care from some 14 years ago—I think my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon mentioned it—which recommended free long-term care, which is precisely what he and I want. However, the Government at the time—they happened to be a Government I supported—could see that the report was going to be unanimous, so they slotted in two people at the last minute to ensure that it was not unanimous, and from that point onwards they hung on to the minority report of those two members. It was a bit of a disgrace, and I made that point strongly. I tabled an early-day motion in the 1997 to 2001 Parliament calling for implementation of the royal commission’s recommendations, which was signed by more than 100 Members of the House at that time, and in the 2001 to 2005 Parliament I tabled another early-day motion saying the same thing, again with the same sort of support. I also have the support of the National Pensioners Convention—a body with which I am closely associated—which also wants free long-care on the same basis as in the NHS.
In Scandinavia they do it. Indeed, what I have always wanted my party to do—as well as the others, but particularly mine—is to move in the direction of Scandinavia, not the United States of America. If Members read the book “The Spirit Level”, they can see that the civilised societies—where people are happier and all sorts of social problems are lesser—are in the Scandinavian- style countries. The worst end of the spectrum is in America, and we have been steadily moving towards the American end, not the Scandinavian end.
In the end it is about cost and this word “affordability”. We choose what is affordable. It is not written in stone: we can choose to make things affordable, and we can choose to pay for them by progressive taxation—if we wish. It is a political choice. People say, “Oh, well it’s not affordable.” However—I have told this story many times—I remember that when my children were young, if they asked for a second ice cream, my wife would say to them, “Mummy can’t afford it,” when what she was really saying was: “You can’t have another ice cream.” Of course she could afford it. We can afford to pay for free long-term care too, but we choose not to—so far. I hope to persuade my side at least to commit to it in time.
The extra costs of Dilnot would initially be £2 billion a year. That is the equivalent of 0.5p on the standard rate of income tax. I have put this to many people in meetings and asked them, “What would you choose: the threat that your home would be taken away, with no equity to hand on to your grandchildren, or an extra 0.5p on the standard rate?” Without exception, they say 0.5p on the standard rate. Of course, we do not have to do it that way, because there is plenty of cash in the tax gap, which is estimated to be as much as £120 billion a year, or even more. If we collected a tiny fraction of that—one sixtieth—we could cover Dilnot’s proposals; and, if we have to have a bit more, let us squeeze the tax gap a bit further. However, since Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister, we have seen the standard rate cut by 5p, which is 10 times more than the cost of Dilnot, so do not let us pretend that it not affordable. We choose not pay for it, because we think—or some people think—that low taxes are better or that letting tax evaders and tax avoiders get away with it is better than looking after elderly people in great need.
We are also committed, apparently—I understand that this goes for both sides of the House—to the idea of owner occupation, but we are actually seeing the gradual erosion of owner occupation, particularly by poorer people having their houses taken away when—
Sarah Newton
Would my hon. Friend like to comment on some of the Opposition’s assertions that the efficiency savings from reductions in management levels in NHS are not being put back into front-line services to enable integration, and that they are somehow being siphoned off to the Treasury? I do not believe that—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I must ask the hon. Lady to turn round so that the microphone can pick up what she is saying. I know that she is finding that difficult, but she should be heard by everyone in the Chamber.
NHS (Rationing of Care)
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. You can make an intervention, Mr Reed, but not from the Opposition Front Bench. If you step up to another Bench, you may intervene from there.
Mr Reed
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I trust that this is in order.
Will my hon. Friend join me in asking the Minister, who has indicated that he will not take interventions from me this evening, whether he will undertake a nationwide investigation into the clear rationing that is occurring in the NHS, and whether the Government will publish a list of procedures in which the eligibility criteria for treatment are now being changed? Will she join me also in asking the Government to act where various NHS organisations are breaching NICE guidelines on treatments offered to patients?
Mental Health
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. As hon. Members can see, about nine Members are trying to catch my eye and we have just over an hour. We want to get everyone in, do we not? If everybody speaks for only six or seven minutes we can accommodate everybody, so I ask Members to be time-focused, please.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. To help the remaining speakers keep to time, I am introducing a six-minute limit.
Health and Social Care Bill
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Grahame M. Morris
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether I might seek your advice in relation to a declaration of interest. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) has made two interventions on the private patient cap and has made a declaration of interest. He is a director of Circle, a private health care company. Is it your ruling that every Member must make such a declaration if they speak during the course of this debate?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
It is up to each individual Member to make whichever declaration of interest they wish during a debate, but ultimately it is up then to the Member and the Commissioner if the Member wished to take that further.
Andy Burnham
The amendment gives us no protection at all, and it gives us no protection from the NHS cross-subsidising private care. There is nothing in the Bill which says, “The whole costs of the provision of that care have to be reimbursed to the national health service”, as the Financial Times has again demonstrated, and that is why we object to what is happening. We are going back to the old days of the NHS, whereby patients are told, “You can go private or you can go to the back of the queue and wait longer.” That is the choice which we removed from the NHS during our 13 years in government, and we will not accept any return of it.
Paul Burstow
I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendment 11.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this we will consider Lords amendments 12, 43 to 53, 61, 62, 168 to 241, 243 to 245, 247, 249 to 251, 253 to 286, 288 to 291, 327, 333, 334 and 366 to 374.
Liz Kendall
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Minister who moved these particularly important amendments, which will abolish a statutory organisation, HealthWatch, to be absent from the debate? If it is in order, is it not a huge discourtesy to Members on both sides of the House?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. It is in order for the Minister not to be here at this moment in time, and it is up to each Member’s judgment as to what to make of that.
Andrew George
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), who has taken us round a number of issues, particularly in relation to the public’s ability to scrutinise, through the proposed healthwatch organisations, the effective delivery of commissioning in their areas.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) suggested, there is a desperate need for provision within our procedures whereby important Bills such as this, which have been significantly altered in another place, can be reviewed on Third Reading. Our earlier debate about the still unpublished transitional risk register was, in a sense, a proxy for that lack of a Third Reading debate.
This debate has placed public health and the role of HealthWatch, particularly local healthwatch, in the context of local health services being placed at risk. We have already discussed how clinical commissioning groups may be fundamentally conflicted. In my contribution to that debate, I posed questions about the conflicts that intrinsically exist within those organisations. I believe that HealthWatch should be there to provide scrutiny of those conflicts. Throughout the debates on the Bill, fundamental concerns have been expressed about the fragmentation of local health services. We need a strong and independent-minded local healthwatch in all our areas to be watching for that and looking out for opportunities to maintain the integration of local services.
I fear that one of the effects of such a major reorganisation of the health service nationally and locally will be to make it more difficult to deliver the £20 billion efficiency gain that the previous Government proposed and that the coalition Government intend should be delivered. That issue needs to be considered at national level, with HealthWatch, and at local level. I believe that we need an independent body that is capable of ensuring that efficiency gains are being achieved at local level and that keeps an eye on the commissioning and delivery of local health services.
The Royal College of Nursing has said today that there is a need to look carefully at staffing levels in front-line health services, including in acute hospitals. There is a debate about whether that should be mandatory. That has long been a concern of mine when looking at the delivery of local health services and it is identified by people when they visit hospitals. There are staff-to-patient ratios that, in my view, are barely tenable and barely safe. Qualified nurses are struggling to provide the support and care that patients require, simply because the staffing ratios are inadequate. The same ratios may have been adequate in the past when the throughput of patients and the acute status of patients were lower, but with the current turnaround of patients and their acute status, it is no surprise that the RCN’s survey has identified the need to review staffing levels in our wards.
NHS Risk Register
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. For the purposes of accuracy, I understand the right hon. Gentleman to have said that 105% more patients waited longer than a year for their treatment in December 2011 compared with December 2010, when he should know that the figure—[Interruption.]
Mr Lansley
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. For the purposes of accuracy, the figures published by my Department for December 2010 were 14,671, and for December 2011 were 9,190, a reduction of almost 5,000.
Mr Deputy Speaker
That is not a point of order for the Chair, Mr Lansley. As—[Interruption.] Order. As you well know, that is a point of debate.
Andy Burnham
Even though it was not a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, let me just answer it. I was comparing December 2010 with December 2011. That is a different time frame from the one that the Secretary of State quoted, which involved a time frame since the election. The Government inherited an NHS in which those waiting times were going down, and that is why he quoted those figures. On his watch, they are going back up, and it is a disgrace that he does not have the courage to admit it.
The fact is, as I said a moment ago, that warnings have been coming from the NHS, and I want the House to listen carefully to this information. The right hon. Gentleman has not been listening. The Government will not publish the transition risk register, but we have a pretty good understanding of what is in it from the local and regional risk registers that have been made public in line with Government policy as expressed on the Treasury website. So what do they say about waiting times?
Let us take the risk register from NHS Bradford and Airedale. Its assessment warns of
“a risk of poor patient access and assessment within four hours at Leeds Teaching Hospital due to significant staffing pressures resulting in potential patient safety issues and delay”.
The likelihood of that happening is considered 4, likely to happen, and the consequences are rated 4, major, giving an overall risk register rating of 16, which is extreme.
Julian Smith
Last week, I met Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred earlier. To clarify, neither the chief executive nor the chairman raised any of the points that he has raised. Not only that, but the local GP commissioning consortia are perfectly happy and are asking me and other local MPs to push ahead with the Bill. Why is the right hon. Gentleman such a scaremongering buffoon?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw that description.
Andy Burnham
I do not know why the hon. Gentleman thinks that such an intervention is appropriate. Why did he not ask the chairman and chief executive about this matter? Why does it take me to go and research the risk register—[Interruption.] Listen to the answer. Why does it take me to research the risk register in his constituency and to tell him about the risks to the NHS in his constituency, which he clearly does not know about? I suggest that he goes away from this Chamber right now and searches online, where he will find that risk register. Perhaps he will learn something about his constituency.
We are told that the market will decide. Last week, the Government received a specific warning from more than 150 members of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health that the market-based approach envisaged in the Bill will have
“an extremely damaging effect on the health care of children”.
They went on to say:
“Care will become more fragmented, and families and clinicians will struggle to organise services for these children. Children with chronic disease and disability will particularly suffer, since most have more than one condition and need a range of different clinicians.”
They stated that:
“The Bill is misrepresented by the UK Government as being necessary”
and that it will
“harm those who are most vulnerable.”
Those are not my words, but those of clinicians. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) wants to dismiss them, that is up to her, but she would do well to listen to them.
Warnings do not come any more serious than the one that I have just read out. It shows why the Government will not publish the risk register: they know that the case for their Bill would be demolished in an instant. People watching this debate will ask how it is possible to proceed when experts make such warnings and when NHS bodies warn of fatalities. To press on regardless would be utterly irresponsible and unforgivable. That is what the Prime Minister said today that he plans to do.
The truth is that the Government are not listening, as we have seen throughout this debate. The Prime Minister is surrounding himself with people who say what he wants to hear, while closing the door of No.10 Downing street in the faces of those who do not. He will not listen to the doctors and nurses with whom he was once so keen to have his photograph taken. It could not be clearer: he is putting his political pride and the need for the Government to save face before the best interests of the national health service. He is gambling with patients, with public safety and with this country’s best-loved institution. The Prime Minister asked people to trust him with the NHS, but we have learned today that he is running unforgivable risks with it. What his Government are doing is wrong and they need to be stopped.
I call on Members across the House to put the NHS first tonight. Vote with us for the publication of the risk register so that the public can see what this reorganisation will do to their NHS. They deserve the full truth and tonight this House can give it to them and correct the Government who have got things so badly wrong. I say to people outside who are watching this debate, join this fight to save the NHS for future generations. The NHS matters too much to too many people for it to be treated in this way. People have not voted for what is happening. [Interruption.] Not a single Government Member who is shouting at me now can look their constituents in the eye and say, “I told you that I was going to bring forward the biggest ever top-down reorganisation.” The more people who join this fight, the stronger our voice will become.
We promised this Government the fight of their life for betraying that trust and that is what we will give them. Tonight, this House has an opportunity to speak for the millions of people who care about the NHS and are worried about what is happening to it. I implore this House to take that opportunity and I commend the motion to the House.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Before I call the Secretary of State for Health, I say to the House that in my time as Deputy Speaker, this is easily and by some margin the worst-tempered debate that I have chaired. I ask Members on both sides of the House to lower the temperature so that we can have a decent and full debate.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Will Members please resume their seats? I am introducing a seven-minute limit, with the usual injury time for up to two interventions. Clearly there is a lot of interest in this debate, and if Members do not use up their full seven minutes, I am sure it will be greatly appreciated by Members towards the end of the list of speakers.
Richard Graham
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. As the business of the day is specifically focused on the publication of the NHS risk register, is it in order to describe the register as a secondary issue?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
May I advise all Members that they should not resort to a device such as this, as it is an argument in continuation of the debate. Many Back Benchers want to get into the debate, so Members should not misuse points of order. That was not a point of order for the Chair.
Alan Johnson
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I believe I heard the Secretary of State say that he did not really want to talk about the risk register, and neither do I, but I think it is important to the Government’s basic problem and the threat to the national health service.
Three important and interlinked reforms can be summed up in five words: “better outcomes for lower costs”. Does the private sector have a role? Of course it does.
Let me say a word about the introduction of independent treatment centres, which seem to have been used by some in this debate to suggest that this Bill simply carries forward policies pursued by the Labour Government. ITCs were introduced to deal with the perennial problem in the NHS—long waiting lists. We should remember that in the late 1990s about one in 25 people on the cardiac waiting list died before they were operated on. Rudolf Klein, in his seminal history of the NHS, said that ever since it was created, there has been a tail of around 600,000 people on waiting lists. He said that the captain shouted his order from the bridge and the crew carried on regardless.
In 1995, after 16 years in power, the Government before the last one decided to reduce the guaranteed in-patient waiting time under the citizens charter from two years to 18 months. That was the best they could do after being so long in power. For us, it was an absolute priority. Let me say to Members of all parties that independent treatment centres transformed behaviour in the NHS. Suddenly, it became possible for surgeons to operate on Fridays and on Saturday mornings as hospitals reacted to the threat of competition.
Alan Johnson
I shall not be taking an intervention from the hon. Gentleman.
When it comes to integrating social care with health, people want an adult social care system that resembles the NHS, not an NHS that resembles the current adult social care system. The very real fears about the Bill, particularly in respect of commissioning, were highlighted recently by the Health Committee. If the necessary economies are to be made, the provision of health and social care must be planned together, and, despite its title, the Bill is hindering that process. Yes, it includes the word “integration”, at a late stage, but the word just sits there doing nothing more than suggest that this is the spirit that the Bill will introduce, and it is not.
The one sensible decision made by the Health Secretary was the one to retain the services of Sir David Nicholson as chief executive of the NHS. The goal of achieving efficiency savings of 4% a year to reinvest in patient services is a noble one, but its achievement will be particularly difficult for the acute sector. What seems to be happening at present is that hospitals are cutting services to save money. What needs to happen, and what the Nicholson challenge envisaged, is the transformation of services to eliminate waste by, for instance, reducing readmissions and bringing care much closer to the patient. Of the £80 billion spent by PCTs in 2009-10, nearly half went to hospitals, the most expensive form of care, while primary care received only a quarter.
When I asked the distinguished colorectal surgeon Ara Darzi to lead 2,000 clinicians in moving the NHS to the next stage of its development by focusing remorselessly on quality, he produced a report that was radical in its concept if a little boring in its detail. Government Members could do with a bit of “dull and boring” on the NHS at the moment. The proposals required no reorganisation and very little legislation.
At that time, the Conservative party was promising a bare-knuckle fight to defend the district general hospital, and siding with the British Medical Association to stop patients accessing GP surgeries later in the day and on Saturday mornings. If the Nicholson challenge is to work, it must be accepted that the vision of the district general hospital as all-singing, all-dancing, and capable of providing all clinical procedures must change. There is no political leadership on that, there is no leadership from the Government—
Manufacturing
Nigel Evans Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I remind the House that there is a five-minute limit on Back-Bench contributions, but not for the first two speakers, or for the Minister and the shadow Minister.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. As we are approaching the festive season, I will play an early Father Christmas and set the time limit at 10 minutes.