(8 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe Department engages regularly with UK industry to understand the impact of the Windsor framework, and we encourage businesses to respond to the consultation, which is still live.
First, let me say that there is a consultation taking place, so there is discussion on this. Secondly, £50 million has already been allocated as transitional support. Thirdly, particularly for colleagues in Northern Ireland, it is important that, far from restricting choice, we maintain it. That is exactly what the Windsor framework, which the House as a whole agreed to, is designed to do.
A correctly labelled shipment for Going Nuts, a firm in Park Royal, made it to Felixstowe on 2 January but, shockingly, it has only just been released from being impounded. That was due to a customs staff shortage at the border, so will the Government fix that? The company incurred a three-figure sum for 40 days’ storage, plus VAT. The Government are throwing small business under the bus—albeit a Sadiq Khan bus with low emissions.
I will leave it to others to deduce the link to Sadiq Khan’s bus. I think the hon. Lady prepared her question before the previous answer, because I just set out that we are giving £50 million of transitional labelling support. Of course, a consultation is live and we are working with businesses on it.
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe Government support the right to take industrial action within the law, but equally the law is there to protect patients and NHS staff alike. Following legal advice, NHS Employers and my Department are confident that the proposed strike action by the Royal College of Nursing goes beyond the mandate it secured from its members, which expires on 1 May at midnight. While NHS Employers has sought to resolve the issue through dialogue, the RCN’s failure to amend its planned action has led NHS Employers to request my intervention. Even as we work to resolve those issues through dialogue, I can tell the House that I have regretfully provided notice of my intent to pursue legal action. None the less, I am hopeful that discussions can still be productive, especially those between the RCN and NHS England on patient safety, and that they will continue to be guided by the imperative to keep people who use the NHS safe.
The right to choose sounds attractive, but when diabetic eye disease and glaucoma seriously threaten the sight of millions, the fact that any qualified provider can and does cherry-pick reversible cataract work leaves the NHS with astronomical bills and all the complex cases. Will the Secretary of State praise award-winning clinicians Christiana and Evie at Central Middlesex Hospital and visit to see for himself how effectively writing a blank cheque for private treatment is destabilising NHS budgets and jeopardising the NHS’s ability to do award-winning research and to train junior doctors, who need routine work?
I am always happy to praise the brilliant work of clinicians up and down the NHS, who do a formidable job. Given the huge scale of the backlogs we face as a consequence of the pandemic, it is important that we not only use the full capacity available within the NHS, empowering patients through patient choice and technologies such as the NHS app to better enable that, but maximise the capacity in the independent sector.
(1 year, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberIt is. As my hon. Friend will know from another of my visits, which was with him to Kettering, the enabling works are progressing. That is in no small part a tribute to the work that he and neighbouring MPs have done to strongly make the case for Kettering. I know that he will continue to do so, and I look forward to working with him on that.
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the issues in Shropshire. I draw her attention to the fact that we have more doctors, more nurses and more funding going into the NHS, and more people are being treated.
(2 years ago)
Commons ChamberA respected woman pharmacist in my constituency, with a lifetime of NHS experience, went solo with her own practice in the hope and expectation of an NHS licence, which she has been denied. Will the Secretary of State look into the opaque decision-making process? Our increasing population otherwise means increasing demand, and my constituent cannot survive on private alone.
(4 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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I am happy to give my hon. Friend that assurance about levelling up. It is at the core of the Government’s mission. It is a key priority of the Prime Minister and consequentially of all Ministers. We are actively working in the Treasury to accelerate under Project Speed our infrastructure investment to ensure that it is better targeted in terms of place as well as scheme.
London, which is now on a watch list, is not only our financial centre but our cultural capital. [Interruption.] I believe so. It is the nation’s beating heart. Despite the £1.57 billion arts rescue package, freelancers and the self-employed in the sector in my constituency have not seen a penny since March. Established venues such as The Questors in Ealing face a record loss this year because the panto is off—oh yes it is! Will the Chief Secretary not be a villain and sort this out now?
I shall resist pursuing the panto theme, although I am not sure too many villains have allocated £1.57 billion to the industry in addition to the other package of support that the Chancellor has announced. The hon. Lady speaks of a real concern, which we are acutely aware of. The House has debated at length the issue of that subset of the self-employed who were beyond the date of the initial package and I do not think we need to rehearse that argument, but I recognise that it is an issue of ongoing concern. By international standards, the self-employed income support package that we have put in place is extremely generous, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor extended it further in the winter plan.