NHS (Charitable Trusts Etc) Bill

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Kevin Foster

Friday 22nd January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend for that good point. Once we start on the principle of these changes, where do we stop? Karing, a charity in my constituency—it is in Preston, in Paignton—is very closely linked with a local doctor’s surgery, and it was lucky enough recently to have had its new base opened by Esther Rantzen. It is not, however, part of that surgery. Clearly, the two work together, with Karing supporting and providing great services, giving real benefits to local people, but, crucially, it is not part of the business that is the surgery, nor is it part of the business that is the NHS. That is where the logo point comes in.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is making a strong, clear point. In my constituency, Edenbridge hospital has a league of friends, which is there not only to support the hospital—it does that incredibly impressively—but to support the needs of the community and to advocate when the hospital gets it wrong, which, occasionally, it may have done. Keeping that independence is essential so that the charity can actually do its job and not merely be an adjunct to the hospital.

[Kevin Foster]

My hon. Friend makes the excellent point that many people will see a league of friends at a local hospital as not just having a function of holding some money in an account, but as also being a stakeholder in the process, able to speak independently and fearlessly about the local hospital and the charities. It needs to be seen as neutral and independent. As we have mentioned, the Public Accounts Committee looked in depth this week at the financial sustainability of NHS trusts. There are concerns about that, and we have seen examples where NHS trusts have gone badly wrong. Thankfully, this Government have been far more prepared to talk about that and deal with it than previous Governments have been. If the charity is seen to be part of the trust, we go back to the idea that the charity is not bringing in additionality. People will think, “I am not donating money so that there is something extra; I am donating money that could or should have been provided by the Government or by the trust.”

If we start spreading the logo around, we open up other debates that are not particularly helpful, as we set a precedent. That was touched on briefly in the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall. People are very precious about the NHS—it is a symbol of the public sector, delivered by the public sector. That is a very important point. If we start extending use of the logo to charities, what do we do about other bodies that might wish to start using it? For example, we regularly see the NHS logo used alongside “in partnership”, for example with a foundation trust or the Department of Health, but we do not see groups such as my local league of friends abandoning their long-established and very well-recognised brand within the local area to say that they are collecting for the NHS. The Torbay Hospital League of Friends is doing a great job with its “This is Critical” campaign to get money to help equip the new critical care unit of the hospital, but it is not the NHS, and the essence of that approach is that what it provides is additional and that it is independent. That is why, for me, the amendment would go against the whole spirit of the Bill, which is about independent charities and independent trusts. For me, amendment 9 does not make sense and I will not be supporting it. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset will not press it to a vote.

Trident

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Kevin Foster

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend very much for that intervention. The appalling nature of nuclear weapons is exactly what keeps us safe. The very fact that they are an existential threat to so many regimes and to so many dreadful leaders around the world is exactly what puts them off. Few bunkers and no society could survive a nuclear attack, and that is exactly why nuclear weapons work: nobody wishes to face them.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is giving a very powerful speech. Does he agree that NATO is about making a conventional or a nuclear attack on its members absolutely futile? In short, in the nuclear age, the enemy is war itself.