Oral Answers to Questions

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We have a fantastic opportunity next year to show all faces of Britain, both modern and traditional. We are going to celebrate the jubilee, and I think that people will want to celebrate the incredible public service that Her Majesty the Queen has given over many years as an absolutely amazing model public servant. People will also want to celebrate the Olympics as a celebration of sport and all that is best about Britain. The royal wedding, as the Major of London said, was in many ways a dry run for how we handle some of those events, and everyone in the country has a lot to look forward to next year.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Many of my constituents in Wirral worry about the quality of care that older people, especially those with dementia, receive in hospital. How does the Prime Minister think that his now paused, top-down reorganisation of the NHS will help to make sure that older people are looked after with real dignity?

[The Prime Minister]

One of the aims of the changes that we are making to the NHS must be better to link the national health service, social service provision, local authorities and how we look after the elderly. All of us have seen too many cases in hospital where people who should be in residential or nursing care or being looked after at home are stuck in a large district general hospital or in a community hospital, when they should be getting alternative pathways of care. That is what the whole change should be about. What I am finding as I go round the country listening to doctors, nurses and clinicians is that we must make sure we take the opportunity to get this absolutely right. That is what the reforms should be all about.