Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the fact that local commissioners have a duty to ensure adequate community health care provision. I hope that that is an issue that he will take up with them. If he would like help in that fight, I am happy for him to come and meet me, and to bring in the local commissioners to talk this through, as it is important that we have enough community nurses to provide good care in communities and local commissioners need to listen to that.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

T6. Can my hon. Friend update the House on what he is doing to support the earliest relationships of new families through early years intervention? Specifically, will he support the cross-party “1,001 Critical Days” manifesto?

[Dr Poulter]

I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has done on the early years, and there are many good things in that manifesto. That is why we are investing in an additional 4,200 health visitors by 2015 and why we are supporting the most vulnerable families by increasing to 16,000 the number of families that will be supported by family nurses by 2015. A lot of investment is going into early years, which pays back to the Exchequer and gives much better care to families, too.