Local Contact Tracing
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves
Let us be clear: there are places that are doing this—for example, Wales, to which I shall come later—and the difference between what we see with Serco and what we see when it is done in-house is that with the latter more people are being traced, which means more people are going into self-isolation and a slower spread of the virus. That protects all our lives and means that our economy can get back on track. The Government are the ones who are wasting hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on a system that is failing—a system that is letting us down.
Outsourced contact tracing is part of £11 billion of public procurement in this pandemic that has not gone out to competitive tender. The Government do not even know whether they are getting value for money because they do not even bother to test it in the marketplace or against what local authorities can deliver. For the outsourcing companies this is a gold rush. I have called for the National Audit Office to investigate, and I look forward to its findings later this year. I am sure that all Members will look forward to the findings from that investigation so that they can check for themselves that they are getting the value for money that they seem to believe they are getting.
One issue that I hope the National Audit Office addresses is the murky subcontracting of the Government’s contractors. My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) asked the Government how many companies Serco has subcontracted its work on contact tracing to; the answer was 29 companies other than Serco. The amount subcontracted to other firms represents 80% of staffing. Who are these businesses? The Government have refused to say—because Serco decided that it was too commercially sensitive. We now have a Government that outsource even decisions to private outsourcing companies. The situation is frankly ludicrous.
It has taken investigative journalists, whistleblowers and the Good Law Project to start to piece together the jigsaw. Why the shyness? Presumably because if the Government revealed what was going on, it would not stand up to public scrutiny. One business to which Serco has subcontracted work is Concentrix, which was previously involved in scandals relating to tax credits.
In September, it was reported that another Serco subcontractor, Intelling, was paying bonuses of £500 to staff despite poor contact rates. One contact tracer employed by Intelling was reported to have said:
“I couldn’t believe it when I got my bonus. It’s an absolute disgrace…I’m getting paid and now given a bonus for doing nothing…I really want to help and be involved and make calls and be useful. But I’m not being given anything to do. The system is on its knees.”
This evidence is devastating because it shows that people who should have been contacted are not being contacted and that, far from what the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) said, the Government are handing out money to companies without getting the value for money that we should all be demanding.
I challenge the Minister today to name all Serco’s subcontractors and to publish details on how much they have been paid and for what. I will give way to the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), if she would like to tell the House that information. This is revealing: either they do not know, they do not care, or they will not say. I fear that the more we know about what is happening under the bonnet in contact tracing, the worse it gets.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
I fear that the hon. Lady may have inadvertently misled the House earlier. She told the House that the Government did not speak to local government authorities throughout the country, but on 22 May, many months before Labour even started to talk about involving local authorities, the Government provided £300 million for local authorities to set up local test and trace services, so what she said at the Dispatch Box was patently untrue and she should apologise.
Rachel Reeves
Local councils are desperate to take on the responsibilities from Serco. They are begging the Government: “Hand over the resources and the responsibilities, because we can do it better than you.” I will come later to the issues relating to what the Government are doing with tier 3 compared with the other tiers.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
I know that in some early listings I appear as the hon. Member for Ipswich. I am not the hon. Member for Ipswich—I never could be!—but if he was here I am sure he would agree that the Opposition’s brass neck takes some beating, in a week when we have seen craven, callous political opportunism of the worst kind from Labour Members. First, they were anti-10 pm closures; then, they were for 10 pm closures. First, they were against the tiered system; then, they were for the tiered system. First, they were against a circuit-breaker approach; then, they were for a circuit-breaker approach. I hope that Labour Front Benchers have cleared their position with the Leader of the Opposition, because for all we know he will be on TV in half an hour announcing a different position from the one they have taken here today.
The Opposition’s tone in opening the debate was quite depressing. We could have spent these few hours talking about how we work together to address the issues with the test-and-trace system, but, no, all we heard was typical Labour public good, private bad. Labour might have a new leader, but it is the same old Labour.
As my hon. Friend the Minister said, the Government’s aim and objective is to save lives. We accept that there are issues with the test-and-trace system, which is why we are working with all stakeholders—public, private, not for profit and local and national organisations—to get this right. It is not either/or. It is not public or private. It is not local or national. We are working to create a system that uses the best of all worlds.
We are providing £300 million to help local authorities to set up local test-and-trace services. We are extending the partnership between NHS Test and Trace and local authorities to reach more people who test positive—[Interruption.] They say we are not, but we are: it is a fact. We are bringing together the efforts and data of local and national services so that we can spot local flare-ups and take measures to control them more easily.
NHS Test and Trace—the Opposition would not say this—is delivering results. We are testing more than any other comparable European country today, and that is something of which we should be very proud. Test and trace plays a crucial role in our fight against coronavirus. It is not a question of national or local, but rather both working together to control and suppress the spread of this virus, and I really hope that the Labour party drops its recent approach and moves back to where it was in March, working constructively with the Government so that we can defeat this virus and save lives.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, which I chair, led hearings all through the summer; the very first ones we held back in July were on test and trace, and then we did it again last week. It was saddening to see that a lot of the predictions many of the experts made about the issues with test and trace back in July have since come to fruition. The things they were saying were very much common sense.
First, and I hope this is self-evident, this stuff is not easy. It may seem easy when we have read a briefing from the Library or whatever else, and the basic principles are easy, but the specifics of running a massive lab are very niche and require a lot of expertise. There are very few people in this country who can do this incredibly well, so when we say it should be a locally led test and trace system, of course it needs to be backed up by national capacity, but it should be led by those who are closest on the ground. We also took evidence from experts in Italy, who were also pointing to what Germany has done, and what they have in common is that that is how they run it: the people closest to the ground lead it, backed up by national systems and national resourcing. That is what we are asking for; it is what we have been asking for for the past three months, and here we are on the verge of what is likely to be an inevitable second national lockdown, because yet again we are not listening to the scientists.
Layla Moran
Well, we will see. I sincerely hope I am wrong, but unfortunately, we have not done enough listening to the experts.
Speaking of experts, I want to put on record my thanks to Oxfordshire’s public health director and his team, but also the councillors, the councils and the lab technicians—the people behind the scenes, who very rarely receive thanks. They do an incredible job, and one of the things I would like to highlight while the Minister is in her place is that concerns have been raised about pillar 1 and pillar 2 testing labs not talking to each other. There is not enough transparency coming out of the community testing Lighthouse labs, and we cannot be assured of their quality. Those concerns have been raised by people who are really expert in this area and would like to be able to help, so I have a plea to the Minister: can we please be more transparent about what is coming out of the Lighthouse labs, so that it can be scrutinised by real experts in the field?
I will end with a heartbreaking story of what this means. I heard from the mother of a disabled child in my constituency whose carers were unable to receive tests, so the mother was not able to visit them for two weeks during September. That child is unable to read their facial expressions owing to PPE and therefore struggles to interact with them; and because the carers were unable to receive tests, the mother is incredibly worried and that child is left without the proper care. This all comes back to real stories and real people.
Covid-19
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It is a pleasure to be called to speak in the debate this evening. This has been an incredibly trying time for all of us. The restrictions on our hard-fought liberties and freedoms have been an incredibly terrible burden. People have been precluded from visiting relatives, from celebrating birthdays, weddings and religious celebrations and even from paying their respects at funerals, with places of worship closed across the country. I do not think any of us thought we would have to live through such a situation. I do not think anyone in this House, or even outwith the House, foresaw the time when a British Government and the devolved Administrations across the UK would be forced into taking the action they have taken to protect life. This has been tough, especially for those of us who see individual freedoms and liberties, along with personal responsibility, as the guiding principles of what we believe in. However, it has been necessary, just as it has been necessary for the state to take unprecedented action to support the economy and protect jobs and necessary to begin opening up the country once again in the summer. It was, and remains, important to strike the right balance between public health and the societal impact of the restrictions.
I believe that the Government have got the latest steps right, balancing the need to keep the virus at bay with keeping the country open and our economy moving. But crucially, we must keep our schools, colleges and universities open. The education of the next generation cannot suffer any more than it has already done. We owe this to the young people of this country, the next generation. They are the generation that has been most hit by the restrictions. They have had months of school life taken away from them, and they are seeing the beginnings of their university lives changed beyond all recognition. They are seeing their job prospects wither, and their chances of buying a property now seem even more out of reach, with the average deposit now requested being 20%. This is the generation that will be paying for the economic response to this crisis for years to come. We owe it to them at the very least to give them as good an education as we can, and that means keeping school, college and university gates open.
The Government’s economic response to the crisis has, as many hon. Members have said, been on an unprecedented scale. We only have to look at the figures to see the enormous contribution made by the UK Government to Scotland, with an extra £6.5 billion-worth of financial support being delivered to the Scottish Government so far. Sadly, this was not mentioned by the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) earlier. In my constituency alone, 12,900 people were furloughed under the job retention scheme, making up nearly a third of all those in employment in West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine. Across Aberdeenshire, 70% of self-employed people made a claim under the self-employed income support scheme.
I know there is consensus in the House that I represent the most beautiful constituency in the United Kingdom. As a result, it is a constituency that depends on visitors, foreign and domestic, as key drivers of the local economy. As the lockdown came into force in mid-March, many businesses saw a bleak outlook ahead, not knowing how they would get through what was, to all intents and purposes, a lost season. However, the success of the enjoy summer safely campaign and the eat out to help out scheme in giving the boost needed to get these visits going again cannot be underestimated, and I was pleased to do my bit, especially supporting eat out to help out at Castleton Farm, the Leys Hotel, Banchory Lodge, the Tor-na-Coille Hotel, the Deeside Inn, the Belvedere Hotel, Molly’s, the Westhill Holiday Inn and many more. The most recent announcement to extend the cut in VAT to 5% through to March next year, instead of January as planned, which would have been the very worst time for tourism businesses, is extremely welcome.
For me, one thing that has been highlighted throughout the entire crisis has been the strength of our being part of one United Kingdom. We have shouldered the burden of this almighty crisis as one nation, with all four countries working together—for the most part—to get through the crisis and beat this disease. From PPE to testing, and from the Joint Biosecurity Centre to the support from our brilliant armed forces, the country has pulled together as one, and frankly, as we move on to the next stage of our fight against this sickening, liberty-inhibiting, life-changing disease, the whole world needs to do the same, as the Prime Minister so rightly said two days ago at the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Finally, I would like to take this brief opportunity to pay tribute to some of the fantastic local organisations and individuals in West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, including the churches and community groups that have kept local people connected and reached out to help those who needed it. This is even more vital in a vast rural constituency such as mine. I pay tribute to people such Thomas Truby from Torphins, who, at 10 years old, has continued throughout the lockdown and the crisis to pick up litter and keep his local area clean with his own group, the Rubbish Club. People and actions such as these give us all an abiding hope for the future. The importance of community has never been so evident, and as we head towards winter facing the prospect of the second wave, I am in no doubt that communities will pull together once more. I sincerely hope that we will see the spirit of co-operation across the political divide and among the four Governments of our United Kingdom as we move forward.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
Of course, we are constantly working to improve the system, but as the statistics that I read out at the start of this Question Time show, we have made very significant progress over the summer. NHS test and trace is just over three months old, and is now reaching 84% of contacts when contacts are given. On testing expansion, of course when a testing site is full, people will be directed to a nearby but not immediately close testing centre. That does sometimes happen when there is an increase in demand for testing, but we try to respond by putting in more testing where it is needed and in the highest-risk areas, of which, thankfully, Chesterfield is not one.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)
The UK Government are supporting the covid-19 response right across the country. We have established the joint biosecurity centre, ensuring decision makers in Scotland and across the UK have the best possible information when responding to outbreaks. The UK-wide test and trace programme has significantly enhanced the ability to respond to covid-19 in Scotland, notably through the six Department-funded testing sites and 18 mobile testing units, with additional ones deployed such as the one to Aberdeen during the recent outbreak there.
Andrew Bowie
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. One of the things that has been welcomed in Scotland has been seeing both of Scotland’s Governments working together to fight this pandemic—for example, the British Army working with the Scottish Ambulance Service and local NHS boards to increase our testing capacity. Can he confirm that this one nation approach to tackling covid will continue in the future?
Covid-19: R Rate and Lockdown Measures
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
Absolutely; I work closely with the Scottish Government to do everything we can so that they can increase their testing capacity. Part of the testing programme, as the hon. Lady mentioned, is the drive-through centres. That is essentially UK-wide, likewise the postal testing services, and then the hospital-based testing is run, of course, by the Scottish NHS and is therefore devolved. This requires a higher level of co-ordination. Across the UK, in England we have the highest level of testing and we do everything possible to help the Scottish Government to get their testing capacity up.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
No new deaths in Scotland, no new deaths in Northern Ireland, and no new deaths in London hospitals: while I agree with my right hon. Friend that even one death from coronavirus is one too many, does he not agree that this is evidence that the whole-UK approach and the measures adopted across the entire United Kingdom at the beginning of this virus are working, and that this is reason to be hugely positive?
Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there has been very encouraging progress, and all the significant data point in the same direction, which is downwards. That is incredibly important. It is a testament to the efforts of everybody across the whole United Kingdom, because everybody has played their part in the social distancing. The more that we do this as one United Kingdom, the better. Of course there are sometimes substantive reasons for local variation—sometimes, for instance, north of the border—but ultimately this country is coming through this and we are winning the battle against this disease.
Covid-19
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Matt Hancock
We are looking at the impact of all the decisions that different countries have taken. There will be lots of consequences should we take the decision to close schools, but we have not taken that decision today.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
May I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend, and to all the staff and officials at the Department of Health who are working around the clock in incredible situations to deal with coronavirus? Indeed, I also pay tribute to the Secretary of State’s counterpart in the Scottish Government and to all her staff, who are working to do exactly the same north of the border; I know that my constituents in West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine appreciate it. Does the Secretary of State know whether the Transport Secretary will be coming to the House at some point soon to update us on any discussions he is having with the airline industry? The maintenance of routes is very important to the economy of the north-east of Scotland, and the survival of those airlines is vital.
Matt Hancock
It is of course a matter that I discuss with the Transport Secretary, who I am sure will be coming to the House sooner rather than later.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Edward Argar
As I have made clear, we have set out the funding for the six new hospitals in the first tranche; we have invested seed funding in the development of the schemes for the further 34; and further capital announcements will be made in due course.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)
The Minister for Care (Helen Whately)
This Government will be introducing an NHS visa, which will offer reduced fees and fast-track access for overseas doctors, nurses and allied health professionals to work in the UK. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will be outlining detailed plans in due course.
Andrew Bowie
Scotland has an increasing crisis of GP shortages, and in NHS Grampian—where £1 million had to be spent on agency nurses this winter—we have an increasing nursing crisis. Some people are understandably concerned that the changes to immigration rules will have an adverse effect. Can my hon. Friend confirm that the new NHS visa will be applicable in Scotland as well?
Helen Whately
Yes, I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. The NHS visa will be available for doctors, nurses and allied health professionals coming to work in the NHS across the whole United Kingdom.
Coronavirus
Andrew Bowie Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. Following on from the question by my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) about working with the devolved Administrations, will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State confirm that although the delivery is devolved, this is a whole-UK plan? There should be no confusion in any of the devolved areas of the United Kingdom: this is a UK-wide plan and the information published today is applicable to and the same for every part of the United Kingdom.
Matt Hancock
That is right; in fact, the document is badged with the emblems of the four nations. There are of course elements of it that are technically different in terms of delivery, but they are set out in the plan.
If I may take a step back, the deputy chief medical officer has already got a note to me to answer the question from the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson). The expert committee NERVTAG —the new and emerging respiratory virus threats advisory group—has looked at the issue of nebulisers and does not consider their use an infection-prone procedure.
NHS Funding Bill
Andrew Bowie ExcerptsMonday 27th January 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
Somebody on the Opposition Front Bench just shouted, “Oh, come on!” when I talked about saving huge amounts of money by reducing by a third the number of people who do not attend a GP appointment. They should get with the programme, and use the best technology to support our staff in the NHS.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
My right hon. Friend brought up the issue of Scottish funding. Does he share my regret and frustration that if the Scottish Government had matched our funding at the levels that we are spending in England, the NHS in Scotland would have £505 million more to spend on frontline services? The fact is that they are investing more slowly, and less, than we are south of the border.
Matt Hancock
Exactly. That is precisely true, and what is so frustrating is this—perhaps my hon. Friend knows the answer to this question: what did they do with the half a billion pounds that they did not put into their NHS? It is a disgrace.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was not expecting to be called this early. [Interruption.] It is unusual for me to be called this early. I am getting used to this new age.
Andrew Bowie
I am perfecting it. I am delighted to be called to speak at this time in this debate on a Bill that demonstrates our commitment to implementing our promise to the British people in the last election to invest in our NHS: to invest a record amount in our NHS. In fact, we are talking about the biggest cash increase in the history of the NHS, delivering new hospitals, more nurses, more doctors, more primary care professionals in general practice and millions more appointments in GP surgeries every year across England; we are demonstrating once and for all that the NHS is safe in the Conservatives’ hands and putting an end, I hope, to the disgraceful, lazy, scaremongering trotted out every election by the parties opposite, which is in place of—in fact, caused by—a dearth of realistic policy proposals that appeal to the British people.
This is a debate about NHS funding. It has been rightly certified as relating exclusively to England, as this matter is fully devolved, and it has focused on the areas— how and where—the extra money will be best spent south of the border. However, it would be remiss of this House to let this Bill pass on Second Reading today without at least mentioning the effect that this transformative amount of money being invested in the NHS, coupled with decisions on funding in education, local government and policing taken by this Conservative Government, will have north of the border in Scotland.
Thanks to this Conservative Government, the block grant to Scotland will increase by an unprecedented £1.1 billion this year, to £29.3 billion, with £635 million of that increase due to our commitment, cemented here today, to boost spending on health to record levels, as it could be transformational. Indeed, it needs to be, for despite the bluff and bluster of the Scottish National party—or, in fact, because of the bluff and bluster of a Scottish National party obsessed with stoking division and grievance, and foisting upon the Scottish people another referendum that they do not want—the health service in Scotland is suffering.
Before I go on, I wish to put on record my thanks to the amazing people who work in NHS Scotland, particularly those at NHS Grampian. They do incredible work, going above and beyond to serve the people of Scotland and north-east Scotland. Their service and sacrifice are something that everybody in this Chamber is grateful for, and I include the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) in that, not just for her service in Scotland, but her service overseas. My admiration for what she has done in Palestine knows no bounds. However, I do think that health service workers are being let down by the Scottish Government, for whom everything—investment in our NHS, the education of our children and the delivery of policing—plays second fiddle to the obsession of separation from the rest of the United Kingdom.
The story of the SNP’s management of Scotland’s NHS is, sadly, one of underfunding. Spending on the NHS in England increased by 17.6% between 2012-13 and 2017-18, whereas it increased by only 13.1% in Scotland in the same period.
Dr Whitford
The hon. Gentleman was not in his place when I spoke earlier to point out the fact that if the global funding in Scotland is higher, the Barnett consequential makes a smaller percentage. Scotland spends £136 more per head on health and £130 more per head on social care. I think he should go and work out a little bit of mathematics, because percentages relate to what the starting point is.
Andrew Bowie
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but my figures were from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, and that is a Parliament oft quoted by SNP Members. Moving away from funding, the story of the SNP’s record on the NHS in Scotland is also one of failed waiting time targets. The 12-week treatment time guarantee unveiled by Nicola Sturgeon when she was Health Secretary in 2011 has never been met—not once. For the quarter ending September 2019, just shy of 30% of in-patient and day cases were not treated within 12 weeks. The situation is even worse for my constituents living under the NHS Grampian umbrella, where more than a quarter of patients—34.6%—were not seen within the mandated 18-week referral time in the month ending September 2019. That is not the fault of the amazing people at NHS Grampian; how can they hope to meet targets when they are being so chronically underfunded by the SNP? According to the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, the 2019-20 cash allocated to the NHS Grampian health board was £7.7 million short of the target set by the NHS Scotland Resource Allocation Committee. The total shortfall over the decade for NHS Grampian is estimated to be £239 million.
I am sorry to say that the cancer waiting times are little better, with a fifth of people with urgent cancer referrals waiting more than two months for treatment. The target is that 95% of patients with urgent referrals are seen within 62 days, but this was met for only 83.3% of patients in the quarter ending September 2019. We have a GP crisis in Scotland—a shortage. It is shameful that the Royal College of General Practitioners expects a shortfall of 856 doctors across Scotland by 2021. There are delays to the promised Inverness medical centre, and fears over the same happening at the Aberdeen cancer and maternity units. There is a completed children’s hospital in Edinburgh, but it is sitting empty due to “ongoing safety concerns”. We also face a shameful, tragic situation at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, where children have died and it has emerged that Health Protection Scotland reports had identified contamination risks as far back as 2016, with dozens of individual cases.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman says that in Scotland the figure is 82% in respect of people meeting the cancer treatment target, yet the figure in England is only 75%. I am not sure that throwing party political stuff around is going to make the blindest bit of difference to delivering for those people.
Andrew Bowie
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I tend to agree with him, but I have deliberately avoided getting into, “England is better than Scotland.”
Andrew Bowie
I am agreeing with the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman; I am trying not to get into that debate. What I am saying is that it could be better in Scotland. The SNP has been responsible for more than 10 years for the NHS in Scotland and it is missing its own targets and the service is underfunded. When SNP Members come into this Chamber to harangue, castigate and berate this Government for the record investment they are giving the NHS south of the border, perhaps they should look closer to home and sort the problems in Scotland, where they are failing to meet their own targets.
I know that Members from all parties, and especially on the SNP Benches, care deeply for the health and wellbeing of the Scottish people, as do I, but I ask them to bear in mind the record of the Scottish Government when they attack this Government, who are investing record amounts in the health service. I ask them to join me in welcoming the record boost to the block grant and calling for the NHS in Scotland to be funded to a level equivalent to the funding we are putting in here in England.
I welcome the Bill and hope that when the Scottish Government receive the unprecedented boost to the block grant made possible by Conservative decisions, they spend it wisely and where it is needed, fix the health service where it is broken up north, and invest in our healthcare workers, so that throughout the United Kingdom—in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland—we can have an NHS that all the British people deserve.