Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. He will have noticed that the global poverty action fund that we launched is principally a matched fund, in order to enable the taxpayer to piggyback on the brilliant development outcomes that many of our NGOs produce. That is the right principle, whereby taxpayer support can focus on results, outputs and outcomes, and not on inputs.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

4. What steps he is taking to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV in developing countries by 2015.

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

11. What steps his Department is taking to support the UNAIDS goal to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2015.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Stephen O'Brien)]

The Government are committed to a comprehensive approach to eliminating paediatric AIDS by focusing on where we have a comparative advantage—that is, on primary prevention of HIV among women of child-bearing age and on prevention of unintended pregnancies among women living with HIV through our investments in family planning.

[Bill Esterson]

Does the Minister agree that it is important that children who have already contracted HIV should be able to access medicines to stay alive? If so, will he join me in calling on pharmaceutical companies to make their patents available to the patent pool, so that there can be affordable HIV drugs for children?

[Mr O'Brien]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s question. The Government definitely support the UNITAID patent pool, which is, as he knows, a mechanism to facilitate the development of new, particularly fixed-dose combination drugs, partly to ward off the danger of monotherapies. That can be a key means of addressing the treatment challenge. We welcome UNITAID’s decision to create a separate foundation to manage the pool’s activities, and we recognise that that is an important step. We now need the milestones to be put in place as rapidly as possible, so that we can convert it to a working programme going forward.

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[The Prime Minister]

I am not fully up to date with that particular planning circular, but I reassure my hon. Friend that, as I have said here before, Traveller communities should be treated in a similar way to other communities, in that they cannot have planning permission retrospectively granted when they have not obeyed the rules. That is not right. Everyone should obey the law.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Q6. I wrote to the Prime Minister about my constituent, Scott Sheard from Formby. Scott suffered severe brain damage when he was assaulted in July, and he needs a wheelchair so that he can go home. Will the Prime Minister join me in welcoming the good news that Scott’s wheelchair will be ready next week, and will he intervene to help others in Merseyside and elsewhere who have been on the waiting list for wheelchairs for far too long?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I am certainly happy to do that. The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point. MPs of all parties in all parts of the House, and anyone who has ever tried to get a wheelchair for anybody, will know that the delays and the lack of choice and the lack of power people have is incredibly frustrating. It must be possible in this day and age to put more power in the hands of patients or parents to make sure we have better choice, faster wheelchairs—[Interruption.] Sorry. We should get the wheelchairs a bit faster.