Business of the House

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

As the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, there is a debate on that subject next Tuesday, and I am sure that he will want to take this matter up at that time. I think that he is referring to the decision made by some trusts to bring together different aspects of care in order to give a better service to patients. We should all embrace the possibility of better wraparound care, but if he has specific concerns, he should raise them at the debate next week.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I am sure that we all want to pay tribute to the public sector workers who have struggled into work in this severe weather to keep vital services running, but may we have a statement on our preparedness for this weather? In all the years that I have been alive, we have had winter. We also have severe episodes of winter, but we seem to fall over quite easily when that happens. Countries that have this sort of weather on a regular basis seem to cope with it. May we have a statement on our resilience, so that we can learn lessons from what has happened this year, in the hope that we can get our trains running a bit better so that people are not left waiting at cold stations with no information about what is going on?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Obviously, we want to minimise disruption, and it is frustrating for people when trains are cancelled and schools are closed, for example. Equally, he will recognise that there are some exceptional weather events going on at the moment. Whitehall Departments have clear plans for dealing with disruptive weather, and we heard at Transport questions today about some of the excellent operations to dig people out of snowdrifts and to ensure that the trains can run. At the same time, there are always lessons to be learned from these events, and I am sure that the Whitehall Departments will be looking at what we can do better.