Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Mowat and Angela Eagle

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (David Mowat)]

The STPs are a collaborative local effort, involving providers and commissioners coming together with other stakeholders to produce place-based plans. The vast majority of plans have been developed jointly between the health sector and local authorities. Several plans have been led by local government.

[Ms Eagle]

Yesterday, the King’s Fund rightly characterised what is euphemistically called the sustainability and transformation project as being planned in secret, behind the backs of patients and the public. In Merseyside and Wirral, we know from leaks that the Government are going to cut £1 billion from our local national health service, which, despite rising demand, will close hospitals, downgrade many accident and emergency departments and possibly leave the whole of Wirral without an acute hospital. Will the Minister now come clean and publish these plans in full, and will he undertake to visit Wirral so that my constituents in Wallasey can come and have a word with him about his plans for their NHS?

[David Mowat]

To be clear, every single STP will be published by Christmas. About 12 have been published so far, and the Cheshire and Merseyside STP will be published tomorrow. When the hon. Lady has access to it, she will see that some of the statements she is making are just scaremongering. She mentioned the King’s Fund, so let me quote it:

“The King’s Fund continues to believe that STPs offer the best hope of delivering long term improvements to health and care services.”

That is what the King’s Fund says.

Steel Industry

Debate between David Mowat and Angela Eagle

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

My hon. Friend represents many constituents directly affected by the closure in Redcar, as does my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), and he demonstrates his knowledge of the problems faced by the British steel industry. It is a pity the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not acknowledge those problems when he came up with that policy.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Eagle]

I agree with my hon. Friend, whose constituents are particularly badly affected by the hard closure at Redcar. That hard closure will come to be seen as a folly of the highest order committed on this Government’s watch.

[David Mowat]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Eagle]

I will give way one more time. This is a short debate and a lot of colleagues want to get in, so I hope Members will forgive me if I get on.

[David Mowat]

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) is right: the carbon tax floor is a bad tax and a tax on manufacturing, but so, too, is it true that in every one of the five or six occasions in the previous Parliament when we debated energy prices, Labour Members voted for higher energy prices. In particular, in December 2012 they were led through the Lobby to vote for the accelerated closure of the British coalfields in advance of anything happening in Europe. The carbon price floor is a unilateral tax, because the EU abandoned the emissions trading system and left us acting unilaterally in this regard.

[Ms Eagle]

In this Parliament, we always have to remember the issue of tackling climate change, but we have to balance that with the cost that that puts on our energy-intensive industries. We have to ensure that we get the balance right.