Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gordon Marsden and Nick Clegg

Wednesday 14th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I suspect that my right hon. Friend will do so in the same way as he will no doubt explain to his constituents that there are other priorities, such as changing the boundaries of constituencies, which I know is close to his heart and that of his party. I think that Governments and Parliaments can do more than one thing at once. I also believe that it is a simple democratic principle that the people who make the laws of the land should be elected by the people who have to obey the laws of the land.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

Q3. Mr Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] My apologies, Mr Speaker. It is elsewhere that the deputies are present today. Study after study shows that it is crucial for older people that NHS services work closely with social care. My primary care trust in Blackpool has been doing that by working alongside the council’s social services in the same set of offices. Why is the Deputy Prime Minister still cheerleading for a Bill that scraps trusts and such co-operation, and that puts the health of older people, including those in my constituency, at risk?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am backing a Bill that includes, for the first time, statutory obligations to integrate social and health care. The hon. Gentleman is right that one of the abiding failings of our health service is that social and health care are not properly integrated. There has not been much integration over the past 10 years. We are trying to change that. Secondly, the creation of health and wellbeing boards will bring together representatives of the NHS and social care.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gordon Marsden and Nick Clegg

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

1. What discussions he has had with ministerial colleagues involving elected representatives at regional and local level in decision making by Government Departments.

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

The Government are committed to not just promising localism, but practising it. I and other Ministers have regular meetings with local authority colleagues, across a range of issues and at regular intervals, about the decisions that we are thinking of making. That is what greater transparency and devolution are all about.

[Mr Marsden]

The Deputy Prime Minister talks a good talk about devolution and localism, but that is about all he does. In fact, he and the Business Secretary acquiesced in the abolition of the regional development agencies. I have here a letter from him in which he acquiesced in the abolition of Government offices—one of the few areas in which local representatives can have an input.

Will the Deputy Prime Minister now give an undertaking to the House that he will intervene on his colleagues in the Government to make sure that the new regional growth fund decisions have a proper input from elected councils and local authorities, rather than—