Oral Answers to Questions

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)]

Survival rates are high, but I am ambitious for more. That is why the Prime Minister recently announced £75 million to support new research into the early diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer. We will recruit 40,000 patients into more than 60 studies over the next five years, and further to this even more exciting is the rapid pathway that I was discussing yesterday with Cally Palmer, our national cancer director, which we are trialling across three hospital sites in west London as part of its local cancer alliance.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

T2. Given the challenges the Secretary of State and his Government face in recruiting and retaining health and social care staff, will he follow the example of the Scottish Government, who pay their social care assistants and care assistants the real living wage, meaning they earn £1,100 a year more than their counterparts in England?

[Mr Hunt]

May I gently remind the hon. Lady that it was this Conservative Government who introduced the national living wage, and we did that on the basis of transforming the economy, championing policies that were by and large opposed every step of the way by the Scottish National party?