Business of the House Debate

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Department: Leader of the House

Business of the House

Henry Smith Excerpts
Thursday 9th May 2024

(2 months, 2 weeks ago)

Commons Chamber
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Penny Mordaunt Portrait Penny Mordaunt
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I am sorry to hear about the particular performance of the hon. Gentleman’s local trust. He will know that we are putting a huge amount of resource into ensuring that we can catch up, particularly since the pandemic. We have 2 million more operations, more than 160 diagnostic centres have been set up and we have the dental recovery plan. The funding is provided by the UK Government, but it will be up to local commissioners how they use those services. The next questions to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care are on 4 June, and I encourage the hon. Gentleman to raise any specific concerns he has with her then.

Henry Smith Portrait Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
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I very much welcome and support the Government ensuring that the UK is in the vanguard of global decarbonisation of aviation. I also welcome and support the sustainable aviation fuels mandate coming in early next year. However, the revenue support mechanism is not planned to be introduced until later in 2026. Can we have consideration of a statement on bringing that forward to ensure that there is certainty in the UK sustainable aviation market, so that domestic manufacture of the fuel ensures that we decarbonise our aviation and are at the forefront of green technology?

Penny Mordaunt Portrait Penny Mordaunt
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I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We can be proud that the UK is world-leading in this regard—not just our incredible science and business community, but the RAF. That is its second mention in this business questions session. It has been a pioneer on sustainable aviation fuel. The next questions to the Secretary of State for Transport are on 16 May. I encourage my hon. Friend to raise this matter with him there.