(5 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberI met David Miliband when I went to New York in September, and I think it would be a good idea to have those discussions. We have great concerns about the safety of aid workers, but our concern with respect to journalists is that this trend seems to be increasing, and it seems to be the new border between free and unfree countries.
The BBC is still banned from Rwanda. Is the Secretary of State hopeful that that ban will be overturned by the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in 2020?
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberT1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
I am pleased to tell the House that on 19 June the Prime Minister hosted a very successful global dementia summit as a follow-up to the G8 dementia summit. We are currently diagnosing and treating 70,000 more people every year with dementia, but the big challenge is, as he set out at the G8 summit, finding a cure or disease-modifying therapy by 2025. We had useful discussions on what barriers need to be eliminated to ensure that the research happens to find such a cure.
What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the need for a single hyper-acute stroke unit in south Essex?
I know that discussions are going on on that very topic and the CCGs are very interested in putting a hyper-acute stroke service at Southend hospital, which I know has excellent stroke services. We still need further improvements in the ambulance services for the east of England if we are going to do that and that is what we are currently discussing.