John Baron
Main Page: John Baron (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)Department Debates - View all John Baron's debates with the Cabinet Office
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The most important thing we can do is to help the energy companies reduce bills by rolling back the costs of these green levies and charges. Only since we have done that have we seen energy company after energy company reduce the costs of people’s bills. We also want to see a more competitive market and to see more players in this market. These are all things we are having to correct from the disastrous stewardship of the energy Department when the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) was in charge.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Q10. Each year, thousands of lives are needlessly lost in this country because people’s cancers are diagnosed far too late. The all-party group on cancer and the wider cancer community have successfully lobbied the Government to make sure that the local and national NHS are measured by their one-year survival rates in order to encourage clinical commissioning groups to introduce initiatives to promote early diagnosis—cancer’s magic key. The Government deserve great credit for listening, but twice now, and at late notice, the publication of the one-year figures has been postponed. Will the Prime Minister do what he can to ensure that we meet the next deadline?
The Prime Minister
On the specific point that my hon. Friend raises, yes we will publish those figures—they are important figures and they should be published in June. What we are doing on cancer is backing the NHS with extra money—that is important; we have the cancer drugs fund, which I spoke about earlier and which has helped more than 44,000 people since this Government came to office. Of course, no cancer drugs fund is made available for people in Wales, but it is here in England, and we are spending £750 million on cancer services. But he is absolutely right about early diagnosis, which is why it is really important to make sure that we are doing everything with our GPs to diagnose and recognise cancer earlier.