Oral Answers to Questions

John Glen Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The whole point is that this Government took difficult decisions to make sure we could maintain the number of people going to our universities, and the question really goes right back to the Labour party: if you don’t support a proper system of student contributions, how on earth are you going to pay for our universities? We have set out our plans, and they are actually working well. You don’t start paying back money until you earn £21,000, and you don’t start paying back in full until you earn £35,000. We have a method for making sure we invest in our universities; the Labour party has not got a clue.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Q14. Naomi House children’s hospice, which serves my constituency, receives just 10% of its funding from the Department of Health, whereas adult hospices receive rather more. This is especially difficult because, as private institutions, hospices have to pay for all prescriptions. Will the Prime Minister look again at the reasons for the different treatment of children’s and adult hospices, and meet me and Professor Aziz to discuss the different funding levels that they attract?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to discuss this issue with my hon. Friend. For many years, my family used a children’s hospice in Oxford that got absolutely no state support at all. What this Government have done is continue with the £10 million going annually to support children’s hospices, and this year we have added an extra £720,000. However, what we want to put in place, and what we are discussing with the providers of both adult and children’s hospices, is a per-patient funding system that would be for all hospices. I think that would bring a greater logic and consistency to how we support this absolutely essential part of both our health service and, I would argue, our big society.