Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Karen Lee and John Bercow

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Excellent.

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

T4.   People in Lincoln are waiting on average 59 weeks for their personal independence payment appeal to be heard. It has gone up by 10 weeks in the last seven months. The Government have created a hostile environment for disabled people. The mandatory reconsideration process is causing distress, illness and hardship. Will the Secretary of State take urgent action to reduce the PIP appeal waiting time and provide accessible and financial support mechanisms for those going through the process?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Karen Lee and John Bercow

Thursday 25th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Karen Lee]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Not now. We have three urgent questions and a business statement. There will be points of order in due course.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Karen Lee and John Bercow

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Health (Stephen Hammond)]

Our policies have allowed the NHS to recruit over 13,400 more nurses into all wards since 2010. Additionally, we have increased the number of available nurse training places, offering new routes into the profession and encouraging those who have left nursing to return to practice, alongside retaining more of the staff that we have now.

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I was so enthusiastic about the number of extra staff in the national health service, I might have inadvertently misled my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis): it is 500 obs and gynae doctors since 2010.

[Mr Speaker]

In calling the hon. Member for Lincoln, I congratulate her on her birthday.

[Karen Lee]

You are very kind, Mr Speaker. The latest Care Quality Commission report on Lincoln County Hospital found sufficient nursing staff on only four of the 28 days reviewed and a heavy reliance on agency staff. As people know, I was a cardiac nurse for 12 years, and I can tell the House that agency nurses are expensive and create extra work—often they cannot do IVs and they are not familiar with paperwork, so the regular nurses end up doing half their jobs for them. Will the Secretary of State explain to the House why the NHS long-term plan has no policy on effectively tackling understaffing and no mention of reinstating the nursing bursary, which enabled nurses like me to train?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Karen Lee and John Bercow

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I say to the hon. Gentleman in all courtesy that it is almost always a great pleasure to listen to his mellifluous tones; however, there is a very strong convention in this place that a Member does not ask two questions in the substantive section. As soon as he started bobbing in hopeful expectation of being called a second time, the Clerk not only consulted his scholarly cranium to advise me that he should not be called, but swivelled round with a speed that would put to shame most professional athletes. My advice to the hon. Gentleman is that if he wants to get in again, he should try his luck at topical questions, to which we now come.

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Karen Lee and John Bercow

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Karen Lee. No? The hon. Lady is a most confusing individual.

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

I wanted to ask a supplementary to the question about Boston.

[Mr Speaker]

Oh, well, blurt it out.

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

23. Lincoln’s walk-in centre closed a few weeks ago and Boston’s paediatric department is threatened with closure. Does the Minister agree that cuts and privatisation in our NHS are damaging staff recruitment, retention and morale? [Interruption.] Ministers can shake their heads, but it is true: there are not enough doctors at Boston, which affects A&E and wider care delivery.

Point of Order

Debate between Karen Lee and John Bercow

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I ask for some clarification, please? Is it usual, when an MP visits a constituency other than their own, for them to let that Member know? Within the past 10 days, two Conservative MPs have visited my constituency and I have had no notice or communication, before, during or after—and you never know; we might have another visit coming up shortly.

[Mr Speaker]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. The short answer is that a Member visiting another Member’s constituency on public business should notify the Member whose constituency he or she is intending to visit. That should be done in a timely way. It is a matter of parliamentary courtesy. It is not part of our Standing Orders, but it is a long-standing convention of the House. It is a regrettable situation if Members feel obliged to raise these matters on the Floor of the House, which in this case she has felt she has had to do. Members should simply show a basic level of courtesy and respect for each other in these matters.

BILL PRESENTED

Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Secretary Karen Bradley, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Attorney General and Mr Shailesh Vara, presented a Bill to authorise the issue out of the Consolidated Fund of Northern Ireland of certain sums for the service of the years ending 31 March 2018 and 2019; to appropriate those sums for specified purposes; to authorise the use for the public service of certain resources for those years; to revise the limits on the use of certain accruing resources in the year ending 31 March 2018; and to authorise the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland to borrow on the credit of the sum appropriated for the year ending 31 March 2019.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time today, and to be printed (Bill 186) with explanatory notes (Bill 186-EN).

Points of Order

Debate between Karen Lee and John Bercow

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I will say two things in response to the hon. Gentleman. First, he seeks and perhaps over-generously expects from me a degree of reassurance and even of wisdom that it is not within the capacity of the Chair to provide. Secondly, in asking how we—meaning the House as a whole—can be sure, I simply say that the hon. Gentleman, who is no stranger to these matters, raises something of a philosophical question. Whether, when and to what degree Members can be confident of certainty are not matters that can be broached now from the Chair. However, in so far as he was seeking—as the puckish grin on his face suggests—to register his own concerns, he has found his own salvation.

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. At Prime Minister’s Question Time on 31 January, I asked for a meeting with a Minister and was promised that I could have one. I received a letter two or three weeks ago saying that the matter had been passed to the Department of Health and Social Care. I seek your guidance—or anyone’s guidance, really—on how I can progress that, because I have had no meeting and no date so far. That was five weeks ago, so I think I have been fairly patient.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady has certainly been patient. Sometimes, raising a point of order in the Chamber and reminding those on the Treasury Bench of a promised meeting that has not yet been delivered can be a remarkably effective way of bringing about said meeting. The other device that I recommend to the hon. Lady, who is a new Member of the House, is the tabling of a written question. If she is interested in exploring historic copies of the Official Report, she will know that the former Member for Manchester, Gorton, our late and dear friend Sir Gerald Kaufman, was fond of highlighting unanswered correspondence to which he demanded a reply, unanswered questions to which he demanded a reply, or undelivered meetings that he had been promised and on which he still insisted by tabling written questions to remind Ministers of those matters and inquire when the promised reply or meeting would take place. In my experience, Sir Gerald was remarkably effective at obtaining such responses, as indeed was the former Member for Walsall North, Mr David Winnick. The hon. Lady may usefully learn from their and many other examples.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Karen Lee and John Bercow

Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lee]

The manager of a food bank in Lincoln has said that there is evidence of a clear correlation locally between the introduction of universal credit—in Lincoln, we have only had it partially so far; we are getting full roll-out in March—and an increase in the use of food banks. I ask for your comments on that, and do Government Members, including yourself, think it is acceptable that people in Lincoln and across this country are starving but for food banks because of waiting for universal credit payments.

[Mr Speaker]

I would not presume to say what is acceptable for the people of Lincoln—that is way above my pay grade—but the Secretary of State might wish to proffer an opinion on the matter, and we look forward to it with interest and anticipation.