Derbyshire CCGs’ Finances

Debate between Lee Rowley and Ruth George

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ruth George]

The hon. Gentleman has just summarised the next 11 minutes of my speech extremely well. I absolutely agree with him.

Having asked their commissioners to make a decision about all the cuts to voluntary services two weeks ago, after just four weeks of consultation over the summer, and in the face of challenges from Healthwatch Derbyshire and the county council’s health scrutiny committee and a large public outcry, the CCGs are now being forced to look again at some of the cuts, but they are still on the table. They come on top of all the other cuts to health and social care in Derbyshire, where the county council has lost more than half of its funding since 2010.

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

I share the concerns outlined by the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), and I absolutely regret what the CCGs are proposing for the voluntary budgets. I hope they think again, as I am sure everybody in this Chamber does. However, does the hon. Lady agree that contextualising this issue with a wider point about cuts, which she is about to start doing, is not as accurate as it could be? The litany of historical poor management decisions by the four CCGs got us to this place and is the problem we are dealing with now. As my hon. Friend said, we need a long-term solution, and we should not default to a narrative of Government cuts when we know that is not quite correct.

[Ruth George]

Actually, the alternative is correct. The CCGs in Derbyshire were managing absolutely fine until the five-year forward review in 2016-17. They were making surpluses, and there was no problem—particularly with North Derbyshire CCG, which covers my area and the hon. Gentleman’s area. It had surpluses and hit the 1% target underspend—[Interruption.]

Hydraulic Fracturing: North East Derbyshire

Debate between Lee Rowley and Ruth George

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Lee Rowley]

I agree with the hon. Lady in terms of the importance of local communities being taken along with the country as a whole when it comes to fracking. Whatever people’s views are on fracking, there is certainly a job to be done on that.

Notwithstanding all the challenges to national policy I have described, that does not mean that we should automatically default to being in favour of fracking. In the main Chamber today we heard other examples of how we can improve and make better use of energy through new tax breaks and by trying to re-stimulate North sea oil. I welcome such activity, but I do not believe that the United Kingdom is so far having the conversation that it needs about the impact that fracking will have in some areas, such as mine.

In addition, we have not understood properly the issues that will be created for nearby residents, for businesses that need to continue to operate on a daily basis and for communities who will live in the shadow of the kind of proposals put forward for North East Derbyshire. Even if one agrees with the principle of fracking—I respect absolutely those who do, but that is another discussion we do not have time for now—that does not mean that fracking is appropriate in all circumstances or all places, or that it should be supported in all instances. That is the crucial point for me. Fracking is a highly intense, high-impact, large-scale set of activities, often but not always in rural areas, and it will change the nature of our countryside for decades. It cannot be the case even for the most ardent of its supporters that fracking is appropriate everywhere. If it should not be done in some places, I am positing that it should not be done in north Derbyshire because it is inappropriate there.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

As the MP for a constituency that is also in Derbyshire, I accept the valid points that the hon. Gentleman is making. Is it not most regrettable that the Government have passed policy meaning that even if county councils reject an application for fracking, that will almost certainly be overturned under the Government’s guidelines and therefore the views of communities are not being taken into account?

[Lee Rowley]

I understand the point that the hon. Lady is making, but I am not sure that I necessarily agree with her conclusion. There have obviously been some places where the planning inspector has rejected the rejection of the planning authority, but in others the planning authority accepted the application in the first place or the planning inspector has not yet made an absolute decision. I do not think it is as cut and dried as the hon. Lady suggests.

I have no doubt that I will be labelled a “nimby” for what I am saying in this debate. It might be said that I do not like it just because it happens to be in my part of the world and that I would not be here right now if it were not for the fact that the field that it is being proposed to dig up is in the middle of my constituency. Many of my constituents would have absolutely no time for those sentiments. North East Derbyshire is not full of nimbys. We have spent most of the past four centuries digging up coal, oil and gas in order to support people, to heat their homes, to allow them to drive their cars and to enable them to ensure that their factories still work, and we have lost men, sacrificed health and scarred our landscape as a result. On a personal level, both my grandfathers worked down the pits; one died as a result of the health injuries that he incurred down there, and the other lost his leg. Many of my constituents worked in the production of energy for many years. The last coal mine in my area closed within living memory. I have sat in living rooms that have lamps from 40 years ago, collected when the mines were still open, surrounded by the memorabilia of those coal mining areas, which are now saying that they do not want fracking in their part of the world.

We are not nimbys. We have looked at the proposal in our area and we have concluded that Bramleymoor is a thoroughly inappropriate place to undertake this activity. We have rationalised, for good and honest reasons, why we do not want the kind of industrialisation that this would bring. Some in my area have gone further and turned against fracking as a whole; a number would ban it. Whatever the disparate reasons—I do not concur with all of them—we are stronger together as a group and we stand as one and say in unison: we do not want the Bramleymoor Lane application; we do not need it; and we should not have it.