Mark Pawsey
Main Page: Mark Pawsey (Conservative - Rugby)West Midlands and Coventry
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Mr Cunningham
I was aware of that, but there are still indications that something might happen, although the possibility is pretty remote given what my hon. Friend has said.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
I compliment the hon. Gentleman on securing an important debate on a serious matter, but I was interested in his remarks that not all is doom and gloom. My constituency, which is immediately adjacent to his, has over the past 12 months had a fall in unemployment of 13.2%, which we attribute to a progressive council going out to seek new businesses, bringing them in and having a constructive attitude to development. Does he think that there is some good news and that there is a way forward?
Mr Cunningham
I do not know about good news. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the economy goes up and down in patches, so we cannot ever predict what the future will hold. We like to think that things will improve, but we will have to see—I do not want to diversify too much and get on to Europe, but after what happened on Friday, I will be very careful what I say about the future, frankly.
Returning to the Coventry situation, the city has embraced new technologies and is leading the way for the whole of the UK. A Coventry coach company has won £3 million of new contracts and taken on 40 new staff. It will produce the UK’s first electric bus—we hope so this time, although we have been down that road before. Only last week, I visited the Institute of Digital Healthcare, which was established in 2010 and is a five-year, £4 million project, which will have a real benefit for patients and their care support networks. I advise any of my colleagues that, if they get the opportunity to go up to the university of Warwick, the IDH is well worth visiting. It will address a number of health care issues, including the use of monitoring and communication devices to support people in their own homes, the development of new platforms to measure, analyse and communicate health data to support health care and to promote well-being, meeting the information and training needs of clinicians and health care technologists and improving the targeting of activities by health and social care teams.