Business of the House

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am glad to say that the Union seems to get stronger and stronger. We have seen how important it has been during the course of the pandemic, with the enormous sums of money that have come from the UK taxpayer to help every corner of the United Kingdom, with £407 billion so far, of which I think £15 billion has gone to Scotland.

On the national insurance increase, people in Scotland will get more money than they pay and they will get more money for healthcare. Is it now the policy of the SNP, along with the policy of the Labour party, that it does not want extra funding for healthcare—that it wants longer waits for hips, knees and other operations, and fewer treatments to take place? The Union is getting stronger because people are beginning to see the failures of the nationalist Government in Scotland, as Lady Mona Lott herself just goes on and on about a second referendum, rather than dealing with the problems that Scotland faces and the backlog of issues that have risen from the pandemic.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Rugby Community Ambulance Station is a valuable base for ambulances covering Rugby, yet West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust proposes closing it without any consultation with either the local community or staff. In doing so, it will be removing the last ambulance from a fast-growing town of 80,000 people. My constituents have real concerns about future response times to urgent calls. May we have a debate about decision making in the NHS?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

There will, to some extent, be an opportunity for that as the Health and Care Bill passes through Parliament, but the optimal placement of ambulance stations is an operational matter for NHS trusts to decide; that decision has been delegated to them. West Midlands ambulance service says that it has carefully considered the matter and has set out that the closure would not affect the number of ambulances in the area available immediately to respond to 999 calls as they arise, but one always understands the concerns of people living locally when they feel that a service is being removed from them.