Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 20th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

We are all absolutely heartbroken—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Members must sit down again once another Member is speaking. We cannot have two Members on their feet at the same time.

[Neil O’Brien]

We are all heartbroken by what is happening in the middle east. As Israel works to root out Hamas terrorists, will my right hon. Friend work to ensure that aid gets to civilians and that Israel works in a way that is compatible with international law? As the Government work to get hostages freed, will they also work for increasingly long humanitarian pauses that can build towards a just and lasting peace?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

My hon. Friend is right. The amount of NHS dentistry being delivered in his ICB has gone up in the last year, but we want to go further. The NHS has recently commissioned additional children’s orthodontic capacity within his ICB, but through the actions we are going to take, we will go further.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Judith Cummins with the final question.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

Absolutely, and I always try to learn lessons from right across the UK. In fact, some of the ideas for reforms have come from listening to local partners. For example, our reforms to enable modern ways of working, hub-and-spoke dispensing and empowering pharmacy technicians have come from talking to those local partners.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

People across the country rely on local, accessible pharmacies, but whether it is high street closures or supply problems leading to the absurd situation where women are phoning or visiting multiple pharmacies for a prescribed dose of hormone replacement therapy and other drugs, the Government are again letting people down. They have repeatedly announced plans to expand the role of community pharmacies, but have failed to update legislation that could possibly help. They keep collapsing the business in this place, so we have time to sort it. Why will they not do so?

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

My hon. Friend is assiduous in making the case for his constituency. Ministers of course will meet him to discuss this matter. I know he is closely following the progress of the CDC bid, which we have been talking about. Those diagnostic centres are doing fantastic work to get earlier diagnosis and save more lives, particularly in areas of deprivation.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

From this complacent Minister’s replies already, one would think that health inequalities in England were improving, not widening. Last year, 11,000 people, including 312 children, were hospitalised for malnutrition in the United Kingdom. That is the highest number since comparable records began. Why are so many people in Britain going hungry under the Tories?

[Neil O’Brien]

We need to have care in discussing these subjects. Eating disorders are a sensitive subject and the statistics the hon. Gentleman is quoting are a mix of different things. I have already talked about the £3,300 of cost of living support that this Government are providing to the average UK household, with more targeted help for more vulnerable households. It is something we are seized of and are working on.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

Millions of people with disabilities or serious medical conditions rely on specialist equipment, such as ventilators or home dialysis, which personally costs them more money to run, while giving considerable savings to NHS hospitals. Will the Minister urge Cabinet colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to help to tackle health inequalities by ensuring that those people receive a fair and timely reimbursement for those additional costs, which are essential to run the equipment to help keep them alive?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, tax matters are for the Treasury, but we are absolutely committed to providing cost of living support. By the end of June the Government will have covered nearly half a typical household’s energy bill since October, so we are providing one of the most generous packages in Europe.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Scottish National party spokesperson.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

The last time I asked Ministers whether they would support that Bill I was told that the issue of VAT and skin cancer was a matter for the Treasury, and we have just heard a similar answer. Surely this is a matter for joined-up government. What are Ministers doing—instead of imposing more pressure and costs on the NHS—to persuade their Treasury colleagues to consider more cost-effective cost preventive measures such as making skin protection products more affordable?

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

International recruitment is up. In fact, we have 38,000 more doctors and 54,000 more nurses in the NHS than in 2010. In England at least, we are taking every step we can to draw on that international talent and we are using it to grow staffing in the NHS.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)]

We are still committed to reducing the advertising of unhealthy food, including the junk food watershed that will be implemented in 2025. Ahead of that, we are taking action on obesity across the board, including the sugar tax, which has cut the average sugar content of affected drinks by 46%, the calorie labelling that we have on out-of-home food in cafés and restaurants, and the location restrictions on less healthy food that are coming in from October.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

The question cannot go on forever; let us get an answer.

[Neil O’Brien]

I had a useful conversation with the Scottish public health Minister where we discussed many of these issues. We are providing huge cost of living support—some of the most generous in Europe, worth £3,300 a household—and taking action across the piece. Whether it is smoking or obesity, we are tackling the underlying causes of the health inequalities that the hon. Gentleman mentions.

Oral Answers

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

Absolutely. In total, public health grants will go up by 5% in real terms over the next two years. We want to reduce the postcode variation, because these are important services. I am keen to speak to anyone who wants to work with us at a local level.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

I am very happy to meet the right hon. Lady as we work towards the workforce plan and the dental plan.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Mark Fletcher to ask the final question.

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

The Minister is aware that BUPA recently closed the dental practice in Bolsover, leaving a severe shortage of NHS dentistry in the constituency. I met the ICB yesterday to discuss the various options for the constituency, but will the Minister commit to meeting me and the ICB to talk through those options and see what we can do to maintain NHS dentistry in Bolsover?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

My hon. Friend is quite right. It is something that we are looking at very closely, as she knows from previous conversations. While vaping can be an aid in quitting smoking—it helped about 800,000 people to do so last year—we must stop its use being driven up among children.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

We are just 24 days away from a new financial year. Last week, more than 30 public health leaders said that the delay to releasing the public health allocation for 2023-24 was

“putting public health services at risk”.

Early years support, addiction treatment and stop-smoking services should not have to pay the price of this Minister’s incompetence. He must apologise for treating councils and the health of our communities with such contempt. When will the public health grant be announced?

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Gentleman is completely correct. As well as the actions that we are taking on healthy eating and obesity, that is exactly why we are spending £55 billion to help households and businesses with their energy bills this winter—one of the biggest packages in Europe. It is also why we have the £900 cost of living payment for 8 million poorer households, we are increasing the national living wage to its highest ever level, and we are spending £26 billion on the cost of living support this year. He is completely right and I commend his work on it.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)]

My hon. Friend is right. Although pharmacies are private businesses, we invest £2.5 billion in the clinical services they provide. We put in another £100 million in September so that they can provide more services. The number of community pharmacists is up by 18% since 2017, and we have introduced the pharmacy access scheme to ensure that we support pharmacies in areas where there are fewer of them. Clearly, the solution is for pharmacies to do more clinical work, take the burden off GPs and provide accessible services. That is exactly what we will keep growing.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Scottish National party spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

Unlike the Opposition, we do not regard GPs’ finances as murky and we do not want to go back to Labour’s policy of 1934 by trying to finish off the business that even Nye Bevan thought was too left-wing. We do not believe in nationalising GPs; we believe in the current model. [Interruption.] We do not believe that people with a problem should immediately go to hospital, driving up costs and undoing the good work of cross-party consensus in the last 30 years. A plan that was supposed to cause a splash has belly-flopped.

[Mr Speaker]

Mr O’Brien, when I move on, I expect you to move on with me. I have all these Back Benchers to get in. I do not need the rhetoric; I want to get Members in—I want to hear them, not you.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

T2. The UK has the sixth largest and richest economy in the world, yet data from the Food Foundation shows that in September 2022, 9.7 million people on these islands lived in food insecurity. That kind of malnutrition does not have a good impact on the health service. When will Ministers pick up the phone or nip along the corridor to the Department for Work and Pensions and tell it to drop its punitive sanctions regime, which pushes so many people into poverty and so many problems on to the NHS?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

We are rolling out community diagnostic centres to bring services closer to those who need them, and we are investing in 21,200 extra people working in general practice to make sure that rural services, as well as services in the rest of the country, are improved.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

In 2019, the Tories promised to extend healthy life expectancy by five years, but on this they are failing. In the last year, the health disparities White Paper has disappeared, the tobacco control plan has been delayed and they have chickened out on implementing the obesity strategy because the Prime Minister is too cowardly to stand up to his Back Benchers. Health inequalities are widening as a consequence. Does the Minister plan to revive any of these strategies, or have the Conservatives completely given up on prevention?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)]

My hon. Friend is so right. I praise her work with the APPG and I know many colleagues will want to attend. Whistleblowers can save lives and improve healthcare, as I have seen in my own constituency, and she is right to be pressing on this matter.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

Whatever format our next steps forward are set out in, we will be pushing forward very quickly and aggressively on this. This year, we are putting £35 million into the NHS to support our services for everyone who goes in to stop smoking. We have doubled duty on cigarettes and brought in a minimum excise tax. Women who are pregnant now routinely get a carbon monoxide test. National campaigns such as Stoptober have now helped 2.1 million people to quit smoking. We are also supporting a future medically licensed vaping product as a quitting aid. We will be pressing forward at the greatest speed.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

Covid-19: PPE Procurement

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Thursday 24th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. I welcome the Minister to his place—I think this is the first time we have met at the Dispatch Box—but to be honest, to his defence of due diligence I would say, “What due diligence?” Last night, documents seen by The Guardian revealed yet another case of taxpayers’ money being wasted, with a total failure of due diligence and a conflict of interest at the heart of Government procurement.

In May 2020, PPE Medpro was set up and given £203 million in Government contracts after a referral from a Tory peer. It now appears that tens of millions of pounds of that money ended up in offshore accounts connected to the individuals involved—profits made possible through the company’s personal connections to Ministers and the Tories’ VIP lane, which was declared illegal by the High Court. Yet Ministers are still refusing to publish correspondence relating to the award of the Medpro contract, because they say that the Department is engaged in a mediation process. Can the Minister tell us today whether that mediation process has reached any outcome, and what public funds have been recovered, if any? Will he commit to releasing all the records, both to the covid-19 public inquiry and to this House, once the process is completed?

Rightly, there are separate investigations into Baroness Mone’s conduct, but the questions that this case raises are far wider. It took a motion from the Opposition to force the Government to release records over the Randox scandal. Will they agree today to do the same in this case without being forced to do so by the House? Can the Minister say now what due diligence was performed when awarding the Medpro contract?

Today’s reports concern just one single case, but this Government have written off £10 billion just on PPE that was deemed unfit for use, unusable, overpriced or undelivered. Worse, Ministers appear to have learned no lessons and to have no shame. As families struggle to make ends meet, taxpayers spend £700,000 a day on the storage of inadequate PPE. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government’s new Procurement Bill will still give Ministers free rein to hand out billions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash all over again?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Can we please stick to the rules of the House on time limits? I do not make the rules; the rules are meant for us all. This is happening too often.

[Neil O’Brien]

The right hon. Lady asks two main questions, the first of which is what we are doing on PPE Medpro. It has been widely reported that it had an underperforming contract. Let me set out what we do in such cases. The first step is to send a letter before action, which outlines a claim for damages. That is followed by litigation in the event that a satisfactory agreement has not been reached. To answer the right hon. Lady’s question directly, we have not got to the point where a satisfactory agreement has been reached at this stage.

On the high-priority group, let us be clear about what it was and what it was not. Approximately 9,000 people came forward. All Ministers will have had the experience of endless people ringing them up directly to try to help with the huge need that there was at the time. Many of us, as Back Benchers, will have been approached by constituents who were keen to help and needed to be referred somewhere. All that the route did was handle the huge number of contacts coming in to Ministers from people offering to help. Let me be clear that it did not give any kind of successful guarantee of a contract; indeed, 90% of the bids that went through it were not successful. Every single bid that went through the route went through exactly the same eight-stage process as all the other contracts—it looked at the quality, the price and the bona fides of the people offering to produce.

On the point about PPE that has not been useful, I set out in my answer the extraordinary context in which we were operating. There was a global scramble for PPE. People were being gazumped: goods would be taken out of the warehouse if people could turn up with the cash quicker than them. It was an extraordinary situation in which we had to act in a different way. Loads of us will remember standing up in this House and saying to Ministers, “What are you doing to get more? More, quickly!” That was the context in which we were operating.

[Neil O'Brien]

That was the underperforming contract that I referred to in my previous answer, and I set out the process that we go through when we take action on underperforming contracts. There is the initial letter before action, and then a process in which we look to see if a satisfactory agreement can be reached. If not, that leads on to litigation. Of course, there was wasted PPE—my hon. Friend is absolutely correct about that—but I have already set out the context of the global scramble and the huge amount of PPE that was successfully delivered, saving lives and protecting workers in our NHS.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

From the moment we learned about the existence of this VIP lane for the politically connected, it was almost inevitable that it would come to this. This get-rich-quick scheme to fast-track cronies, politically connected pals and colleagues was never going to end well. I suspect that today’s revelations, however shocking, are simply the tip of a very large iceberg—an iceberg that could yet sink this ship of fools.

Transparency International UK has flagged as a corruption risk 20% of the £15 billion given out by the Tories in PPE contracts at the height of the pandemic. As we have already heard, they are spending £770,000 every single day to store much of that useless equipment in China. One Tory politician who had absolutely no background in PPE procurement personally made millions from those contracts, so do the Government plan to investigate proactively how many others like that are in their ranks, or are they content to sit there and watch this dripping roast of sleaze, corruption and scandal unfold on its own?

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I think there is a little rewriting of history here. At one stage in the pandemic, getting PPE was the most important thing, and I remember Members on both sides demanding quicker action from the Government. The Minister has explained the situation fully, and I regret that the Opposition are making political points from what was actually a great success in protecting our NHS staff. Does the Minister agree with me or with that lot?

[Mr Speaker]

I suspect he might agree with the hon. Gentleman.

[Neil O'Brien]

My hon. Friend is completely correct. Some have short memories. Many of us stood up in this House to chivvy Ministers, asking, “Why aren’t you going faster? Why don’t you do more? Take the risks, get the stuff—we need it.” That was the priority. Many Members want it both ways: they criticised us at the time for not going fast enough or taking enough risks, and now they do not accept that we are going through all the contracts that did not perform.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O'Brien]

My hon. Friend is completely correct. When Mrs Justice O’Farrell went through these cases, she noted in her summing up that given the time-sensitive nature of the work, it was not irrational for the Department to decide that it was prepared to take more risk than usually would be acceptable, because of that extraordinary context that is so quickly forgotten in the questions we are hearing in the House today.

[Mr Speaker]

On her birthday, I call Christine Jardine.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

The Minister has made much of the context of the time and the speed and the calls for PPE, but what my and, I am sure, everybody else’s constituents wanted was PPE quickly and appropriately. Earlier this year the High Court ruled that the Government’s VIP lanes were not only inappropriate, but unlawful, and in breach of the obligation of equal treatment. Does the Minister appreciate that constituents across the country are calling for an explanation? Will he back the Liberal Democrat amendment to ban VIP lanes for all future Government contracts?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

My right hon. Friend is so right, and she has been a powerful champion on this issue. We have invested £1.5 billion to get an extra 50 million GP appointments per year. The number of appointments in September was up 7% compared with the same month in 2019. We now have an extra 2,300 doctors working in primary care compared with 2019, and an extra 19,300 primary care professionals, on the way to the goal of 26,000 extra primary care professionals. This is hugely important, we are investing in it, and my right hon. Friend is right to campaign on it.

[Mr Speaker]

I call shadow Minister Andrew Gwynne.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

We know that, if poorer communities cannot afford to heat their homes, health inequalities will worsen significantly over the winter months and beyond. Despite the seriousness of this issue, the previous Health Secretary—that is the right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), in case Members are struggling to keep track—planned to ditch the Government’s long-promised health disparities White Paper. Does the current Minister intend to do the same? If he does, how will he seriously address the dreadful health inequalities that have widened after 12 Tory years?

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Gentleman implies that I disagree with him about this. In fact, the Government are working hard to clamp down on squalid housing. That is exactly what we were doing in my previous Department, DLUHC, and I have just mentioned some of the things that we are doing: the £37 billion we are spending to help people to meet the cost of living, the £15 billion of that that is targeted on the very poorest households, and the £12 billion that we are investing in making people’s houses easier to heat. We will continue to tackle health disparities across the board.

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to SNP spokesperson, Martyn Day.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neil O'Brien]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have received five competitive bids for Scottish green freeports and the two Governments are working closely together to assess the proposals. I am confident that we will announce two outstanding winners that will create highly paid jobs, help to regenerate the areas around the ports and become global and national hubs of trade, innovation and investment.

[Mr Speaker]

I call shadow Minister Liz Twist.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

There are five excellent bids from across Scotland for the two proposed green freeports. Each of the bids is of such high quality that it would be a great shame not to support the local economies in Inverness and Cromarty, Orkney, the Forth, the Clyde, and Aberdeen City and Peterhead. Will the Minister’s Department consider what support can be given to unsuccessful areas, and whether that support can be widened?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 27th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Neil O'Brien)]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I pay tribute to her leadership on this issue. We look forward to seeing the bid.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

I have met my hon. Friend about this issue several times and I agree that coastal communities have the potential to be real powerhouses for our economy. That is why the future high streets fund has allocated £149 million to coastal local authorities, and why coastal local authorities got £287 million of funding in the first round of the levelling-up fund. That comes on top of the £229 million, which he mentioned, that we have invested in coastal towns and communities since 2012 through the coastal communities fund.

[Mr Speaker]

We come to the shadow Secretary of State, Lisa Nandy.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Look, can the Minister not see the crisis unfolding across the country? There has been the biggest fall in living standards since the 1950s. Pensioners are boarding buses just to keep warm. On every measure, the gap is widening; there is less for the regions, in terms of public spending; salaries are falling; homes are less affordable; and local economies are on the verge of collapse. Surely he recognises how absurd it is that all we have had from the Secretary of State in the past week is the promise of an al fresco dining revolution, and three full pages of legislation giving us the power to rename our Mayors. What exactly is stopping the Government scrapping business rates, bringing in a windfall tax to cut money off energy bills, uprating benefits now, rather than waiting till later, or doing any of the things that will get money back into people’s pockets and get our economy growing?

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

I thank the hon. Lady for drawing attention to the Cabinet’s visit to Stoke the other day; if she had been a Government Back Bencher, people would accuse her of toadying for teeing up this answer so brilliantly. She mentioned several things that allow me to mention the three successful levelling-up bids that we have had in Stoke, and she mentioned the shared prosperity fund, about which I will make a point. Under the last Labour Government, money was decided on in Brussels and then given to remote regional development agencies. That money is now going directly, with no strings attached, to the fantastic Conservative-run council in Stoke, which is transforming the fortunes of that city after years of Labour neglect.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Scottish National party spokesperson, Patricia Gibson.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

Despite the bullish posturing, the Minister knows that households across the UK are suffering terrible hardship because of the cost of living crisis, which has the Tories’ name written all over it. Despite the rhetoric, the reality is that Scotland’s resource budget allocation has been cut by Westminster by 5.2%, and the capital budget allocation has been cut by Westminster by 9.7% in real terms. How can he claim to support economic growth across the UK when the Scottish Government’s ability to support business, investment and people through the cost of living crisis can only be severely constrained by these cuts?

Public Health

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is talking about my constituency. I gently point out to him that during the period of the most restrictions in Leicester, the number of cases did come down from 160 to 25 per 100,000. That shows that tough controls of the kind that we are about to vote to bring in today do work.

[Mr Speaker]

Let me help people. A few Members have now intervened a couple of times. We want to get everybody in. If they go down the list, I am sure that they will appreciate that.