Business of the House

Nick Smith Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I am sure the House will appreciate how she has pursued that case, and share her hope that successful pursuit of that treatment will be of great benefit to Ms Williams. I cannot promise a debate, but it is important for the NHS to be able to pursue innovative treatments. CyberKnife—a brand name—is a form of interventional radiotherapy, and other forms of interventional radiotherapy were agreed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to be effective. From my experience in these matters I know that, along with others, CyberKnife was increasingly being adopted across the NHS, and rightly so.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Real wages for men have dropped in Blaenau Gwent by £30 a week. May we have a debate in Government time on how the Government’s two-nation policies have failed so many parts of the UK?

[Mr Lansley]

What is clear is that the coalition Government are pursuing what I regard as a genuinely one-nation policy, and restoring the economic health of this country after the appalling circumstances in which it was left—I referred to that earlier—in a way that gives proper support to those in need and helps people back to work. The Work programme is among the most successful initiatives. As I said, people in work will inevitably find that across the whole economy we are not in a position to pay ourselves more than we earn, or to carry on doing so, as we did for a long time. As a country, however, we are increasingly earning our way, winning in the global race, getting contracts and exports, investing for the future, and putting in place infrastructure and business investment that will enable us to earn our way to rising living standards in the future.