Business of the House

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 6th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Indeed, my hon. Friend is right that there have been previous cases, including in this Parliament—for example, the debate on prevention and suppression of terrorism on 10 July last year. I am grateful for what he says about yesterday’s deliberations by the Committee, and we all hope that it will complete those deliberations next Tuesday.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

As my right hon. Friend knows, I am the Government’s pharmacy champion. Plymouth’s Peninsula medical school is very keen to have a pharmacy school attached to it. May we have a debate on pharmacy schools and on the much wider issue of pharmacies as a whole and their contribution to the national health service?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend does a very good job of representing these issues. Pharmacists do indeed make a crucial contribution to the health service, and it is very important that we have well-trained pharmacists for the future. I cannot promise him a debate, although of course he can pursue one in all the normal ways, but by raising the issue today he has already drawn attention to it very successfully.

Business of the House

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I do recall that very disturbing case, and the hon. Gentleman is quite right to raise it in the House and draw our attention to it again. I will have to refer his question to my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and ask them to respond to him and to look at the idea that he has just promoted.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

The Government passed the Localism Act more than two years ago and Plymouth city council, which is controlled by the Labour party, has identified Collins park tennis courts as surplus to requirements and might well seek to build on them. It claims that it has not made a decision, but has published a planning brief. Please may we have a debate on the progress that local communities and neighbourhoods have made in protecting green inner-city areas such as mine in Plymouth?

[Mr Hague]

I think a debate on these issues would be most welcome to illustrate the opportunities that are now open. The Localism Act 2011 gives communities the opportunity to list valuable local assets and so far some 1,500 assets of community value have been listed. Green spaces are the second most popular listing, along with parks, village greens, open land and even, in one case, a mountain. I encourage my hon. Friend to pursue a debate on these matters.

Business of the House

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 11th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Yes, tackling diagnosis is vital. We have committed more than £450 million over the period of the spending review up to next year to support earlier diagnosis. We have debated related issues, most recently on Monday, when the House considered the e-petition on research funding and awareness of pancreatic cancer, but I am sure the House would benefit from further opportunities, particularly to coincide with the next early diagnosis reminder campaign, which is running in October and November.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

On Sunday, I visited one of my constituents, Mrs Margaret White, who happens to be the former chairman of my local party. She had been released from hospital and went home, but unfortunately, there seems to be no care plan for her. May we have a debate on the national health service and its interrelationship with local authorities, to ensure that such people are looked after much better?

[Mr Hague]

It is a priority for the Government to ensure that patients receive joined-up health and social care. That is exactly what the better care fund seeks to achieve through pooled budgets between the NHS and local authorities, which is being done in every single area for the first time. I am sure that that is the right approach, but such a debate, which my hon. Friend can seek through all the normal channels, would help the House to consider individual cases like the one he mentions.

Business of the House

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

That is a heartbreaking case, and of course it happens all too often in other parts of the country as well. It is important that people understand the great dangers of using mobile phones while driving, and the kind of publicity that my hon. Friend is creating helps raise awareness. On the question of penalties, I will draw what he has said to the attention of hon. Friends in the Ministry of Justice.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Earlier this year, as my right hon. Friend knows, the railway line at Dawlish was swept away, completely cutting off Plymouth, west Devon and Cornwall from the rest of the country’s rail network. Earlier this summer, Network Rail published a report suggesting five alternative routes. Will my right hon. Friend find time either for the Secretary of State for Transport to make a statement, or for us to have a proper debate on the matter, because it is incredibly important to the south-west and to my constituents?

[Mr Hague]

That issue is of massive importance to my hon. Friend’s constituents. As he has said, Network Rail’s study considers alternative options for providing a long-term, resilient route west of Exeter, including re-opening alignments, making the existing route more resilient and maintaining rail connectivity to coastal communities. The Secretary of State will announce his findings on the study shortly, so I ask my hon. Friend to await that announcement.

Business of the House

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am sorry but I simply do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. I was here for the statement and much of the debate, and I heard the Home Secretary accurately describe in terms what is on the Home Office website. She characterised the information as a promise of a straightforward application being achieved in three weeks. She quoted precisely from the website, which makes it very clear that that cannot be guaranteed in circumstances where additional questions have to be raised. The Home Office website is clear and the Home Secretary, in what she said yesterday, was absolutely clear about the number of passports that are currently a work in progress and the number that are in excess of the three-week objective.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which states that I have shares in the company, Polity Communications. I am also chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for excellence in the built environment. Sir Terry Farrell has undertaken a review of architectural policy for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport recently. May we please have a debate on the future of architectural design as a real basis of our building for a significant amount of our heritage in the future?

[Mr Lansley]

I am aware of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and the important work it does in advising on the developments that are coming forward. We do have opportunities, not least in relation to new settlements and prospective garden cities, not only to reflect the successful design concepts in architecture of the past but to establish something in the 21st century that will be part of our architectural heritage for the future. As far as a debate is concerned, the subject might lend itself to an application for an Adjournment debate.

Business of the House

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

The legislation passed earlier this week does not threaten district general hospitals. It secures a commitment to the fullest consultation to enable us, if necessary, to reconfigure services on the basis of clinical quality as well as finance. Under the 2009 special administration regime of the previous Government, the process was finance-driven, not quality-driven. I am astonished at the effrontery of the hon. Lady getting up to talk about a vascular services review that started under her Government—as far as I am concerned—and about Whiston hospital, which was one of a number of unsustainable private finance initiative projects put in place by the previous Government. They had no idea where the money was going to come from to pay for that from within the local economy.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

I was recently approached by a constituent who expressed concerns that Plymouth city council is granting planning permissions for pop-up shops to sell what are generally known as legal highs. As my right hon. Friend knows, Plymouth is a university city with 30,000 students in it. I have great reservations about selling these legal highs. May we have a debate on the matter so that we can have a better understanding of what Government policy will be?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Planning control, as he knows, considers the land use impact of different types of development, but does not generally regulate the sale of particular items inside shops. The Home Office, however, is taking a comprehensive approach to tackling this reckless trade, working closely with the Local Government Association and trading standards. My hon. Friend will be encouraged that the Minister for Crime Prevention has commissioned a review to see how we can enhance our response, including possible legislative responses, alongside better health promotion and education.

Business of the House

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and he is not the first Member to raise it at business questions recently. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott), the employment relations and consumer affairs Minister, announced on Tuesday that websites which try to pass themselves off as legitimate Government services will come under the trading standards spotlight. We have committed an additional £120,000 in this financial year to the National Trading Standards Board so that it can investigate such websites and be better equipped to take enforcement action against them. I hope that provides some reassurance to my hon. Friend and other Members. Government and Members need continuously to identify— and perhaps expose, through the kind of questions my hon. Friend has raised—the issue to our constituents so that they know they need to be careful about potentially misleading false websites.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

As has been mentioned, Saturday is international women’s day. As my right hon. Friend may know, Plymouth city council and Devon and Cornwall police run a groundbreaking initiative called Encompass, under which the council rings every primary school each morning to check that children are in school. One sign of domestic violence is when kids do not turn up. May we have a debate on best practice, so that we can share what happens in other communities?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting the steps being taken in his constituency and Plymouth by Devon and Cornwall police. As he knows, the Government are committed to working with the police and other criminal justice agencies to ensure the response to domestic violence and abuse offers the best possible protection to victims. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary—who is alongside me on the Front Bench and will have heard what my hon. Friend said—has commissioned Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary to conduct a review across all police forces of the response to domestic abuse, and we will consider the case for any change to the law against the backdrop of HMIC’s findings and recommendations.

Business of the House

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I suggest that Members would be better advised to read the speech that is being made today by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. They will find that we are returning to the original intention of the welfare state, which is to encourage people to be in work and to help those who are most in need, not to create the opportunity for a lifestyle of living on benefits. People must contribute the most that they can not only to society, but to their own family by taking up the opportunities for work that the economy is creating.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Although I fully recognise the need to invest in flood defences, I understand that the Environment Agency put a spade in the ground two weeks ago to start work on flood defences for Exeter—a part of the world that my right hon. Friend knows well, having been to university there—which could have a significant impact on the railways from Exeter to Plymouth and onwards to Cornwall. May we please have a debate on that matter?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot promise an immediate debate, but I can tell my hon. Friend that Network Rail has identified 10 projects to improve flood resilience on its western route. That programme might take several years and the funding mechanism is still to be determined, but it will be important to him. Network Rail is liaising closely with the Environment Agency and will continue to do so.

Business of the House

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I can understand why the hon. Gentleman raises that issue on behalf of his constituents. It is regrettable that they were placed in that situation. I do not know the circumstances of the case, but I will ask my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice and his colleagues to look into it and respond to him as soon as possible.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

In November, on the Terrace of this place, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society launched the Now or Never campaign on shaping pharmacy for the future. On Tuesday the Secretary of State for Health met me, pharmacists from Devon and Cornwall, including some from my constituency, and a member of the English Pharmacy Board. Given the Leader of the House’s commitment to putting pharmacists at the centre of the NHS, may we have a debate on how, by sharing data with pharmacists, we can work to take the pressure off GPs and accident and emergency units?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will know, not least because the all-party group on pharmacy, of which he is a member, has followed these matters carefully, that the last contract under the previous Government promised pharmacists much but delivered very little. There is clearly tremendous potential, previously unrealised, for pharmacies to contribute to public health and prevention, taking the load off the NHS, for example by dealing with minor injuries and medicines management. There is every prospect that NHS England, through its framework pharmacy contract, and clinical commissioning groups have a tremendous incentive to use pharmacies, as do local authorities in relation to some preventive measures. I hope that they will do that. One of the blockages that he rightly refers to under the previous Government was pharmacists’ complete inability to access patients’ summary care records. We need to make it possible for patients to have their conditions monitored and treated and to be provided with medicines in pharmacies through access to that information.

Business of the House

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy is currently undertaking a review. We hope that within two months we shall see a report on people’s experiences over the last few weeks of the storms and the response to them by the power companies, not just in relation to reconnections, but more especially—given the sentiments that were expressed in the House on Monday—in relation to the extent to which the companies communicated with customers. I should add, however, that when I was in Anglesey on the Thursday and Friday after Christmas our power was off for 16 hours, and I thought that it was reconnected reasonably promptly.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

As my right hon. Friend may know, Plymouth’s truly excellent Theatre Royal, which is in my constituency, is one of only five production companies in the United Kingdom, and the principal theatre in the south-west. Shortly before Christmas, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport published its response to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s report on creative industries. May we please have a debate, in Government time, on the coalition’s arts policy and on regional arts funding?

[Mr Lansley]

I am very glad to acknowledge the excellent work of the Theatre Royal in Plymouth, for which the Government provide more than £1 million a year via Arts Council England. We also support Attik Dance Ltd, the Institute of Digital Art and Technology, the Plymouth Arts Centre and the Barbican theatre, all of which are in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

The issue of the distribution of arts funding is inevitably complex, but the Arts Council is seeking to achieve a better balance between public funding and lottery investment throughout the country. I cannot promise a debate at present, but other Members may share my hon. Friend’s interest in the issue, and may wish to ask the Backbench Business Committee to allocate time for a debate on it. My hon. Friend will recall that the Opposition Front Bench chose arts and the creative industries as the subject of a debate in the middle of last year.