Prevention of Ill Health: Government Vision

Debate between Paul Beresford and Matt Hancock

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

As my right hon. Friend is aware, I am a very part-time dentist and I am also a supporter of the British Fluoridation Society. Probably the very biggest reason for children attending hospital for general anaesthetic is to extract decayed, rotten, abscessing teeth caused by dental caries. Fluoridation of the water supplies is a very effective means of prevention. Does he support fluoridation of the water supplies, and what can he do to actively promote it, because, at the moment, it is in only 10% of our supplies?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is of course a dentist, and I would love to listen to him speak in more detail about what we can do to get this right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Beresford and Matt Hancock

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Funding is available from lots of sources, not just taxpayers. Nevertheless, he will have noted that I have already started talking about the importance of getting funding out into the community, whether that is through social prescribing or wider public health efforts, to make sure that we try to tackle health problems at source and keep people out of hospital as much as possible, rather than spending all the money on sorting things out later in hospital.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

5. What assessment he has made of the potential merits of extending the provision of the HPV vaccine to boys.

Record Copies of Acts

Debate between Paul Beresford and Matt Hancock

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Matthew Hancock)]

It falls to this House to debate issues both large and small. Today’s debate has shown that this issue is both large and small: large because the question of how, as a Parliament and as a country, we record the sovereign laws of our land, and whether we should protect the traditions by which we have done this for many centuries, is of great importance; and small because the financial sums involved and the savings offered by the change that we are debating are but a minuscule fraction of the overall cost of government.

I want to be clear that this is, first and foremost, a House matter. Should the House carry the motion today, I hope that we can work with the other place to find a path forward that both Houses find satisfactory. In that spirit of pragmatism, the Government have offered financial support from other savings, without further burdening taxpayers, to ensure that this tradition, which is of great symbolic and practical value, is not irrecoverably broken by a lack of funding on this small scale.

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) on his tireless campaigning. I have been buoyed by the support that we have received from across the House and, indeed, the other place. The case was set out powerfully by him, by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), and by many Members across the House.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

It is absolutely inappropriate for the Government to dictate to the Houses of Parliament by a payment. The way in which it should work is that the Houses decide and pass on the bill, as traditionally happens every year. The Minister should know that. To tell us that he will pay for one specific thing is inappropriate.

[Matthew Hancock]

This is indeed a matter for the House, and this House is just about to make sure that its view is well known.

The speech by the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), the intervention by the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) and the speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena), for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) and for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) were incredibly powerful and persuasive. There are Members who sit on the Treasury Bench, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), and my hon. Friends the Members for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster) and for Devizes (Claire Perry), who would have spoken had convention not prevented them from doing so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) made the case for abolition, but his speech ended up as a haggle about the costs. The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) railed against the rule of law, ultimately, arguing that it was not worth preserving laws. Well, I think that the rule of law in this country is important and should be preserved.