Oral Answers to Questions

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Who exactly are the section-75 bogeymen that the hon. Gentleman hates: Whizz-Kidz who are supplying services to disabled children in Tower Hamlets, or Mind, which is supplying psychological therapy to people in Middlesbrough? The reality is that those regulations are completely consistent with the procurement guidelines that his Government sent to primary care trusts. He needs to stop trying to pretend that we are doing something different from what his Government were doing when in fact we are doing exactly the same.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

2. What support his Department has given to local authorities in respect of their new public health responsibilities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)]

The Department has continued to work with all its partners to ensure that there is a swift and effective transition of public health responsibilities to where they should be—back with local authorities. We have made available £15 million to ensure that the transition is successful and complies with all the requirements that we have laid down.

[Rehman Chishti]

I thank the Minister for that answer. I invited the Silver Star charity to my constituency on Friday, where it offered free diabetes tests to all residents. Will local authorities be encouraged to work with such charities to improve public health?

[Anna Soubry]

The Silver Star bus is making many journeys because as well as going to my hon. Friend’s constituency, it is coming to mine on Saturday. It is an outstanding charity that provides diagnosis at a local level. I pay tribute in particular to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) because the charity goes to communities that are often hard to reach, such as the Asian community, where we need to do good work to reduce the level of diabetes, both type 1 and type 2. I look forward to local authorities working with outstanding charities such as Silver Star.