Stephen Williams
Main Page: Stephen Williams (Liberal Democrat - Bristol West)Department Debates - View all Stephen Williams's debates with the Scotland Office
(14 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point, and I know that he is chair of the all-party group on thrombosis. In answer to his question about what we are going to do, the first thing is to make available more information. It was a freedom of information request by the all-party group that showed that only 14 acute trusts in England were even close to meeting the goals for risk-assessing patients submitted to hospital for the dangers of thrombosis and blood clots. He is right, and the best thing that we can do is provide more information. That will help us to ensure that hospitals are coming up to the mark.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
The Prime Minister will be aware, I am sure, that today is world AIDS day. What are the coalition Government doing to ensure that the tide of HIV is stemmed both at home and abroad?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise that issue, and to say that we need to look at what is happening both at home and abroad. Abroad, the biggest decision was to maintain the commitment to 0.7% of gross national income going to our aid budget, and we make a very big contribution out of that budget to the battle against AIDS globally and to ensuring that antiretroviral drugs are made available. We also have to look at home, where there are worrying signs of infection rates that are still extremely high. We need to get the message out today and on other days about the importance of safe sex and the precautions that people should take.