Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Double and Jake Berry

Monday 10th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

13. What progress he has made on plans for the UK shared prosperity fund.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Jake Berry)]

Leaving the European Union offers great opportunity to the country, including coming up with a shared prosperity fund that aligns our national priorities. Good progress is being made, and we intend to consult on the design of the UK shared prosperity fund shortly.

[Steve Double]

I am sure the whole House will agree that Cornwall is unique in many ways—we have our own heritage and culture, including our own language—but we also face a number of unique economic challenges, particularly from our geography as a peninsula and after decades of under-investment. Will the Minister confirm that the shared prosperity fund will continue to support the Cornish economy, so that we can all continue to say, “Kernow bys vyken!”?

[Jake Berry]

If I may respond in Cornish, I take the opportunity to wish my hon. Friend and all his constituents Nadelik lowen. With only 109 shopping days to Brexit, I can reassure my hon. Friend that the UK shared prosperity fund will be simplified and targeted, and will tackle the challenges of our whole country, including those facing Cornwall.

Car Insurance: Young People

Debate between Steve Double and Jake Berry

Monday 20th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He makes the precise point that I will be making, which is that the cost of insurance is based on risk. The reason the cost of insurance for young people is so high is that the risk is so much higher. Rather than imposing an artificial cap, we instead need to look at why that risk is so high and work to reduce it, as premiums will then naturally come down.

I am afraid I cannot support capping premiums, which would defy the logic of risk that the insurer is taking. Insurers assess those risks from many sources and charge a premium accordingly. It is a competitive industry, and any attempt to cap the price that insurers charge would surely simply result in other groups having to pay more than they should. It would also fail to deal with the cause, which is that novice drivers have a far worse accident record than any other group. One in five young drivers has an accident within the first six months after passing their test. Indeed, I was one of them. They are 10 times more likely to make a claim. That speaks of a systemic failure of our current tuition and test procedures, which I have come to understand is at the heart of this issue. Put simply, the current system teaches young people how to pass a test, rather than how to be a safe and competent driver. If we want to deal with the fruit of high premiums, we must deal with the root cause. Capping premiums will not stop the accidents.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

This is a very important debate, especially for my constituents, who live in a similarly rural area to that of my hon. Friend. Does he acknowledge that black box technology in young people’s cars is a much better way of altering driver behaviour in the long term than the current driving test?

[Steve Double]

Later in my speech, I will talk about telematics and some of the available technology. My response to my hon. Friend is that I think we need both. Yes, we need to embrace technology and use it as much as possible to help people to be safe on the roads, but I am also of the view that we can do better with the current testing regime in helping people at that very initial stage to be safer on the roads.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Double]

I am grateful for that point.

[Jake Berry]

I return to the main issue of the debate. Despite all that has been said about changing their behaviour, could young people not legitimately say that when they pay their very large insurance premiums when they first start to drive, they are paying into the Motor Insurers’ Bureau for uninsured drivers? Young people have said to me, “Why should I pay for people who behave badly? Why shouldn’t people who behave well have put money aside to try to reduce premiums in rural areas?” Why are young people compelled to pay for the mistakes of people who insist on breaking our laws?

[Steve Double]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Our young people are penalised for the fact that lots of people behave irresponsibly and even illegally.

I am not saying that nothing can be done to address the issue of premiums. As I said earlier, there are ways in which the industry can drive down those costs and be more competitive, but I am still of the view that the only way we are going to address this issue in the long term is to deal with the cause: the fact that far too many young people who go out to drive having just passed their tests have accidents. Sadly, too many of them die or get lifelong injuries. What drives me to wanting to improve the situation is the need to make our roads safer for our young drivers. That will result in driving down premiums, but I am as focused on saving lives as on saving money.

As we look to the future, we must balance any action with an acknowledgment that, overall, we drive on some of the safest roads in the world. Technology will rapidly come to our aid and help us to be safer on the road, but in the meantime we must close the gap on the high accident rates of novice drivers—not just so we can reduce premiums, but so we can save lives.

Pharmacies and Integrated Healthcare: England

Debate between Steve Double and Jake Berry

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Oliver Colvile]

rose—

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

rose—

[Steve Double]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) first.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Double]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I agree with him. Clearly, part of the answer is getting GPs and pharmacies working much more closely together, and co-locating can often be one way to help with that.

[Jake Berry]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he accept that the demand for prescribing pharmacies can be demonstrated by the recent proliferation of adverts we have seen on television for “pay to see your GP” services, which I was very surprised to see so many of on TV over Christmas? For £20, someone can pay to have a Skype consultation with a GP, who will then email or contact the local pharmacy to issue them with a prescription. An NHS that is free at the point of use should be absolutely fundamental to us in this country, but the fact that people are now paying to see GPs rather than waiting to see them shows that there is huge demand for people to have minor ailments prescribed for by a pharmacist.

[Steve Double]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; he clearly watches far more TV than I do, because I was not aware of that. However, he makes the point well that there has been a huge increase in the demand being placed on our GP services, and people are therefore looking for other ways to meet that demand when it cannot be met in the usual ways.

I applaud and support the Government in their desire to create a truly seven-day-a-week health service. Part of the way to achieve that is by making far better use of our community pharmacies. Many are already open for longer hours than GP surgeries, typically on a Saturday, and my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans made the point that maybe some need to consider opening for longer still. That is something the Government could certainly help with. If we are to achieve a truly seven-day-a-week health service, we need to make more effective use of our pharmacy services.