Business of the House

Debate between Stuart Andrew and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

Yesterday, I spent seven hours sitting in a meeting, carefully listening to the decision from the Safe and Sustainable review of children’s heart units. There was a clear disregard for a fundamental principle of the NHS constitution, namely patient choice, as it was said that patients would be managed to use the Newcastle hospital and Lincolnshire patients were barely mentioned at all. In addition, the review goes against the Secretary of State’s recently stated four principles for the reconfiguration of services. This is a fundamentally important issue to many of our constituents, so please may I urge my right hon. Friend to ensure that, at the very least, the Secretary of State gives a statement to the House?

[Sir George Young]

Again, I recognise the strength of feeling, which has been added to by my hon. Friend, whose concern I recognise also. I am not sure that I can usefully add to what I said a moment ago, except to say that I do recognise the strength of feeling on the issue and will try, between now and next Thursday, to find a way through so that we might provide an avenue for a discussion on this important matter.

Business of the House

Debate between Stuart Andrew and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s contribution, which is very much in the same vein as that of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I would welcome such a debate, for which I think there is an appetite in the House. We should be absolutely clear what is meant by my right hon. Friend differentiating Islamist extremism, which is a political ideology, from Islam. As I said, we need a genuinely liberal country such as this one, which believes in certain values, and we should do more actively to promote them.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

Greenfield sites in my constituency and across Leeds are being lost to development at appeals, despite their being turned down by local councillors. May we have an urgent debate on how to prevent and preserve these sites, and reintroduce a sequential approach to planning, particularly during this interim period while the Localism Bill goes through the Parliament?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend will welcome the provisions in the Localism Bill, which will give much greater weight to the views of local people than the present top-down arrangement. He raises a key issue about what happens before the Bill kicks in, and I will draw his remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.