Pharmacy First

Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Andrea Leadsom

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

Oh, was it 8.31? I thank the Secretary of State. When will the services be available? I should think that many more are taking place already.

I am afraid that, while welcoming this, the hon. Lady is being a little pusillanimous with her praise. A lot of her suggestions, as she will know, are simply not true: already, well over 2,000 new GPs and tens of thousands of nurses are working in our NHS. Many thousands of additional practice staff are working in GP practices, and, as she will know, our brilliant GPs have made 50 million more appointments available each year ahead of the target in our manifesto. Good on them. They are doing an amazing job, and Pharmacy First will ease the ever-increasing burden on them.

The hon. Lady talks about technology. I am pleased to tell her that ensuring that the technology was in place was key in deciding when we could go live. There is a very short window in which some systems will have elements of manual intervention, but only for a few weeks. The whole system will be fully automated and will provide the ability to inquire into GP records and to swap advice, which is important for pharmacists to deliver the excellent service that they are already delivering.

Finally, the hon. Lady will know that community pharmacists have for some time now been delivering blood pressure checks, which in some cases are truly lifesaving. This is amazing patient access and patient convenience. The Labour party should, for once, simply praise it and be glad that the Government have stuck to our plan and got on with it.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I am so pleased to hear today’s announcement that we are delivering. It was one of the key things in our plan for patients that I wanted to ensure happened. In particular, many Members of this House, current and past, have had infections and, as a consequence of not dealing with them, have ended up in hospital. This is the sort of sensible approach that, frankly, met some resistance during my time in the Department, with worries about over-prescribing. It is about treating pharmacists like proper professionals and, most important, providing quicker access to necessary care, which patients will now properly enjoy.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

May I say a huge thank you to my right hon. Friend for her contribution to kicking this project off? I feel very fortunate to be at the Dispatch Box on the day we launch it, because many others were involved in setting it up. She rightly highlights some of the problems with spotting things such as sepsis infections, which pharmacists are trained to spot. They really can be the first line of defence. Being able to walk in off the high street to see a pharmacist is incredibly valuable to us all.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Andrea Leadsom

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I absolutely share the hon. Lady’s desire to see clean air—nothing could be more important. We are doing absolutely everything we can, and we will continue to be committed. As the Prime Minister has said, we will be nationalising the acquis communautaire, so the EU legislation will become UK law. Just today, as the hon. Lady may be aware, we have announced our clean air zone consultation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

Including for Nottingham.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Indeed, as my hon. Friend points out, a clean air zone in Nottingham—in the Nottingham South. We are doing that to try to ensure that we make some real, serious progress towards cleaner air and a clean and healthy environment for all.

Child Care

Debate between Thérèse Coffey and Andrea Leadsom

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I indeed join my hon. Friend in congratulating North Yorkshire county council and I will also give a boost to Suffolk’s council, as one Sure Start centre has opened in my constituency since the general election, and that is to be welcomed.

That takes me neatly on to the issue of Sure Start centres—or children’s centres, as they have become. A lot of figures are being bandied around about how many have closed. I have a regular correspondent on Twitter who assures me that the figure is now more than 700, whereas the Opposition tell us that it is more than 500. We have heard from the Minister today that fewer than 50 have closed. I will not pretend that I have had the time to go through all the different links and go into detail about the different numbers, but I am assured by what she has said at the Dispatch Box. Our Prime Minister said that he wanted to counter scaremongering, and we should not always get hung up about the buildings; it is about what matters for the child.

[Andrea Leadsom]

rose—

[Dr Coffey]

I was about to refer to my hon. Friend and I will do so before I give way to her. Early intervention grants are no longer ring-fenced; it is to be welcomed that we have local solutions to deal what is needed. I wish to commend three Members of Parliament, in particular, in this regard: the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field); my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), who has done some extraordinary work—learning, to some extent, from the right hon. Gentleman—on how to help children in his constituency; and my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), whom I was going to praise because of her work with OxPIP—the Oxford Parent Infant Project—and other facilities.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Surely what really matters is what Sure Start centres are achieving for families. We are not looking enough at the achievements of the centres, the inroads they are making and the improvement in UNICEF’s assessment of the happiness of British children—that is going in the right direction. Instead, all we talk about is whether a centre has closed. That is surely not the right thing to be looking at.

[Dr Coffey]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes the point I was referring to. Whether we are talking about Sure Start centres, children’s centres or many other public sector services, we should not get hung up solely on bricks and mortar; we should be focused on the outcomes for children, as that is what really matters.

I also wish to praise another local scheme in my constituency, Home-Start, which also operates around the country. I am particularly impressed with what it is doing to try to reach people, many of whom are not going to children’s centres to access services. It is taking the service to people in their homes, and giving help without it being seen as being judgmental—instead, it is seen as friendly. These are the kinds of initiatives we should be supporting. We should be allowing local councils to use their discretion and initiative to focus on what works best in their area, rather than solely implementing an idea from Whitehall.

Opposition Members have said that their proposals will be funded through the bank levy—I appreciate that they are not talking about a bankers’ bonus measure, which may have been discussed earlier. The shadow Secretary of State mentioned that less tax is coming in. He might have noticed that some of our largest banks have not been making a profit. The obvious cause is the global recession, but the previous Administration allowed the financial disasters to emerge: they allowed RBS to grow without any particular controls; HBOS was forced together with Lloyds, and similar other things occurred; and we had the disasters at the Co-op which have been revealed in the past few works. The Opposition are trying to suggest that a recovery in financial services is bad and that we need to tax them and, indeed, the people who work in them, further to pay for more and more schemes; the bankers’ bonus tax seems to have been used 11 times to pay for various schemes that Labour Members cite. The reality is that money does not grow on trees—we all got taught that lesson when we were children—and we have to make every penny stretch. I am very proud that this Government have genuine ambitions for world-class child care. We know that at this moment in time the coverage is patchy and it is costing more than it should, but I am very supportive of the moves we are making to ensure that child care becomes a significant contributor to growth and to the growth of the family.