Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Tony Baldry and Jeremy Lefroy(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Sir Tony Baldry
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I hope every parliamentary colleague will read the bishops’ pastoral letter. I do not expect everyone to agree with everything in it, but it is a thoughtful and thought-provoking document which makes it clear that the bishops believe that
“the great majority of politicians and candidates enter politics with a passion to improve the lives of their fellow men and women.”
Only yesterday the Archbishop of Canterbury made this observation:
“It’s just the reality; decisions have to be made and it is often unbelievably difficult. Politicians know that quite often they are doing the best they can and the more I see of them the more I reckon that it’s very rare to find one who isn’t doing the best they can but often in incredibly difficult situations.”
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
2. If the Church Commissioners will take steps to support St George's cathedral in Jerusalem.
Canon Sir Tony Baldry
Like any Anglican cathedral overseas, St George’s cathedral in Jerusalem is financially independent of the Church Commissioners. However, I would hope that everyone possible would support the work of the friends of St George’s cathedral in Jerusalem, a UK registered charity that has the Archbishop of Canterbury as patron.
Jeremy Lefroy
I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer and join my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) in paying tribute to the work that he has done as the Second Church Estates Commissioner.
On a visit with the International Development Committee last year in the area, I had the privilege of being invited by my constituent, Mrs Hifsa Iqbal, to an interfaith conference hosted by St George’s cathedral in Jerusalem. May I encourage the Church Commissioners to look at the very important work that St George’s is doing in the middle east and see what support they can give?
Canon Sir Tony Baldry
My hon. Friend makes a good point and I entirely agree with him. St George’s cathedral in Jerusalem seeks to support everyone in need irrespective of their faith, but its support for Palestinian Christians is particularly important as they often feel themselves to be twice a minority. It is a sad fact that the number of Christians in the Holy Land has dwindled significantly in recent years, so I hope that we will all do what we can to support the work of St George’s cathedral in Jerusalem, and the schools and hospitals that it runs for everyone in the west bank and in Gaza.
Francis Report
Debate between Tony Baldry and Jeremy Lefroy(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Jeremy Lefroy
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, to all the Stoke-on-Trent MPs and to the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) for the way in which they have approached this matter together with us. We will be working with them under the new trust arrangement, with the University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust, and it is very important that we work together.
I refer to unity because the only way in which we will develop a health service fit for the 21st century is by showing that same unity of purpose nationally. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who is no longer in his place, for his remark about working together, and I absolutely agree with it. When the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, and later the Secretary of State and his shadow, have made their responses to the Francis report in the past year, they have been of the highest quality; they have shown a true appreciation of the gravity of the subject and the importance of a mature response.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
On the proposed reorganisation of services in Staffordshire, what is the role of the clinical commissioners? I thought that if we moved to a commission-based NHS, commissioners would determine what services were provided at which hospitals.
Jeremy Lefroy
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. Indeed, the clinical commissioning groups have backed the changes, but the local population has not. The clinical commissioning groups are in a difficult position, because they have a budget, and the budget in Staffordshire, as in many other rural areas, is much lower than the national average for England. They are told that if they want to commission services that cost more than the tariff—as maternity services almost always do because maternity tariffs are simply not high enough—they will have to pay the extra. To some extent, the clinical commissioning groups are caught between a rock and a hard place. They may wish to commission those services, but in doing so they will have to stop commissioning others.
It is in the spirit of unity that I ask both the Secretary of State for Health and his shadow to visit Stafford and Cannock Chase hospitals to speak to patients and staff and to hear first hand what they have gone through. I also urge that same co-operation in approaching the long-term challenges facing our health service. The increasing specialisation of services—62 specialties as against 30 in Norway—is driving up costs and resulting in clinicians knowing more and more about less and less.
In Stafford, we have been told that we cannot continue with our consultant-led paediatric service, because we have too few consultants—five or six as opposed to the eight to 10 that the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says are needed to maintain a rota. By that standard, some 50 or more other consultant-led departments in England should close. Instead of a proper national review with full political co-operation, however, we see the gradual picking off of departments in trusts that have financial difficulties. The same is true with maternity services.
I echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell and urge the Government and Opposition to come together with the royal colleges and resolve this matter and much else. The British public are not stupid. They understand that they cannot have every service just around the corner. However, they do not understand why a consultant-led maternity department or paediatrics department in one place must close on safety grounds because it does not have a large enough rota, whereas another with a smaller rota remains open. They also understand the need for more services in the community, but the idea of “slashing” hospital budgets, as Sir David Nicholson is reported in The Guardian as saying, is both incomprehensible and deeply worrying to those whose A and E departments are heaving, whose wards are full and whose children face travelling long distances even to receive general treatment.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Tony Baldry and Jeremy Lefroy(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
9. What assessment he has made of the effects on churches of metal crime since introduction of the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Tony Baldry)
The enactment of the Scrap Metal Dealers Act is warmly welcomed by the Church. The additional powers under the Act have strengthened the hand of the important agencies against this crime, which for churches is now at its lowest level for many years.
Jeremy Lefroy
I thank my hon. Friend for that statement. Will he provide some information about the effects of this welcome Act, promoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), on churches in my diocese of Lichfield, led by the lord bishop?
Sir Tony Baldry
In 2011 in the diocese of Lichfield there were 100 claims for lead metal theft costing nearly £200,000. As of May of this year, there were fewer than 10 claims costing less than £10,000. Churches still have a duty to use things such as SmartWater and CCTV, but the fact that it is now no longer possible for robbers to strip churches of lead at night, go round to the scrap metal yard next day and get paid in cash means that we are seeing a considerable drop in lead theft. That is good news and the whole House should be grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) for getting the Bill through Parliament.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Tony Baldry and Jeremy Lefroy(13 years ago)
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Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
6. How much the Church Commissioners received through the gift aid scheme in the past 10 years.
Tony Baldry
Church of England parishes recovered £82 million in gift aid from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in 2009, which is the last year for which we have data. Over the past 10 years, we believe that the Church has recovered a total of nearly £713 million from parish donations; this excluded donations made at cathedrals.
Jeremy Lefroy
I welcome the recent measure in the Budget to allow donations up to £5,000 for which declarations have not been made to have tax recovered on them. What measures are the Church Commissioners taking to ensure that parishes take up this welcome opportunity?
Tony Baldry
That provision in the Budget was very welcome, as was the provision for the small donations gift aid scheme, because each year, in addition to using planned giving envelopes, people put into the collection plate some £58 million of loose change, and the scheme will be of considerable assistance in recovering tax on that money as well. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Church has to make the best possible use of funds that are given to it in meeting social need and ensuring that churches can be places of community resource. That also means their being places not just of worship but for the widest possible community use, whether it be for cafés, concerts, crèches or other uses for the community as a whole.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Tony Baldry and Jeremy Lefroy(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
7. What steps the Church Commissioners are taking to support the work of the Churches Conservation Trust.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Tony Baldry)
The Churches Conservation Trust was set up by statute to preserve
“in the interests of the nation”
churches that have closed for regular public worship but are of historic or architectural value. For the funding period to March 2012, the Church Commissioners will provide a further £4 million.
Tony Baldry
The CCT is supporting some 340 church buildings, all of which are of considerable historic or architectural interest. We are grateful for the co-sponsoring by the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, on a 30:70 basis. This is an issue that is bigger than just the Church. Some 45% of all grade 1 listed buildings are churches, and those buildings represent an important part of the social history of our nation.