Speeches by George.

“I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton), my fellow member of the Health and Social Care Committee, not only on the manner in which she handled this inquiry but on the manner in which she stepped in, very appropriately, during our work on maternity care. This is a particularly excitin…”

“Say you were targeting—to pluck a figure—10,000?”

“It is quite critical, if we are saying, “This is how we need to go,” for us also to understand what the budgetary considerations are.”

“Are there any lessons that you have learned from your experience in both London and Manchester that indicate you would do things differently, having learned what works and what does not?”

“Presumably, you have no difficulty with the independent retailers that you are co-operating with the system. Do you ever have any difficulty with them? For example, complaints about recovering the value of the vouchers or anything of that nature?”

“On the risk of stigma being attached, is that carefully managed in terms of the interface between the voucher holder and the wider public?”

“If I said, “Could you go and replicate this in this other part of the country with no experience of this?”—what would you do, and how could you both scale up and expand into other areas? What lessons have you learned, and what would you do?”

“Are there any parts of the country that are not facing bankruptcy?”

“What budget would they need?”

“First, my apologies for missing the opening of this session because of commitments elsewhere. I want to ask you about the prescription and voucher scheme, Corin. The figurework in your evaluation certainly suggests that it has been very successful. Could you perhaps say a little bit more about that? The figurework sugg…”

“In terms of access to the fruit and vegetables, presumably because you are going to retail outlets where there is no issue with supply, they are getting the fruit and vegetables that they prefer.”

“Is eligibility clearcut? Presumably, you are able to data share with other Government agencies to identify those who are eligible for the scheme. Is that right?”

“So you are also looking at the out-turns in healthier lives, as well as healthy living.”

“Those points are all very welcome. Does my hon. Friend accept that global food systems already produce more than enough food to feed the world, but the problem is distribution and fair trade? As my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) said earlier, the Groceries Code Adjudicator needs to be …”

“I am repeating myself, but the hon. Gentleman must understand that those research papers were questioned heavily as, during the period over which the statistics were gathered, they were not based on the same baseline nor on the same system as cattle testing at that time. Therefore, they did not compare like with like. …”

“My hon. Friend is of course correct. The testing regime has been hotly debated—indeed, not just debated; successive Government Ministers and scientists have promised progress on the testing regime for many years. In 1997, the agriculture Select Committee looked at this issue and the benefits of shifting from the tuberc…”

“On the effectiveness of culling, the scientific papers often refer to the figure of 56%, but when we dig down into the detail it becomes less clear. There was variation in the testing regimes during the period when the apparent reduction was detected, so it was not clear at all. There is certainly a lot of science out …”

“Meur ras—pur dha—to my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon). If we are being boastful about the number of people who are supporting the petition, the St Ives constituency, I should say that which includes west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, came first with 470 signatures. It …”

“I welcome the Secretary of State to his position and declare an interest as a volunteer member of the Cornwall Community Land Trust. The Secretary of State will be well aware that a perfect storm has hit the construction industry as far as the delivery of social housing is concerned: tender forecasts are not encouragin…”

“3. What progress he has made on meeting social housing targets.”