Speeches by George.

“I am grateful for the Minister’s helpful remarks. She says that the DIVA test is currently being tested, which is wonderful, but does she accept that, given it was possible to produce a vaccine within a relatively short time in the pandemic—I appreciate that civil servants seem to have a rather stretchy temporal langua…”

“Is that licence in a low-risk area?”

“To a certain extent, we are going over the same theme time and again. My question really is for Zubir. You have arrived shortly after the car crash that was the VPAG negotiations. What we hear from the industry is that the UK is full of potential—the words that it uses are talent and fertile ground—but we are losing ma…”

“Are you not overcomplicating it really? They are saying the door is open, you are saying the door is open, but you are not talking. It is as simple as that, is it not? You just need to be around the same table.”

“You have mentioned VPAG a number of times. Tom, you said that it is a symptom rather than a cause. Richard, why did negotiations break down this summer? I note that you said that the lack of a deal undermines the Government’s plan for the UK to grow in its life sciences sector, arguing that pricing is the “core issue h…”

“The conversations are going on at the moment? Or are you not talking?”

“So no, you are not having a conversation. We have Ministers before us shortly, in 10 minutes’ time. What should we be pressing them to do?”

“The hon. Lady is making a powerful point. She will note that in excess of 90 MPs are taking part, or seeking to take part, in this debate. Given that she is sitting next to the Minister, I hope she will lean on, or nudge, her to recognise that we should not necessarily wait for the provisions of the—no doubt welcome—Wh…”

“So if you had a target, it would be something in the region of another 15% on top of that number. Have I got that wrong?”

“I hope we will have some rich answers; I do not know about the questions now. On the theme of lessons learned, and on the back of an earlier question from the Chair, we can learn lessons from successes like Trieste and the pilots, but we can also learn from the not-so-good examples, the failures and where things go wro…”

“Safe staffing ratios, you mean?”

“You mentioned 15 associate pilots. Do we know where those are? Can you provide us with a list?”

“That would be really helpful. Finally, social workers were not included in the workforce plan, yet they are clearly essential in the workforce that you require. What are you going to say about them? First, will you make sure that social workers are included in the workforce plan? Secondly, what plans do you have to ens…”

“Thank you for that response—that is much appreciated. Maybe we could take this up, Minister, separately outside this meeting. Moving on to the workforce, you mentioned earlier the 8,500 additional mental health workers coming into the system. There is a severe shortage of staff within community mental health services. …”

“And what is the target number?”

“In respect of sanctions, the Minister will be aware that I asked the then Foreign Secretary last week whether he would make sure that the UK has no involvement in the proposed Elbit contract, either commercial or governmental, that there is absolutely no use of the Akrotiri air base in Cyprus to the advantage of the Is…”

“These will be offices of the centre, really.”

“The ICBs will simply be receiving and communicating through that.”

“Answering one of the fact-based questions earlier from Beccy, Jim, you said there was a requirement to achieve effective operational balance within three years. Do you mean the end of the year 2028-29, or, in other words, by March 2029? Am I right? Is that the three‑year financial year?”

“That is March 2029.”