Speeches by George.

“But that is not what, for example, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine is saying. Dr Adrian Boyle is saying that, if every acute hospital had an additional ward for the admission of patients who are clogging up the emergency departments, that would relieve a lot of pressure. That requires more inve…”

“I am not aware that those things have not already been rolled out. It is certainly a mantra that has been expressed by those on the frontline of the NHS, so I am not sure there is anything new as far as that is concerned.”

“And you will be able to balance that with your view that you do not want an overly centralised system. You want to let go but at the same time hold on.”

“I suppose the shift from hospital to community is the holy grail question. For the 30 years or more that I have been involved in the politics of health, it has been a mantra or objective. The language may well have changed but, if anything, things have moved in the opposite direction. It is a laudable aim; everyone, ot…”

“There has been a reduction from 8% six years ago to 5.5% of the NHS pot going into community services. If you are going to reverse that, you can use the mental health investment standard, perhaps, as a means to achieve that. Can you now set us an indication as to what level you think that proportion should be? Can you …”

“In the far west of Cornwall, in a medical emergency we cannot look for additional support from the north, west or south, because it is sea. The urgent treatment centre at Penzance hospital was closed two and a half years ago, under the Conservatives, adding pressure to the only emergency department for the next 100 mil…”

“My hon. Friend is making an excellent case, as did our hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson). Of course, his constituency of Honiton and Sidmouth is three and a half hours away from Penzance, so a 20-minute delay for people at Penzance is not necessarily the issue. It is the disruption, the uncertainty …”

“My constituency, which includes Penzance station, will be deeply affected. We are five hours away from Old Oak Common and will experience much of the pain with no gain. Just a fraction of the £67 billion being spent on HS2—for example, just one two-hundredth of that budget—could address the issue in Dawlish, which is t…”

“Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Exeter (Steve Race), is that not the nub of the argument? If the Government are to make the three shifts—including, importantly, the shift from hospital to community—they must not only stem the loss of pharmacies, but build them up.”

“There is presumably an opportunity for you to have a big say in next year’s review of the Long Term Workforce Plan, to put a lot more emphasis on retention and recruitment, and to address those issues. Maybe we can start with Kamila.”

“Thank you for your earlier remarks. Nicola, for the benefit of the Committee, what is the pay at the lower and higher ends of band 5?”

“That is £28,000 for a fully trained, degree-level clinician?”

“I suppose this question might apply to Kamila as well. On the issue of the longer-term workforce planning and trying to achieve larger numbers within the service to fill the 32,000 vacancies and so on, there has been a move—one might say a clever move—towards finding other ways of recruiting nurses, such as using nursi…”

“What is level 7? Please explain.”

“Maybe you would like to use the opportunity of the review of the Long Term Workforce Plan as your route into the subject.”

“Retention is clearly a very important issue. Finance to enable retention will be a big constraint. Are there actions that the Government or the system can take to address retention matters without that becoming a large financial burden on the Government?”

“To deliver the shift from acute to community—a mantra we have been hearing for decades—the assumption is that social care needs beefing up to tackle delayed discharges from hospital, but as far as I can see, in a large proportion of such cases, the majority in Cornwall, there is a need for ongoing medical oversight. I …”

“I am grateful to the Minister; it is enormously helpful to hear her respond to these matters. She will have picked up the question I raised earlier about the national wealth fund and the fact that smaller projects, particularly those at the critical exploration stage, feel that they cannot take advantage of it. Is the …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon), not only on bringing this issue to the House’s attention, but on the manner in which he introduced it, emphasising its importance. There have been a number of contributions to the debate…”

“Over the last 10 years, under the previous Government, £500 million of taxpayers’ money was handed out to second and holiday homeowners in Cornwall alone, while only half that amount was spent on social housing for first-time need. Meanwhile, there is a massive backlog of shovel-ready social housing development that ha…”