Speeches by George.

“And six years is a notional tipping point, in that sense.”

“You mentioned earlier that the programme was largely, I think, delivered by non-clinically trained staff.”

“Thank you very much.”

“That is interesting in itself. Although you said that the practice nurse would be reviewing cases, the actual training was undertaken by non-clinically trained staff. Are you content that that is sufficient for the programme going forward?”

“The other side of the coin is: what proportion of people over 40 who are clinically obese are likely to have type 2 diabetes? Or is that simply prejudice?”

“”

“In the other place, Lord Teverson brought forward on Report amendment 31, which sought to add the following provision to the Bill:”

““The local authority of the local government area does not have any specific responsibility for and stewardship of the rights of its population under the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.””

“”

“That would be a helpful vehicle for allowing the Government to recognise Cornwall’s special status and would, in our view, justify the transfer of combined mayoral authority powers to such locations.”

“The Minister responded to that proposal in March, explaining that the Government were minded to continue the conversation with the local authority, and indeed with the six Members representing Cornwall’s constituencies, to ensure that we can make some progress on this. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that when…”

“That is welcome, although we would like to go further, as fellow Cornwall Members will emphasise in a moment. It is helpful to have that building block in place, but it is really important that we can go further.”

“As the Minister will be aware, we have already received correspondence from the Secretary of State in which he recognised the special status of Cornwall and the reason its integrity would be retained. This is very important. In a letter to the leader of the council on 26 November, the Secretary of State said:”

““The Government is minded, on an exceptional basis, to work with you”—”

“the local authority—”

“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) and in particular her points about parish and town councils. In Cornwall, where we are completely parished and towned in that sense, they are an important vehicle for communication up from the community. They enable communities to articulate the…”

““to explore designating the council as a Single Foundation Strategic Authority.””

“The Government are promising that they will not impose things without local consent. The other side of that argument is that local authorities in areas such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly want to press on with devolution much faster than the Government seem willing to allow. Will the Minister account for that in t…”

“I rise to present a petition on the future of the Penzance driving test centre. The metrics used by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency assume homogenised geographic uniformity, but we are at the end of a long thin peninsula. The DVSA offers a postcode search tool, which is irrelevant to areas like mine. Distress l…”

“I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. We are simply giving the example of Cornish devolution as one of the potential products should the Government not reject the opportunity for local authorities to be properly consulted, which is what is on the amendment paper this evening. That is the most important thing this evenin…”