Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

Debate between Damian Green and Thérèse Coffey

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

As the hon. Lady will be aware, it is available—it was available yesterday. I am conscious that it does not cover Wales, where her constituency is, so I do not know what the Welsh Government are doing in that regard. [Interruption.]

I am not decrying them. This is the Parliament of the United Kingdom, so I am very happy to take questions from Welsh MPs and have already done so. But what I am keen to say is that we have already delivered. I have already shared information on how bathing water has got much cleaner under this Administration, and we will continue to do a number of activities. What we have done, and what the Welsh Labour Government have not done, is transform farming funding to make sure that we have sustainable food production, but that we also protect and enhance the environment.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

There are very many farmers in my constituency who love the Kentish countryside and are proud to be custodians of it for this generation. At the same time, they have to run profitable businesses, producing and selling good, healthy food. Can my right hon. Friend assure me and them that the new scheme has enough strength behind it to enable them to run viable businesses and to continue to protect and, indeed, enhance Kent’s beautiful countryside?

[Dr Coffey]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend, who is right to stand up for his farmers. Kent is the garden of our country and the producer of many fine foods, fruits and, of course, wines. The same amount of money is being dedicated to supporting our farmers and landowners. I am conscious that we are on this transition journey, and that is why I wanted to offer people opportunities to get Government funding as we reduce the guaranteed BPS. We are in a good place whereby farmers have a genuine menu from which to choose—a lot of this was informed by a practising farmer, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Farming—and, as well as saving the planet, the farmers in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) will have opportunities to have a viable, sustainable and profitable business.

Health and Social Care Update

Debate between Damian Green and Thérèse Coffey

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

As the hon. Lady will know, people access care, or work in the care industry, in different ways. That is why I am keen to continue the national recruitment programme, working with the Department for Work and Pensions. As for the £500 million that I have announced today, the local NHS, working with local trusts and local councils, will clearly be in a better position to decide, in a more differentiated fashion, on the best way of spending that money through not just buying packages but support for the sector. Let me also remind the hon. Lady that since last year we have changed the universal credit taper rate so that people keep much more of the benefits they may receive. However, I am also conscious of the need for us to continue to try and encourage people to come into the care sector, and that is a joint endeavour.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend to her new post, and I welcome her statement. I especially welcome the social care discharge fund, but, as she knows, the problems of under-capacity in the care sector, which filter into the whole NHS, are not just a winter crisis but a chronic problem. May I therefore urge her to take seriously a suggestion from the leaders of the care sector—I know it is on her desk at the moment—that something equivalent to the Teach First system should be introduced in social care, so that we can get some of the brightest and best young people to take it up as a career in their early years of work? That would not solve the whole problem by any means, but it would be a significant step towards raising the status of the profession.

[Dr Coffey]

My right hon. Friend is correct to raise this strategic challenge, which I am confident that the Care Minister my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien), will be looking at carefully. Recognising the challenge, the Prime Minister has set out clearly that she wants to see a rebalancing of funding within the health and social care system. I am sure we will make progress on achieving that, informed by how the £500 million fund will be spent and the outcomes it will produce.