Coeliac Disease and Prescriptions

Debate between Kevin Foster and Kevan Jones

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point, especially in terms of families with children. There is also a question of availability in some rural areas. Larger supermarkets stock some of these products at the prices he mentioned and higher, but in other areas the products are not available.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jones]

I will make a bit more progress.

We have a situation where, in places such as east Essex, the needs of patients are being discounted despite a complete lack of any type of research. I am concerned that more CCGs across the country will begin to use inadequate justifications as a precedent and follow a similar path. That leads me back to my earlier point about the big problem of under-diagnosis. I am afraid we will see a bigger problem if gluten-free prescriptions are not made available to those on low incomes.

Yemen

Debate between Kevin Foster and Kevan Jones

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), given that we regularly see each other at a range of debates in this House.

It is welcome that we are here again discussing Yemen. Having attended the recent Adjournment debate secured by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), I share many of the comments he expressed earlier about the scale of the crisis gripping Yemen and the disaster that the conflict has proved to be for the Yemeni people. I think it was earlier this year when the UN highlighted that both sides were preventing the access of food aid. I know he shares my disappointment that the ceasefire has not held. Again, I share his hopes that the forthcoming UN discussions will bring what everyone here wants to see: a return to a system based on a constitutional structure for settling differences, not one based on armed conflict.

That said, we have to look at the choices and the alternatives, and at why the UN voted to support an intervention. It was interesting to hear the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) talk about a small rebel group. It is perhaps worth quoting the House of Commons Library on this “small rebel group”:

“The Houthis have managed to gather dozens of tanks and plenty of heavy weaponry from these defectors and deserters.”

It also states:

“Yemen’s government and armed forces have long been weak and fragmented, and have had too many forces lined up against them to put up a strong resistance to the Houthis.”

This is not a small band of people who are incapable militarily; these Houthi rebels are former soldiers who are able to pose a direct threat of overthrowing the main Government. That is why the intervention is there. We then have to be clear about the alternative. If we did not have coalition involvement, the Houthis would overrun the whole country. We would have a failed state in Yemen, equivalent to the failed state we have had in Somalia for so long.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

It is not only a large group. It is well armed with arms from Iran. There is also evidence that there are Iranian revolutionary guards acting on the ground in Yemen.

[Kevin Foster]

Let us be blunt. It is not a small rebel group that fires effectively a ballistic missile at a neighbouring country or attacks a US warship in international waters. That does not fit my definition of a small group of lightly armed individuals. This is a serious and coherent threat to the recognised Government of Yemen, any constitutional process, and, ultimately, to the security of one of the key trade routes of the whole world through what we once saw as the Straits of Aden, with shipping heading up towards the Suez canal. Ultimately, if we allow a failed state in Yemen we will all pay the price for it in the cost of shipping, and disruption to energy supplies.

The alternative to the Saudi coalition—let us assume it is not the Saudis and their allies who intervene—is western intervention to enforce a UN motion. The same people very busily attacking this coalition are the same people who regularly oppose any western intervention in the middle east. For a UN resolution to have any meaning it needs to be implemented and it is questionable who it would want to take the action.