Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matt Hancock and Clive Efford

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, emphatically we do, and there is a drive across the country for more of the sort of social prescribing that the hon. Lady talks about. The clinical solution to many people’s health issues, and in particular mental health challenges, is often about changes in behaviour and activity, and the support people are given, rather than just drugs. On the face of it, the project the hon. Lady mentions sounds very good; of course I do not know the details, but I would be very happy to look into it. However, we wholeheartedly and emphatically support the broad direction of travel of helping people to tackle mental illness both through drugs where they are needed and through activity and social prescribing.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I recently met three care workers who work for Sanctuary Care. Between them, they have 60 years of experience of, and dedication to, caring for vulnerable people, but Sanctuary Care has decided to cut their pay and conditions because they were TUPE-ed over from the Borough of Greenwich. Is this the way to treat dedicated care staff? Will the Minister meet me and those care staff to discuss what is going on at Sanctuary Care, whose chief executive gets a handout of almost a quarter of a million pounds a year, while it cuts low-paid staff’s wages?

Health

Debate between Matt Hancock and Clive Efford

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

The Secretary of State is making a really powerful case. On mortality, I would say that, far from the age going down in Somerset, it is going up. This is a good thing, but the conditions from which people are suffering are getting more complex. This is something we have to address. Indeed, I know the Government are seriously looking at it with many of the models they are bringing in.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Matt Hancock]

I will give way in a moment, if I may just make a bit of progress.

Of course extending healthy life expectancies is a central goal of the Government, and we will move heaven and earth to make it happen. Yes, that does involve ensuring that the entire budget of the NHS—not just the public health budget, important though it is, but the entire budget of the NHS—and all those who work in it are focused more on preventing ill health. The entire long-term plan of the NHS, which sets out how we are going to spend all the extra taxpayers’ money that is going in, is about focusing the entire NHS more on prevention than on cure. To choose just to look at the public health grant—it is important, but it is smaller by far than the entire budget of the NHS—is entirely to miss the point.

[Clive Efford]

The right hon. Gentleman must accept that it is not acceptable that, in the fifth richest economy in the world, life expectancy has flatlined across the country and in some areas has actually gone backwards. Is that not an indication that wider policy approaches by this Government than just those on health are not working?

[Matt Hancock]

It is true that across the western world the incredible rise in life expectancy is continuing but the rate of improvement has slowed. Our task here is to ensure that we extend healthy life expectancies.

[Clive Efford]

rose—

[Matt Hancock]

I have taken the hon. Gentleman’s point. That is the purpose of the entire prevention agenda: to help people to stay healthy in the first place.

Let me give a few examples. The hon. Member for Leicester South talked about deaths of despair, and each one of those suicides is a preventable tragedy, but he did not mention that the suicide rate in this country is the lowest it has been in seven years. We should be celebrating that while also resolving to drive it down further. Similarly, he talked about some of the sexually transmitted infections that are rising around the world, including in America, France and Belgium, but he did not mention that STIs overall are down. Indeed, HIV is down very significantly, and the UK is one of the leading countries in tackling HIV. It is important to look at the objective facts and not just pick out some. Of course there are STIs that we must tackle, and we will, but we must look at the overall picture. I will give one more objective fact: the number of attendances at sexual health clinics has gone up. That is one of the reasons why STIs overall are down.

Cambridge Analytica: Data Privacy

Debate between Matt Hancock and Clive Efford

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Few Governments are doing more to get the rules right in this space. The Data Protection Bill has a full suite of data protection provisions, including the GDPR from European law, to give people power over their data and consent about how it is used. I recommend that the hon. Lady read the Bill and get on board. If she has specific improvements to suggest, we are willing, as we have been throughout the passage of the Bill, to listen and consider them, as we have done with the proposals made by the Information Commissioner and the Select Committee, because we want to ensure that we get the legislation right.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

In the years before the 2008 crash, we were told that the people who were running the City of London were the masters of the universe and we could not touch them. We are seeing the same sort of arrogance from the large internet companies, such as Facebook. The way they are using data, and researching how to use data, is completely unregulated. Other areas of research that affect people’s lives are highly regulated. The Data Protection Bill does not go far enough to protect people’s data and the research that goes into manipulating it.

[Mr Speaker]

I exhort the Secretary of State to imagine that at the end of the hon. Gentleman’s peroration there was in fact a question mark.

Leveson Inquiry

Debate between Matt Hancock and Clive Efford

Thursday 1st March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am absolutely delighted to hear that. It is not the national norm to hear that about the local press, but that shows that sustainable business models can be found. I am absolutely delighted about that and want to do everything I can to make sure that there are sustainable business models for high-quality journalism, which includes not adding extra costs on to the local press.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson came before a Committee of this House and admitted to committing crimes by bribing police officers—such was the scale of their arrogance; they felt that they were so powerful that they could take on Parliament and they had the Metropolitan police in their pockets. That shows the scale of the position we had reached when the Secretary of State voted in favour of the legislation that he is now trying to repeal. Has he forgotten what happened to the victims? Our duty is to give a voice in this House to people who are weak and vulnerable. As Members of Parliament, we have a duty to stand up for them. The Secretary of State has failed to do that today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matt Hancock and Clive Efford

Thursday 8th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

A huge amount of work is ongoing. We have managed, through the sugar tax, to double the amount of funding for school sport. I pay tribute to the Minister for Sport for all the work that she has done on this—she cannot be here today because she is flying to the Winter Olympics—and I am sure that she will be happy to work with my hon. Friend to see what more we can do.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The gross yield of the gambling industry is £13 billion a year, yet GambleAware has been able to raise only £8.6 million through the voluntary levy. Come on, Minister—we have to do better than that.

[Matt Hancock]

I will take that as another consideration in the gambling review, the response to which we are looking at right now.