Business of the House

Debate between Geraint Davies and Lord Lansley

Thursday 6th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will share my strong support for the industrial strategy set out by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), which focuses on the many sectors where we have identified comparative advantage, and on rebalancing our economy geographically and away from an undue reliance on financial services, to bring forward internationally tradable manufacturing and service industries, which are the only basis for paying our way in the future. I cannot offer a debate on the strategy at the moment, but I hope I have indicated the importance we attach to it. We will look for opportunities for the House to help to frame its implementation.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to the previous question, City and Guilds today published research that shows that we in this place spend four times as much time debating academic qualifications as vocational qualifications and skills. Most people do not have degrees, while the vast majority of MPs do have them. When can we find time to debate the important issue of skills and vocational training in relation to our growth strategy? Does the Leader of the House have any idea how we might get more representation from people who have had real jobs in the past, and who have even faced redundancy?

[Mr Lansley]

I have found in business questions that hon. Members pay consistent and frequent attention to the development of skills. My colleagues have supported the doubling of apprenticeships that has taken place under this coalition Government and the introduction of traineeships to secure, as the Queen’s Speech set out, the expectation that all young people should be going into higher education, traineeships or apprenticeships, to ensure that we have appropriate skills at all levels for those going into the work force.

Business of the House

Debate between Geraint Davies and Lord Lansley

Thursday 16th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am pleased my hon. Friend has been able to bring to the House that recognition of his constituents Mr and Mrs Clough, not least because I know how difficult it must be for people who have suffered such a tragic and terrible loss then to use that as a means to try to ensure others do not suffer as they have suffered. It is a difficult thing to do, and it is right that we pay tribute to them for doing it.

In the context of what the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—who has now left us—was saying, my hon. Friend demonstrates how the private Member’s Bill can have considerable benefits, not just because Bills achieve Royal Assent, but because they create the agenda for legislation, which in his case the Government followed up. May I also just say that the Government have now ring-fenced £40 million to fund support services in relation to domestic violence and sexual violence, including national helplines and rape support centres, but we are constantly looking for new ways to protect victims?

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Although there have been over 1,000 measles infections in Swansea since November, the number of live cases is in the dozens, not hundreds, because measles only lasts for three weeks. May we have an urgent debate about measles, not only on the case for universal immunisation, but to make the case that places such as Swansea are still open for business now—and for the centenary in 2014 of Dylan Thomas, the second-most translated poet of all time?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I do not know when we might have an opportunity to hold such a debate, but I think it is important for us to have a debate about vaccination. Some new vaccination programmes have recently been announced, which I think will make substantial progress in the prevention of disease. We have restored MMR vaccine uptake to its highest level, but, unfortunately, there is a reservoir of people who were not vaccinated in earlier years, and in many places across the country we are rightly now having to tackle that.

Business of the House

Debate between Geraint Davies and Lord Lansley

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of the Portas pilots. The funding of £2.3 million is only one little part of the effort that it has enabled. The multiplier effect in high streets is very important, including on those beyond the Portas pilots. It might be a slight contrivance to extend next week’s debate on local government finance to discuss the matter, but I hope that it might be one mechanism used to illustrate how local authorities can use resources effectively to generate economic activity.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

You will remember, Mr Speaker, that I have raised the idea of Bob Dylan coming to Swansea to play at a centenary Dylan Thomas concert in 2014. Well, the times they are a-changing, and I have had a letter from Bob Dylan’s manager to say that he would prefer to perform in the summer in case of inclement weather. I wonder whether the Leader of the House would find time, as the House’s “Mr Tambourine Man”, to come to the concert and, more importantly, timetable a debate in this House before 2014 on cultural and literary icons of the UK and Wales.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I must say, though, that I am surprised by what he says, since I have understood from him that the sun always shines in Swansea.

Business of the House

Debate between Geraint Davies and Lord Lansley

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I share my hon. Friend’s sense of frustration that the negotiations with the Association of British Insurers have not yet reached a successful conclusion. My hon. Friends at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy are actively engaged in those negotiations. I would advise my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) that it is not necessarily helpful to make statements or offer a running commentary in the midst of such negotiations. Our objective is clear: to do something that will offer the necessary protection to householders and, of course, also be fair and responsible to taxpayers.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Bob Dylan named himself after Dylan Thomas. We in Swansea will celebrate the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth in 2014, and I have asked Bob Dylan whether he would be prepared to give a centenary concert in Swansea, in order that he could blend his music with Dylan Thomas’s poetry. Sony Music has come back and said that Mr Dylan is thinking very positively about the idea. Would the Leader of the House welcome such a concert, and does he agree that it would add to the reputation of Swansea, the popularity of Bob Dylan and the legacy of Dylan Thomas? Also, would the Leader of the House be interested in coming along, or is his answer “Blowing in the Wind”?

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Geraint Davies and Lord Lansley

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I would say two things to Professor John Appleby. First, the latest data published in EUROCARE-4, which I know the right hon. Gentleman will have seen, are clear about the gap between cancer survival rates in this country and others, and in recent years that gap has not diminished as it should have. He can read in last week’s Lancet an authoritative study of cancer survival rates in this country and a number of others demonstrating that the gap remains very wide and that we have to close it. Secondly, the King’s Fund supports the aims of the Bill and Professor Appleby, as a representative of the King’s Fund, clearly understands, as we do, that if we are to deliver the change that is needed, we need the principles in the Bill.

People trust the NHS, and its values are protected and will remain so—paid for from general taxation, available to all, free at the point of delivery and based on need rather than the ability to pay. However, a system in which everyone is treated the same is not one that treats everyone as they should be treated. Our doctors and nurses often deliver great care, but the system does not engage and empower them as it should.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the John Appleby point, does the Secretary of State accept that what he actually said was that the rate of deaths from heart disease would be better in Britain than in France by 2012, on current trends, even though France spends 28% more on its health service? Is not that a ringing endorsement of what is happening now rather than a prescription for blowing up the system as the Secretary of State suggests?

[Mr Lansley]

First, I have just answered the point about John Appleby. It is true in a number of respects, as I have made clear, that although there have often been improvements in the NHS, they have not been what they ought to have been. It was a Labour Prime Minister, back in 2001, who said that we must raise resources for the NHS to the European average, but he did not achieve results that compared with the European average.

Let me give the hon. Gentleman some examples. A recent National Audit Office report showed that as many as 600 lives a year could be saved in England if trauma care were managed more effectively. Too often, the latest interventions, which are routine in other countries, take too long to happen here. John Appleby used heart disease to illustrate his point. Primary PCI— percutaneous coronary intervention—using a balloon and stent as a primary intervention to respond to heart attack was proven to be a better first response years ago. I knew that because cardiologists across the country told me so several years ago. I remember a cardiologist at Charing Cross telling me, “I have a Czech registrar working for me who says that in the Czech Republic PCI as a response to a heart attack is routine, but it hardly ever happens in this country.” Since then, it has been better implemented in this country, but that started to happen only when the Department of Health gave permission for its adoption.

The same was true of thrombolysis for stroke. That happened too late in this country, after such changes had taken place in other countries, because health care professionals there were empowered to apply innovation to the best interests of patients earlier.