Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and James Morris(1 year, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (James Morris)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Government are focused on improving the early diagnosis of cancer in England to aid cancer outcome rates. That was set out in the NHS Long Term Plan, setting an ambition of seeing 75% of people diagnosed within stages one and two by 2028. Progress has continued on delivering the Long Term Plan. That includes increased investment and public awareness campaigns, rolling out targeted lung health checks, and introducing non-specific symptom pathways to speed up diagnosis.
James Morris
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, and I deeply sympathise with patients and families who are dealing so courageously with the difficult conditions that he describes. The Government are taking an evidence-based approach to unlicensed cannabis-based products to ensure that treatments are safe and effective before they can be considered for routine funding within the NHS. Whether to prescribe cannabis for medicinal use must remain a clinical decision, and public funding arrangements apply, as they do for all other medicines. The Government remain committed to research and catalysing the generation of evidence to support the use of these products. The National Institute for Health and Care Research remains open—
James Morris
The National Institute for Health and Care Research remains open to receiving research proposals in this area as a priority.
Mr Speaker
Order. Minister, when I stand up, please do stop. You are the one who is dragging this out, so you tell these people why they cannot get in.
Policing and Crime Bill
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and James Morris(8 years, 2 months ago)
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James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
Thank you, Madam—[Interruption.] I mean Mr Deputy Speaker; I am sorry. All the flattery from my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) has befuddled my brain.
James Morris
We have a very close relationship.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne has pointed out, in my role as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on mental health I very much welcome the parts of the Bill that relate to sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983. It is an issue in which I have long taken an interest in this House, and I had an Adjournment debate on it in Westminster Hall in 2013.
A number of people have influenced my thinking about the importance of the changes in the Bill, particularly as regards some of the work that has been done by West Midlands police. In particular, I want to mention Inspector Michael Brown, who has an interesting blog that other hon. Members might wish to look at. He is a mental health blogger and came to see me in my constituency office four or five years ago to talk about how the nature of policing was changing in society, the importance of dealing with mental health on the ground, and how the nature of policing meant that police officers were putting themselves in situations in which they were essentially having to make decisions about whether or not to use the powers under the Mental Health Act, as well as about whether they had the ability, knowledge and training to make such decisions.
If we look at the history of the Mental Health Act, we can see that it was initially conceived to cope with people who were absconding from asylums. It was updated in 1983, including through the section 135 and 136 provisions, and today’s changes are very important as the Mental Health Act needs to reflect the more modern experience of policing and of working with health professionals. Sometimes, we need to question whether we should go further in changing the Mental Health Act, because one downside of police officers specifically being given powers to detain people is that that raises issues to do with liberty and whether somebody is capable of making their own decisions, even when they are in mental health crisis. The fundamental point, which my hon. Friend also made, is that I do not think that any civilised person would say that there should be any circumstances in which a child suffering a mental health crisis ends up in a police cell. I welcome the changes to section 136.
The Bill also confers regulation-making powers on the Secretary of State to define when an adult should legitimately be placed in a police cell.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and James Morris(13 years, 1 month ago)
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James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, and everyone who, with patience and painstaking fortitude, has brought the UN resolution to fruition. I pay tribute, as other hon. Members have, to our armed forces who are implementing that resolution. That type of work is what protecting British national interests is all about. As other hon. Members have said, every generation needs to define what is in Britain’s national interest. In the modern world, our national interest encompasses security, humanitarian issues and commercial interests. It demands that, as a nation, we are prepared to build alliances, to contemplate military co-operation with other nations, and to deploy our unique soft and hard power assets. We are doing so in relation to Libya. We were right to act, but we were right not to act alone.
It was right to agree a resolution with clear parameters for engagement and with broad-based support, which means that, in this context, the international community can act without the United States necessarily taking the lead. It is an example, too, of Anglo-French co-operation, with Britain and France being seen to be in the lead. It confirms that we do not live in a unipolar world. Britain, in the modern world, with a new definition of our national interests, must be as flexible and co-operative as possible to protect its national interest.
As other hon. Members have pointed out, recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have given the British people good grounds for caution about our country taking military action and being involved in foreign intervention. When I speak to my constituents in Halesowen and Rowley Regis, they are concerned about our commitments in the world. They have become weary in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan because they saw no clarity about the missions or their end point. We must not make the same mistake again with Libya.
It is vital that we avoid the tendency that has characterised some of our military interventions in the recent past to use over-optimistic language and to engender inflated expectations about what we can achieve and, in some contexts, a downright delusion about the lengthy effort required to achieve a successful outcome when we make the grave decision to intervene in the affairs of other countries. That mindset and language characterised our initial involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our new modern national interest demands that we are pragmatic, realistic and straight with the British people about what we are trying to achieve through the resolution. We must see the debate tonight, and the United Nations resolution, in the context of Britain adopting a broader strategy towards the middle east, a region which in recent times has been subject to turbulence and unpredictability, forcing on Britain a posture of ambiguity in foreign affairs, and obliging us to live with that ambiguity and make decisions within that context.
Although we are taking military action under the UN resolution, we must also be determined to use our influence through alliances and through our soft power assets to help build functioning civil societies and democracy in the countries of the middle east. It is in our national interest to utilise those soft power assets simultaneously with making a focused decision to take the action that we are taking in Libya.
The resolution that we are debating tonight is clear and pragmatic. It has broad-based support and I believe it is in Britain’s national interest to take action against Gaddafi now, but at the same time to be mindful that in doing so, we are making a grave decision that must be combined with Britain using its soft power assets throughout the middle east to promote democracy and build civic society.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, I inform the House that I will take one more six-minute speech, then I will drop the time limit to four minutes to try and get in as many speakers as possible.