Business of the House

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not put that in the context of the overall reduction in the number of households with nobody in work, which I believe is very much to be applauded.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

May we have a debate on the appointment of judges, and on how to make them more reflective of public opinion? A great deal of concern has been expressed about lily-livered judges by many people, not least me, and yesterday we heard a judge saying that it took a huge amount of courage to burgle a house, and refusing to send a persistent burglar to prison. How can we ensure that idiots like that do not remain in the judiciary, and that the people who are appointed to the judiciary do not reflect the views of that individual?

[Mr Lansley]

I am conscious that, in my new privileged position, I stand at a constitutional juxtaposition between the legislature and the Executive. One of the last things I would want to do, on my first occasion at the Dispatch Box, would be to trespass on the relationship between the legislature, the Executive and the judiciary, and in particular on the independence of the judiciary, so I will avoid commenting on that. However, my hon. Friend’s observations are on the record.

Health and Social Care Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman should go and talk to the clinical commissioning groups across the country that are delivering on the clinical leadership that will modernise and improve the NHS rather than simply sitting reading the newspapers and imagining that he knows what is going on in the NHS.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that when she was in government, Baroness Williams was one of the chief architects of ruining the state education system in this country? Given that, why would a Conservative-dominated Government wish to dance to her tune?

[Mr Lansley]

My right hon. and noble Friend Baroness Williams is now a member of the Liberal Democrat party, and in that respect I am not aware that she has ever transgressed in government.

Alcohol Strategy

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

How far should the state step in to regulate the free market and alcohol? If a jumbo jet fully laden with passengers crashed over Britain every fortnight, drastic action would be taken, and that is what we are talking about—22,000 people die every year in Britain as a result of alcohol. The Office for National Statistics cites the figure of 8,790, but that excludes all the accidental deaths, the homicides, the impulsive suicides and the many victims of road traffic accidents. Alcohol is linked to more than 60 medical conditions, including many cancers.

Some will argue that this is all about personal responsibility and that we should resist the interference of the nanny state, but how can the 705,000 children who live with an alcohol-dependent parent exercise personal responsibility? We have a blind spot when it comes to the destructive effect of alcohol. Yesterday, I spoke to Stephen Otter, the chief constable of Devon and Cornwall police, who told me that the statistics for 2004-05 showed that about a third of violent crime in Devon and Cornwall was related to alcohol. Since then, the statistics have followed a steadily upward path and alcohol is now related to about half of such crime. The trend is increasing, so how do the victims of violent crime feel when we say that we should leave this to the market?

What about taxpayers? The cost of the epidemic is out of control. It is at least £20 billion, but if we look at the finer details of the impact on productivity, we will see that the evidence given to the Health Committee when it looked at this issue showed that the cost could be as high as £55 billion. At a time when the NHS has to make efficiency savings of £20 billion over the next four years, is it right that we are flushing down the drain at least £20 billion a year on alcohol?

The Secretary of State talks frequently about outcomes, so I would like to give some that I think he should look at. Forty per cent. to 70% of all accident and emergency admissions are related to alcohol. The impact on health inequalities is undeniable. The difference between the poorest and the wealthiest neighbourhoods in terms of average life expectancy is about seven years, and early deaths from alcohol-related liver disease are a significant contributor to that. Almost one in four deaths in young people is directly caused by alcohol. That means that every week 12 young people are losing their lives, which is a far higher figure than the number who die as a result of knife crime.

Positive outcomes could be achieved from a reduction in teenage pregnancies, as well as in educational failure and its impact and sexually transmitted diseases. The state has a duty to protect young people and take action. On personal responsibility, harmful drinking does not just affect the individual; it has a knock-on effect on all those around them when they leave a destructive trail in their wake.

If it were possible to solve this problem just through education and gentleman’s agreements with the drinks industry and supermarkets, I would say that we should go that way, but that approach has clearly failed. The fact is that when alcohol is too cheap, people die. That was as true in the 18th century with its gin craze as it is today. This, however, is a general debate on what should be in the alcohol strategy, so I do not want to dwell too long on pricing. Suffice it to say that without action on pricing, I am afraid that nothing else will be as effective as it could be. Alcohol is no ordinary commodity and we should not treat it just through market forces.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend appears to be making a coherent argument for banning alcohol altogether. I am concerned that she is like the anti-smoking lobby, which tries to come up with different things to restrict smoking in order to hide its real agenda, which is to abolish smoking altogether. If she thinks that alcohol is such a bad thing and that it does so much damage, why not have the courage of her convictions, follow her argument through and say that alcohol should be banned altogether?

[Dr Wollaston]

There is a simple reply to that question—it would not work. We have seen that clearly from the efforts at prohibition in the States. I myself enjoy a drink, as I am sure do most Members present. Everyone might like a drink, but nobody likes a drunk, and that is what this is about. It is not about stopping people drinking, but about asking at what point the state should step in to address the real harm. There is a balance to be achieved. I am not suggesting for one moment that my proposals will stop people drinking, and I would not want them to do so. I just want to do something about 22,000 people dying every year in this country.

I propose that we act on price and address availability, marketing, education and labelling, and that we take action on offending behaviour. We should also change the drink-drive limit. Crucially, if we are to put all those measures in place, we also need to help people who already have a problem, which means better screening and treatment in the health service for hazardous, harmful and dependent drinkers. It is also time to send a clear message that we have had enough of drunken antisocial behaviour and violent crime.

On availability—I will try to be brief, because I know that lots of Members want to speak—I welcome the consultation on dealing with the problem of late-night drinking. It is absolutely right that communities should have a greater say in the licensing hours, and I welcome the return from 3 am back to midnight and the idea that those who supply late-night alcohol should contribute to the clean-up cost. Will the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), go further and address whether supermarkets should face greater penalties? The problem for late-night premises and clubs is that their customers are already drunk when they arrive, having pre-loaded on very cheap alcohol. It is crucial that supermarkets should contribute to the clean-up cost.

On marketing, we currently spend £800 million a year on alcohol marketing, which dwarfs the budget given to the Drinkaware Trust, which is industry controlled. There is clear evidence that marketing encourages not only drinking earlier, but children to drink more when they do. Although it is encouraging that fewer children overall are drinking, we should still remember that, after the Isle of Man and Denmark, we are the country with the highest levels of binge drinking and drunkenness in our schoolchildren. The problem is that the current controls are complex and easily circumvented. There is an off-the-peg solution that is compatible with European Union law, namely to introduce similar measures to those in France under the Loi Évin. Rather than having a set of complicated measures saying what we cannot do, we would set out clearly where alcohol can be marketed and everything else would not be allowed. If we want to protect children, why do we allow alcohol advertising before screenings of 15-cetificate films? It is also confusing that, while we say that alcohol cannot be associated with youth culture or sporting success, we allow alcohol-related sponsorship of the FA cup and events such as T in the park. We need to protect children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton.

As a libertarian and a believer in individual freedoms, I had hoped that the country had escaped from the nanny-state health police with the end of the previous Labour Government but, sadly, I was clearly naive in that thought. A great many people in the House seem to want to do nothing else but ban everyone else from doing all the things that they do not happen to like themselves, and I was certainly not brought into politics to do that. I urge the Minister not to be seduced by the reasonableness of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), because I assure her that, were she to implement everything that my hon. Friend asked for today, my hon. Friend and the health zealots would still return with another list of things that they want the Minister to do. Such people will never be appeased or satisfied until alcohol has been banned altogether.

I want to focus on two points—the futile proposal on minimum pricing, and advertising and marketing. The very principle of minimum pricing goes against all my Conservative instincts and beliefs—the free market and freedom of choice. The process of setting a minimum price is predicated on the assumption that raising the price of alcohol will make those who misuse alcohol behave differently. However, that is an incredibly simplistic belief. It is worrying that people in the Chamber think that, by increasing the price of a bottle of wine by 30p or 40p, or of a can of beer by 40p, all the problems associated with drinking would at a stroke disappear. People who think that minimum pricing will stop young people going into town centres on Friday and Saturday nights with the intention of getting bladdered, or whatever the current term is, are living in cloud cuckoo land.

[John Pugh]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I will not give way, because plenty of other people want to speak and time is pressing. I will happily debate with the hon. Gentleman in the Tea Room or at some other point, although I am the only one arguing from this perspective, I suspect.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research conducted research on minimum pricing and concluded that the heaviest drinkers are the least responsive to higher prices. For example, at a minimum unit price of 40p, the CEBR found that harmful drinkers, which the policy is supposed to be targeting, would reduce their weekly consumption by only 1.7 units per week, which at the end of the day is less than one pint of weak beer. A report by Sheffield university found that a minimum price of 45p per unit would trigger a 6% fall in overall alcohol consumption and 60 fewer deaths in the first year alone. Yet the Government figures for 2009-10 show that overall alcohol consumption fell by 7%, while alcohol-related deaths rose by 36. Clearly, there is no link between the two.

Minimum pricing treats all drinkers the same, and penalises—financially and practically—the overwhelming majority of adults, all those people who drink alcohol responsibly and in a socially acceptable way, causing harm neither to themselves nor to others. The people who would be most penalised by minimum pricing are those who are already on tight budgets, such as pensioners, people on fixed incomes or those in low-paid jobs. I simply cannot understand how hon. Members, in a time of economic austerity, are prepared to force some of their poorest constituents to pay more for alcohol, when they know full well that the overwhelming majority of those constituents drink alcohol responsibly and in moderation. If hon. Members want to tackle binge drinking and alcoholism, they should focus their efforts on binge drinkers and alcoholics, not on everyone in the country, which would be unjustifiable.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies produced a report on minimum pricing that found that poorer households, compared with richer households, on average pay less for a unit of off-sale alcohol. For example, households with an income of less than £10,000 a year pay 39.8p per unit, while those on a household income of more than £70,000 pay 49.3p per unit on average. As a result, a minimum price of 40p or 45p per unit would have a larger impact on poorer households and virtually no impact on richer ones.

[Dr Wollaston]

Does my hon. Friend accept that our poorest constituents are paying the price for harmful drinking and that we should consider the effect of alcohol on health inequalities? Furthermore, the Sheffield study showed that minimum pricing at 50p per unit would only add an extra £12 a year to the cost for moderate drinkers.

[Philip Davies]

I do not accept that for two reasons. First, people should be free to spend their own money as they so wish, without having to obtain the permission of my hon. Friend before they decide how to live their life, in particular if no one else is affected; it is their responsibility. Secondly, the one thing that I have learned about alcoholism is that alcoholics will go to any lengths to get the alcohol they need; if we increase the price of alcohol, all that will happen is that they will give over a bigger proportion of their money to buying alcohol, leaving them less money to spend on other things—it will not change their behaviour at all.

I want to touch on advertising, but not for long. I opposed the ten-minute rule Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes on advertising. I used to work in marketing, for my sins, and I want to stress its purpose: it is about brand awareness and increased market share. When Cadbury sponsored “Coronation Street”, does anyone really believe that at the moment the Cadbury advert appeared at the start of the programme everyone leapt off their seat, switched off the TV set and dashed to the nearest newsagent to buy a bar of Dairy Milk? Of course not. All that Cadbury hoped was that, next time people went into the newsagent, they would buy a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk rather than a Kit Kat. That is the whole point of marketing.

If we curb alcohol advertising, more than £80 million of revenue for the broadcasting industry would be jeopardised, leading to a direct loss in programme making in this country. It would also wreak havoc on sporting events, and I expect that the Department of Health would prefer to encourage as much sporting activity as possible. We already have a robust system of advertising regulation in this country, administered by the Advertising Standards Authority and in this case the Portman Group, endorsed by Ofcom. We hear that so many young people are made aware of alcohol by advertising, but lots of young children know about car advertising and yet it does not mean that they go straight out and start driving a car, merely because they are aware of the advertising.

I worry where this will stop. Will my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes return to the House in a few months’ time and urge us to ban the advertising of cream cakes, pizzas, chocolate, fish and chips or curry, because they are all bad for us if eaten to excess? This is a slippery slope, and certainly not one that I am prepared to support.

Organ Donation

Philip Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Dr Poulter]

As the Minister will be aware, in 1994, there were 2,500 people on the organ donor waiting list, and last year there were over 7,500. Only 29% of the UK population are signed up to organ donation, which is woefully inadequate given that 552 people died last year while waiting for an organ transplant, excluding those who were taken off the list because they had become too unwell. It is a big problem; people are living longer, sometimes with multiple medical co-morbidities, which means that more people will need transplants. The problem will become an increasing challenge for health care providers and the Government.

Philosophically, I agree with the Minister and I am not in favour of compulsion. Does he agree, however, that we need a more targeted community-focused approach and, as with the cot death campaign that reduced cot deaths from 2,000 to about 300—

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions must be brief.

[Paul Burstow]

The hon. Gentleman advances an important point. We cannot tackle the issue from the top down; it requires leadership from the bottom up in local communities. That is why NHS Blood and Transplant’s website provides constituency-level information about the number of people on the register, the number of transplants that have taken place, and the number of people waiting for a transplant. That information is invaluable to us as MPs and leaders in our local communities, and we should work with others in our community to break down some of the barriers of misunderstanding and misconception that were referred to by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West.

We have seen an increase in the number of organ donors by around 28% since 2008, and we are on track to meet the 50% improvement by 2013 set by the taskforce. As the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) said, 29% of the UK population are on the organ donor register, and it is interesting to note how levels of registration change from one constituency to another—I urge hon. Members to look at that. The number of deceased organ donations rose to 1,010 in 2010-11, compared with 745 in 2001-02. The year 2010-11 also saw a record number of transplants from deceased and living donors, with 3,740 transplants carried out in the UK, compared with 2,633 in 2001-02.

Despite the considerable progress made over the past few years, however, there is still a shortage of organs donated for transplant. The situation is particularly serious for people from African-Caribbean and Asian backgrounds, because they are three to five times more likely to need a kidney transplant than white people. That is why we cannot be complacent, and we will continue to work with partner organisations to promote donations. That can be done through the Give and Let Live initiative in schools, where new information about the issue is circulated by NHS Blood and Transplant; by requiring people to answer a question about organ donation when applying for a driving licence; or by asking people to sign the organ donor register when applying for a European health insurance card and so on. The African-Caribbean Leukaemia Trust seeks to raise the importance of organ donation in black and minority ethnic communities, and local leadership is a key ingredient in delivering improvement.

Through various public awareness campaigns, NHS Blood and Transplant also publicises the need for more people to register as donors. Work continues at national, regional and local levels further to strengthen the donation programme, to support the excellent work of the NHS in identifying, referring and procuring donor organs, and to make organ donation a usual part of end-of-life care.

I am grateful for the opportunity to reassure all hon. Members in the debate that, as we modernise the NHS, we will continue to focus on driving forward an improvement in donation rates. To maintain that momentum, with the support of all UK health administrations, we have established a transitional steering group that includes health departments, NHS Blood and Transplant, the British Transplantation Society, and the royal colleges. It aims to focus on actions that will continue to embed donation within end-of-life care, and provide a link between oversight of the programme delivery board and the establishment of the NHS commissioning board in 2013. It will also provide a clear link to Health Ministers for any reports on progress.

The transitional steering group will focus on six key areas: increasing consent rates; brain stem death testing in all appropriate cases; donation after circulatory death to be considered in all circumstances; increased donation from emergency medicine; increased and more timely referral of potential donors; and improved donor management. The work of the transitional steering group will continue to drive improvements in the UK’s organ donation programme, and increase donation rates.

The hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West asked about leadership, which is an essential issue. The national clinical director for transplantation, Chris Rudge, has recently retired from that role, although I confirm that he will be appointed as leader of the transitional group, which will provide continuity of leadership. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman, and others, about the Government’s serious intent to deliver on the important target. I can also inform the hon. Gentleman that we will not wait until 2013 to look at what should happen next, and we have already begun to develop a post-2013 strategy. NHS Blood and Transplant is starting to prepare the relevant documents, and is working closely with the transitional steering group.

This has been an incredibly important debate and significant points have been raised. I hope I have demonstrated that, in terms of leadership, intent and drive, we are committed to building on the improvements we have already seen and, where appropriate, to learn lessons from other parts of the world. That will require us all to play our part in raising awareness of organ donation, and of what the consequences for people’s lives will be if donations are not made.

As the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West said, donation is a precious gift. We need more people to realise that and give such a gift by putting their name on the register and being willing to donate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

Under those circumstances, if a referral is made to me, I will wish to apply the kind of criteria that I set out last year for reconfigurations across the country for the first time: that they must meet the tests of being consistent with the result of any public consultation and with the public’s view, with the views of prospective future commissioners—such as the commissioning consortia that are coming together as a pathfinder in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency—and with the future choices made by patients about where and how they want services to be provided to them, and that they must meet clinical criteria for safety and quality.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

May I join my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) in urging the Secretary of State to protect the children’s heart unit at Leeds hospital as it is a very worthwhile facility for people in Yorkshire, and does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State agree with me that doctors should go to where the patients are, rather than the other way around by expecting patients to travel for many hours to get to such an important service?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, but in response I will simply reiterate what I said to our hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West: that these matters are currently the subject of consultation by an independent group representing the primary care trusts collectively, and not by the Department of Health at this stage.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am very grateful, but from now on we do need briefer answers—[Interruption.] No, we need briefer answers, because I want to accommodate Back-Bench Members. It is about them that I am concerned.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

T2. I believe that the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes would be gesture politics of the worst kind, that it would have no basis in evidence and that it would simply be a triumph for the nanny state—and an absurd one at that. Given that, does the Secretary of State believe that I am still a Conservative, and if so, is he?

[Mr Lansley]

I am happy to believe that we are both Conservatives. The coalition Government made a commitment in our public health White Paper to publishing a tobacco control plan. We will do so shortly, and the purpose will be very clear: to secure a further reduction in the number of people smoking, and as a consequence, a reduction in avoidable deaths and disease.

Neuromuscular Care (North-West)

Philip Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) on securing this debate, which is important to many people. Although the title of the debate refers to neuromuscular services in the north-west, my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) and I come from the north-west of a different island. This is not revenge for the map-reading errors that many of us would have heard excuses for over the years in border areas in Northern Ireland, nor is it an attempt to hijack this debate. I want to give positive support to the articulate efforts of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale, who spoke compellingly about what muscular dystrophy can mean for the individuals affected and their families.

Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I do not have a relative who suffers from muscular dystrophy, but I remember being particularly impressed by a young constituent of mine and his family. My constituent, who unfortunately died a couple of years ago, was named Donovan McKeever. When his parents, Brendan and Teresa, heard Donovan’s diagnosis, they were confounded by the degree to which nobody knew what to say to them or what they were talking about, asking about or looking for. Donovan’s father Brendan wrote a small book about his experience, titled “It Shouldn’t Have to Be Like This”.

Unfortunately, when a child is diagnosed with muscular dystrophy—this also happens with many other conditions, such as autism—parents often have to navigate systems and negotiate between services as though they were the first to find themselves in that situation. The hon. Gentleman’s speech reflected such frustrations. Because people know the good work of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign and know that it is a recognised disease, they assume that care services are in place and that the system kicks in and knows what to do, how to pass people on and how to connect services. They assume that key workers exist to ensure that needs are met, whether that involves a disabled facilities grant for adapting housing, or assistance deciding which school environment will be most conducive or accessible. Families need support, and they expect the system to provide it. For people with muscular dystrophy—Donovan had Duchenne muscular dystrophy—that does not always happen.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the importance of care advisers, as did the hon. Member for East Londonderry in his intervention. Northern Ireland has a muscular dystrophy care adviser, but unfortunately the funding for that care adviser is committed only until the end of March, and no long-term funding is in place. Not only are things not as they should be, but the existing service and the commitments that have been made may well disappear in the context of budget squeezes and other changes.

We should use this occasion to call for better services, planning and support, not just in the interest of individuals with such conditions and their families but in the interest of providing well-managed public services and savings. The hon. Member for Weaver Vale mentioned unplanned emergency admissions. Some 2,000 people in Northern Ireland suffer from muscular disease, and their unplanned emergency admissions cost at least £2.25 million a year. Better and more appropriate and available services would lead to savings. Making people present themselves in a less appropriate context puts pressure on other services and adds to costs, which is not efficient. Cutting corners in such areas in the name of efficiency savings is wrong, and some of the cuts and squeezes taking place are counter-efficient.

I know that the Minister is particularly concerned about the health services that the hon. Gentleman and I have mentioned. The issues on which patients need to engage the public policy system are not confined to clinical presentations. In the context of some other changes that the Government are introducing, such as changes to disability living allowance and medical assessments, I would hope that the Minister acts as an advocate for patients with muscular dystrophy to ensure that they are not overburdened by medical assessments. They find it difficult enough to navigate the system and get the services that they expect; it should not be made harder for them to get support such as disability living allowance and the mobility component.

On the intended removal of the mobility component of DLA from people in residential care, many young adults with muscular dystrophy choose to live in a residential care setting because of their situation. Their parents may have passed on, and other family members may have moved on. It is nonsense for people who have made that choice to lose the mobility component, with all the social support, access, personal outlets and socialising that it allows. I hope that this debate is not purely about the important issue of clinical and medical services for those with muscular dystrophy; I hope that we will take a holistic approach to people’s particular needs.

The hon. Member for Weaver Vale mentioned specialist multidisciplinary care. If we break the issue down to our different locations, whether we are talking about the new single commissioner for Northern Ireland, the Health and Social Care Board—

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Gentleman’s flow, but I hope that he appreciates that the terms of the debate relate specifically to the north-west. Although his comments on Northern Ireland are interesting, I hope that he will tie them in to the situation in the north-west, as that is the title of the debate.

[Mark Durkan]

I fully accept your admonition, Mr Davies. I made that point at the start.

If we consider specialist multidisciplinary care in relation only to different localities—whether primary care trusts and GP-led commissioning in the north-west of England or purely within the devolved regions of Scotland or Northern Ireland—we might miss a point. In the case of rarer diseases and conditions, a bigger commitment and wider consideration at a UK level provides a better context of scale. As we have heard, individual GPs sometimes are not good at responding to particular needs or realising the importance of a condition because they do not see enough instances of it. That problem applies not only to GPs but, more broadly, to other services and public management bodies.

I hope that, during the Minister’s tenure, the Joint Ministerial Committee, which brings together Ministers from the devolved entities as well as those from Whitehall, and the British-Irish Council will undertake initiatives to examine whether we can learn lessons from one another. When I was a Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, I was privileged to attend the council’s very first meeting. I remember the late Donald Dewar saying that one of the most undervalued art forms was plagiarism and that we needed a vehicle to bring together public policy planners and overseers, such as Ministers, from different parts of these islands. We need that not just in order to see who is doing well at what and to copy them, but in order to be honest and admit what we are all doing badly; to discuss the serious issues that we are not doing enough about; and to constantly agree, as public representatives, that more should be done and that there should be better laws, better services and better funding. If we cannot do enough of that in relation to our own individual pressures, perhaps the British-Irish Council and the Joint Ministerial Committee can together ask some of the fundamental questions, at the heart of government, that were raised by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burns]

I am extremely grateful, Mr Speaker.

If we look at the Liberal Democrat manifesto, we can see that it also contains proposals for the abolition of strategic health authorities. The hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) has alluded to the abolition of PCTs, and the reason for their abolition is that, when we have given the commissioning to GP consortia and the public health responsibilities to local authorities, there will be no job for the PCTs to do. Why keep them? There will be £5 billion savings during this Parliament that can be reinvested in front-line services.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

9. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of video link medical consultations in prisons.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)]

The Department has made no assessment. PCTs and prison partnerships may consider using telemedicine as an alternative to hospital appointments for offenders, after considering any security issues and the benefits for improved health care. Decisions about treatments for offenders, including video link consultations, are made by local commissioners.

[Philip Davies]

Red Embedded Design, an SME technology company in my constituency, is working in partnership with Airedale NHS Foundation Trust to enable video link medical consultations to take place in prisons. May I suggest that the Minister look closely at this scheme, which has been rolled out in a number of prisons? He will see the cost benefits and the lack of risk of absconding involved. Will he encourage other PCTs around the country to introduce the system in their prisons?

Public Health White Paper

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

There we have it: the Labour party as the opponent of local government. I am sure that people will recognise that when we arrive at local government election time. The Labour party has never trusted local government but we are going to trust it. We are going to give it not only greater freedoms but greater powers and responsibilities. Not every local authority will be brilliantly successful, but at least local authorities are directly accountable to the people who elect them—those for whom the authorities will deliver services.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Many of the measures that my right hon. Friend proposes, such as the plain packaging of tobacco, forcing responsible drinkers to pay more for alcohol in supermarkets than they otherwise would and, bizarrely, forcing employers to allow women to breastfeed at work are a triumph not for public health but for the nanny state—something that we thought had gone out with the previous Government. Why is he still so wedded to the nanny state?

[Mr Lansley]

I am wedded to achieving improvements in public health. Interestingly, today I have been accused both of being an exponent of the nanny state and of having abandoned it in favour of “nudge”. The truth is that, as one sees in the White Paper, there is a clear philosophy here that we will pursue a voluntary approach, regulate only where necessary and seek to have less intrusive and less interventionist approaches in order to make more progress more quickly. If we do not make progress through voluntary approaches, we will of course still have to protect the public’s health and we will seek other measures to do so, but they have been tested to destruction by the previous Administration. It did not happen—they did not succeed and they did not improve public health—but we are determined to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burstow]

The Government’s intention is not to fetter the commission but to allow it to do its job.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

17. What recent representations he has received on the appropriateness of the remit of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

Since 7 May, the Department has received about 120 representations from hon. Members, noble Lords and members of the public on a range of issues concerning the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, including its remit.

[Philip Davies]

May I urge the Secretary of State to get NICE to go back to what most people think it is for, which is monitoring the cost-effectiveness and clinical effectiveness of drugs? Many people do not think that it does a particularly good job on that, anyway, but it is currently indulging in empire building, with its ridiculous drivel in recent weeks about smoking breath tests for pregnant women, compulsory sex education for five-year-olds and subsidies for food companies to make healthier food. Surely it ought to go back to what it should be doing, and do it better, rather than empire building, as it is doing.

[Mr Lansley]

In 2005 the previous Government charged NICE with producing public health guidance as part of its work. As I establish a more integrated and effective public health service, I shall consider how the advice of NICE fits into that strategic framework.