Health and Social Care

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I will certainly join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to all the volunteers and all those who have come forward for their jabs. For a brief moment, I thought that that was where he was going to end, but he is a proud champion of Doncaster, just as you are, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it would have been very strange were he not to conclude by lobbying once again for the new hospital that he wants. I pay tribute to him for that.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I welcome the £131 million for the midlands that the Minister has announced today. I am very aware, though, that my constituents in East Leake are being served by a health centre that is the oldest in Nottinghamshire and which is far too small for the population growth that we have seen in recent years. Twenty months ago, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care—my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill)—promised at the Dispatch Box that we would have a ministerial visit to East Leake so that the Department could see what we were dealing with. I completely understand that that was impossible at the height of the pandemic, but that has long passed, so will the Minister recommit to that visit today and take that request back to his Department, because despite repeated chasing by me and my office staff, we cannot get a date from it in the diary?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. It is very important that we do not go off the boil in terms of briefness of questions. The Minister is being very good at being brief in his answers.