Speeches by George.

“T2. I acknowledge that the Government have inherited local government finance and SEND requirements in what is probably their worst crisis in history. However, Cornwall has faced one of the steepest—indeed, the steepest—demands for education, health and care plans in recent years, and one of the greatest SEND needs, as…”

“I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton), my fellow member of the Health and Social Care Committee, not only on the manner in which she handled this inquiry but on the manner in which she stepped in, very appropriately, during our work on maternity care. This is a particularly excitin…”

“On the risk of stigma being attached, is that carefully managed in terms of the interface between the voucher holder and the wider public?”

“Are there any parts of the country that are not facing bankruptcy?”

“What budget would they need?”

“Say you were targeting—to pluck a figure—10,000?”

“It is quite critical, if we are saying, “This is how we need to go,” for us also to understand what the budgetary considerations are.”

“Are there any lessons that you have learned from your experience in both London and Manchester that indicate you would do things differently, having learned what works and what does not?”

“Presumably, you have no difficulty with the independent retailers that you are co-operating with the system. Do you ever have any difficulty with them? For example, complaints about recovering the value of the vouchers or anything of that nature?”

“First, my apologies for missing the opening of this session because of commitments elsewhere. I want to ask you about the prescription and voucher scheme, Corin. The figurework in your evaluation certainly suggests that it has been very successful. Could you perhaps say a little bit more about that? The figurework sugg…”

“So you are also looking at the out-turns in healthier lives, as well as healthy living.”

“Is eligibility clearcut? Presumably, you are able to data share with other Government agencies to identify those who are eligible for the scheme. Is that right?”

“In terms of access to the fruit and vegetables, presumably because you are going to retail outlets where there is no issue with supply, they are getting the fruit and vegetables that they prefer.”

“If I said, “Could you go and replicate this in this other part of the country with no experience of this?”—what would you do, and how could you both scale up and expand into other areas? What lessons have you learned, and what would you do?”

“Those points are all very welcome. Does my hon. Friend accept that global food systems already produce more than enough food to feed the world, but the problem is distribution and fair trade? As my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) said earlier, the Groceries Code Adjudicator needs to be …”

“On the effectiveness of culling, the scientific papers often refer to the figure of 56%, but when we dig down into the detail it becomes less clear. There was variation in the testing regimes during the period when the apparent reduction was detected, so it was not clear at all. There is certainly a lot of science out …”

“3. What progress he has made on meeting social housing targets.”

“I welcome the Secretary of State to his position and declare an interest as a volunteer member of the Cornwall Community Land Trust. The Secretary of State will be well aware that a perfect storm has hit the construction industry as far as the delivery of social housing is concerned: tender forecasts are not encouragin…”

“Is that licence in a low-risk area?”

“I am grateful for the Minister’s helpful remarks. She says that the DIVA test is currently being tested, which is wonderful, but does she accept that, given it was possible to produce a vaccine within a relatively short time in the pandemic—I appreciate that civil servants seem to have a rather stretchy temporal langua…”