Speeches by George.

“Meur ras—pur dha—to my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon). If we are being boastful about the number of people who are supporting the petition, the St Ives constituency, I should say that which includes west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, came first with 470 signatures. It …”

“I am repeating myself, but the hon. Gentleman must understand that those research papers were questioned heavily as, during the period over which the statistics were gathered, they were not based on the same baseline nor on the same system as cattle testing at that time. Therefore, they did not compare like with like. …”

“My hon. Friend is of course correct. The testing regime has been hotly debated—indeed, not just debated; successive Government Ministers and scientists have promised progress on the testing regime for many years. In 1997, the agriculture Select Committee looked at this issue and the benefits of shifting from the tuberc…”

“To a certain extent, we are going over the same theme time and again. My question really is for Zubir. You have arrived shortly after the car crash that was the VPAG negotiations. What we hear from the industry is that the UK is full of potential—the words that it uses are talent and fertile ground—but we are losing ma…”

“So no, you are not having a conversation. We have Ministers before us shortly, in 10 minutes’ time. What should we be pressing them to do?”

“The conversations are going on at the moment? Or are you not talking?”

“You have mentioned VPAG a number of times. Tom, you said that it is a symptom rather than a cause. Richard, why did negotiations break down this summer? I note that you said that the lack of a deal undermines the Government’s plan for the UK to grow in its life sciences sector, arguing that pricing is the “core issue h…”

“Are you not overcomplicating it really? They are saying the door is open, you are saying the door is open, but you are not talking. It is as simple as that, is it not? You just need to be around the same table.”

“The hon. Lady is making a powerful point. She will note that in excess of 90 MPs are taking part, or seeking to take part, in this debate. Given that she is sitting next to the Minister, I hope she will lean on, or nudge, her to recognise that we should not necessarily wait for the provisions of the—no doubt welcome—Wh…”

“And what is the target number?”

“I hope we will have some rich answers; I do not know about the questions now. On the theme of lessons learned, and on the back of an earlier question from the Chair, we can learn lessons from successes like Trieste and the pilots, but we can also learn from the not-so-good examples, the failures and where things go wro…”

“Thank you for that response—that is much appreciated. Maybe we could take this up, Minister, separately outside this meeting. Moving on to the workforce, you mentioned earlier the 8,500 additional mental health workers coming into the system. There is a severe shortage of staff within community mental health services. …”

“Safe staffing ratios, you mean?”

“So if you had a target, it would be something in the region of another 15% on top of that number. Have I got that wrong?”

“You mentioned 15 associate pilots. Do we know where those are? Can you provide us with a list?”

“That would be really helpful. Finally, social workers were not included in the workforce plan, yet they are clearly essential in the workforce that you require. What are you going to say about them? First, will you make sure that social workers are included in the workforce plan? Secondly, what plans do you have to ens…”

“In respect of sanctions, the Minister will be aware that I asked the then Foreign Secretary last week whether he would make sure that the UK has no involvement in the proposed Elbit contract, either commercial or governmental, that there is absolutely no use of the Akrotiri air base in Cyprus to the advantage of the Is…”

“They will not be collations of the local ICBs, where they come together. It will be your seven offices within the seven Government zones. “Regions” is not the right word. That is what they will be.”

“The cost-cutting plans for each ICB have gone through what is called a moderation process. To what extent has that enforced a national uniformity of approach? Have you used that as a learning opportunity to see how the creativity and ideas of some localities could be shared in other areas?”

“It varies according to geographies, demographics and inequalities. There will be variation across the country as a whole.”