Speeches by George.

“My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. Certainly in my own constituency, further west than his own, in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, there have been 18 discharges around the coast just in the past 10 days. On the proposed changes in the Government consultation, as attractive as the concept of bringing wat…”

“Does the Minister agree that the cold-blooded slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza cannot be justified as self-defence? Does he also agree that—contrary to the Trumpian line adopted by those on the Conservative Benches—just because a country is a democracy, that does not provide it with blanket imm…”

“My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. Along with the point I made in my previous intervention about the opportunity for abuse under the rates relief system, particularly by holiday homes, does she accept that the methodology used by the current rating system for parking spaces in out-of-town retail outlets such a…”

“If the Minister is looking for other methods by which public finances could be effectively deployed, will he look carefully at the last decade, during which small business rate relief has been used by second home owners to flip their properties to business rating and pay nothing at all? In Cornwall alone, that has resu…”

“As someone who was a member of the Health Committee during the 2012 reforms and who sat on the Government Benches and opposed those reforms all the way through, you have picked at the scabs of my war wounds. Moving on to this excellent report, I wanted to cover a couple of themes about primary care and acute care, and …”

“Exactly: I could not find it in the report. In terms of geographic variation, you highlight the distinction between Devon and north-west London, where there is a very significant difference in terms of caseload for GPs. Would you agree that there are demographic variations? Just walking around London, you get knocked o…”

“Is it those kind of proportions?”

“My last question is on emergency care. In response to your report, I notice that Dr Adrian Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, has said that there is a ward of patients waiting to be admitted in every tertiary centre. The pushback against the shift of resource from hospital to community has…”

“A lot of people are focusing on delayed discharge. There is a rather two-dimensional view about delayed discharge, that it is the inadequacy or lack of resource in social care that is causing that resistance. However, in Cornwall I have been asking similar questions and they have come up with datasets that indicate tha…”

“In Cornwall, only 25% of delayed discharges from hospital are because of lack of social care packages, with the remainder involving the significant degree of support needed from primary and community NHS services. The Royal College of Nursing has pointed out that there has been a 45% reduction in district nurses in the…”

“I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, and particularly the sentiment about putting passengers first and getting a grip. Those who are served by Great Western, which runs to south Wales as well as down the main line to Penzance in my constituency—Great Western has already been heavily criticised this afternoon—w…”

“I will, although the right hon. Gentleman has only just walked into the Chamber, so I think it is rather cheeky of him.”

“To reinforce the points made by the hon. Members for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) and for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon), and by my hon. Friend, this is not purely down to money. Indeed, there is an underspend in the dentistry contracts of many ICBs, and not just in Cornwall. Fundamentally, we know that it is…”

“Will the Secretary of State give way?”

“I have three minutes and three quick points, on which I hope I have the attention of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. My first point relates to the NHS. I welcome the introduction to the debate by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care today. Certainly the Government have inherited the worst crisis in NH…”

“I do, although that is rather rich of the right hon. Gentleman when he knows that he and his party left the country in this state. Another issue is the housing emergency, which we have not debated much today. I welcome the additional £500 million that the Government announced, which will supplement the affordable homes…”

“The Government have to accept that the far-right Government of Israel are laughing behind their hands at us at the moment. They know that they are operating under the comfort blanket of a UK Government who say that they stand with Israel and that Israel has a right to defend itself. But when has murdering children in t…”

“When the Conservatives privatised water, they created risk-free, money-printing emporiums that could pollute our coasts, including my west Cornwall coast, at their convenience. Although the Secretary of State says that nationalisation is not in scope —one can understand why—to what extent will company governance be in …”

“I am grateful to the hon. Member for that intervention. Indeed, she anticipates something that I will come on to in a moment. Going back to that pre-history, we managed to make that change under the previous Labour Government. Indeed, I remember well a debate in this Chamber on 9 February 2000 when I raised these issue…”

“That is absolutely the case. As a visitor to the Isles of Scilly, my hon. Friend knows that that is a significant problem, because people cannot commute to the Isles of Scilly to work. It is difficult to commute to work for businesses providing those kinds of jobs in many of the coastal areas around Cornwall, and many …”