Speeches by George.

“I will not pursue this much further. I want to come on to the issue of the creation of SEND caseworkers as a means of helping families navigate what is inevitably a very complex system. Before I do, on the previous question of professionals in both camps, there is still a drive for parents who can afford it—I am sorry,…”

“So it is primarily an objectivised role? They are ambivalent as to which way it goes. They are not instructed, or advised, to be there to help parents and children through the system, to be their champions and to help them, to co-ordinate.”

“Does that compromise the ethics of the profession?”

“Isn’t the role in which they operate about being the champion of the parent and the child? Or are you suggesting that some take on that role as kind of an arbiter?”

“Certainly, in the enormous amount of casework that I have as a Member of Parliament—I am sure this is also the case for others—the role of caseworkers does not seem to arise at all. Is that why people end up coming to the MP—because they do not find a caseworker to help them?”

“Is the new model proposed in the White Paper likely to result in stronger demand for SEND caseworkers? You have undertaken studies on this.”

“So that is just a general problem so long as there is a healthy private sector driven by the shortages?”

“Are you aware of professionals with a foot in both camps?”

“I am pleased to have secured this debate, and I am sure the Minister is delighted that we have reached the Adjournment at a point when we have ample time to explore the important issues of transport to and between the Isles of Scilly. There is, frankly, a shocking injustice. Scillonian residents have been treated as se…”

“I am grateful for that clarification; I am sure that it will be music to the ears of the steamship company. Going back to the point about Artemis, which is exciting—I congratulate the Government for investing in it—is there any indication of the timescale for any roll-out that might benefit the Isles of Scilly?”

“To a certain extent, the Minister has implied the answer to this, but of course he is well aware that a bus cannot drive between the off-islands and St Mary’s—though there might be some inventive way in which someone could do such a thing. He must accept that if one is looking for parity between the Isles of Scilly and…”

“I am pleased that the hon. Member and his family have strong connections with the islands, but I caution him against describing them as the Scilly Isles—he will not be well received on the islands if he uses that particular nomenclature—but, certainly, if he continues to call them the Isles of Scilly, I am sure that he…”

“I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who leads me on to my next point. Although he says that we are all in the same boat—if you will pardon the pun, Madam Deputy Speaker—the fact is that we are not. Services in Scotland are very heavily subsidised, as I will explain. When we look for parity and comparability, the services …”

“You are obviously doing it right. How are you doing it?”

“I was hoping that we could shift to that.”

“Dr Higginson also mentioned that his one aim is to ensure that there are sufficient beds within the hospital—that is the block that creates the stress of corridor care and so on. I recollect having big arguments in this place some 20 years ago on the NHS Confederation publishing a document called “Why we need fewer hos…”

“You are talking about sharing the risk across the hospital, which is certainly something that we learned from the first panel. Are you saying that admission into the hospital is now much smoother because beds are now available as a result of that sense of shared risk? Does that mean that the corridor patient is now in …”

“On Monday, it was my privilege to visit the Helston sorting office, where I discovered staff burdened with remote, counterproductive micromanagement of their work and inadequate plans to deal with the inevitability of staff absences. I was distressed to hear them describe that they had been abused and threatened when u…”

“That is a good segue into my first question. Dr Higginson referred to the impact of the stresses and pressures on staff in previous panel. He said that 90% of senior doctors are saying that the system is unsustainable in the long term. Professor Ranger talked about the impact on nurses. If we are looking at culture and…”

“The hon. Member mentioned Storm Goretti. She and I attended the online meeting on storm recovery with Ministers two days after the event. What troubled me in that meeting was the culture that exists among service providers, and indeed Government Departments, of always seeking to reassure Ministers that everything is un…”