Speeches by Coleman.

“This is where—[Interruption.] I’m sorry; does the right hon. Gentleman want me to answer the question? [Interruption.]”

“This is where it turns into politics. By that, I mean that we very clearly promised in the manifesto not to raise income tax or national insurance on working people—that was directly understood—but the Labour party did not promise not to raise the national insurance contributions of employers, which is what has happene…”

“Mr Speaker, I take that personally, in a positive way. This is a very encouraging statement. It is great to start the new year with some good news and to be so clear that we are keeping our promises as a Government. It is also very good that we are taking the necessary time to create this cross-party consensus on socia…”

“Are we talking about housing as well? And do you think that the NHS understands sufficiently how those things operate in local authorities?”

“When you say “we” need to do that, I presume you are talking about the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care. What action are you specifically taking to ensure that the NHS takes the trouble to understand local authorities, how they work and what they can do better than now? At the moment, it is still very t…”

“It gives us things to look forward to. It was very encouraging to hear what you said about the disabled facilities grant. I think you are saying that occupational therapy is a good profession to go into under this Government. Is that right?”

“Darzi talked about damp and mould, which you touched on. As you well know, local authority funding has been denuded over the last 14 years. There is a huge problem of damp and mould for local authorities to fix. Is there an argument for some money coming from the NHS to local authorities to fix damp and mould?”

“So when you are at the Cabinet table—”

“Are we talking about public health?”

“That is very helpful. You talk about the relationship with social care. Even in social care, I feel that local authorities have a much better understanding of the NHS than the NHS has of local authority social care provision. But are we just talking about social care when we are talking about local—”

“Thank you, Secretary of State, and thanks to Tom and Matthew for coming. It is good to see you. I have to say that it is refreshing to find a Secretary of State who gets local authorities and local government. I have been on an ICB myself. I have worked, as many people here have, in local government, and I have also be…”

“I am extremely encouraged by what the Secretary of State is saying. In my constituency—I have been following this for well over two years—the amount of sewage discharge has been absolutely contemptible. In 2023 alone, Thames Water pumped sewage into the river 116 times, for 990 hours, even when it was not raining. I am…”

“May I suggest that if the right hon. Lady wishes to see the situation in the Thames, she need only go three bridges downstream to my constituency of Chelsea and Fulham, where the people who live in the Chelsea Reach houseboats regularly send me photos of the dirt and sewage coming down the river after 14 years of absol…”

“I see Stephanie wanted to come in on that.”

“What is the voluntary sector and what is the community sector? I looked at your board and that position is vacant at the moment. Is that because it is challenging to fill?”

“To come back to my original question, where are the greatest tensions? Are they between different parts of the NHS that do not want to work together, or are not used to working together, or are they between an NHS that does not understand the local authority and vice versa?”

“That is very interesting and helpful. To follow up on that, you have appointed a private sector provider to bring together everybody and do something new in children’s services. Is that because you could not get skills locally, or was it simply that bringing someone in from outside who was neutral was an easier way of …”

“Thank you very much. Saffron, do you want to talk about how we can improve the understanding between the different parties?”

“Thank you. That is very interesting. I shouldn’t pick out your board, Stephanie, because there are how many ICBs in the country now?”

“And they all operate in their own sweet way. There are a couple of things that I would like to bring out. One is the role of councillors, and the other is the better care fund, because we talked about the funding. I will ask Melanie to pick that up and talk about the agony, from the local authority perspective, of havi…”