(L-R) Matt Warman MP, Nick Boles MP, PCC Marc Jones, Victoria Atkins MP, Sir Edward Leigh MP

A group of Lincolnshire’s Conservative MPs have held a roundtable with the county’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Marc Jones, to receive an update after his first 18 months in office, and to address key issues including future funding and the changing nature of crime.

Marc Jones PCC highlighted the many positive steps which have been taken since his election, including bringing in sobriety tags to combat alcohol-fuelled crime, a new rural community safety strategy, online crime reporting, and the joint Police and Fire HQ in Nettleham, which the force received £7.6 million of funding from the Home Office to establish.

The group, including Sir Edward Leigh MP, Nick Boles MP, Matt Warman MP and Victoria Atkins MP, also discussed the challenges of policing in a rural, sparsely populated region, and how they can work together for the best possible outcomes for Lincolnshire, both in securing funding and reducing crime.

The meeting follows a recent visit to Lincolnshire’s Police HQ by Policing Minister Nick Hurd MP, at which he heard about the Force’s recent investments and advancements, especially in the use of technology to help frontline officers. The Minister and the PPC also discussed the changing nature of demand on police resources.

After the update meeting, Matt Warman MP commented, “Lincolnshire Police achieve remarkable results with very limited resources, making us the fourth-safest county in the country. Marc Jones has skillfully used reserves and extra grants to make real progress since his election – but I know it would be helpful to see a long-term solution to police funding with a new, Fairer Funding Formula. The Government has delivered this for education and is looking at it for local government. It’s vital for policing too. It was very helpful to meet with Marc to discuss how we can collaborate to get the best possible resources for the police in our county. While Lincolnshire is one of the safest counties to live in, there is always more work to do to protect people from crime and anti-social behaviour. Lincolnshire’s MPs will continue to work together, alongside our PCC, to lobby the Government for the resources that our police force deserve.”

Marc Jones PPC said, “It was a very positive and productive meeting with our local MPs and I’m delighted with the support they have given me.

A great deal of progress has been made by my office in terms of creating efficient and effective force with developments in new technology, clear strategies for tackling rural crime and joint working. The future funding for policing in Lincolnshire is an absolutely crucial issue for the whole county and all the MPs understood and supported the need for a resolution as soon as possible.”

The post NEXT STEPS FOR LINCOLNSHIRE POLICING – LOCAL MPS HOLD ROUNDTABLE WITH POLICE AND CRIME COMMISSIONER appeared first on Matt Warman MP.

West Worcestershire MP Harriett Baldwin today celebrated a huge win for county commuters after the Department for Transport confirmed funding for the Carrington Road bridge doubling project. read more »

This week in Parliament the Lancet Commission hosted an event to raise awareness of liver disease, one of the most pressing public health concerns of our time.

A number of recently announced changes to the roll out of Universal Credit have been branded as ‘sensible’ by local MP John Lamont.

Changes include the roll out of a free phone helpline number and new guidance to ensure DWP staff offer up-front advance payments to anyone who needs it. In the next few weeks, all helpline numbers to the Department of Work and Pension will be made free.

I was fascinated to read about the 60th anniversary of the Premier Foods factory, known of course to older readers and traditionalists as the Batchelors factory in Kennington. I remember being told when I first visited the plant (I am a reasonably regular visitor) that the origins lay in pea production, as Ashford was ideally situated for the processing of peas.

Derek Thomas MP during the debate on Wednesday

I am often contacted by small business owners who are being hampered by today’s taxation system. 87% of business enterprises in my West Cornwall constituency are classed as “micro businesses ” meaning they employ less than 10 employees and 99% of businesses in my constituency are SMEs  employing under 250 workers. These small, locally run businesses provide the lion’s share of jobs and are the drivers of our local economies.  This is also the case elsewhere in the country which is why understanding how the tax system helps or hinders small businesses is so important and is why I was pleased to be able to hold a Westminster Hall Debate on the subject.

Since being elected in 2015, I have dedicated a considerable amount my time to meet with and understand the issues facing small businesses. In fact, I had a small business of my own up until the time of my election. I believe that the Conservative government recognises the considerable contribution of small businesses and I acknowledge and appreciate the work that has been done to address the tax burden and support these small employers. Many of the 3 million jobs created since 2010 are within small businesses and this in part is a credit to Government policy.

There is no shortage of priorities for the Government, and navigating our way out of the EU will be time consuming to say the least. However, I believe more needs to be done to help small businesses. Now is the time to take a radical approach to the way businesses are taxed. We need to recognise that some aspects of taxation are outdated and have not kept up with the changes that small businesses must contend with.

While reformation will be a challenge, it will undoubtedly yield benefits to our national economy including by improving productivity, driving wage growth, boosting full time employment and spread wealth across all corners of Great Britain.

From my conversations with business owners, I believe that the Government needs to raise the VAT threshold, reform business rates and properly consider the impacts making tax digital before a compulsory roll out.

Businesses are struggling to cope with the financial and administrative burdens of these taxations, whilst operating on an unfair playing field compared to online shops and supermarket home delivery services. A taxation system that discourages small business growth will have reduced employment opportunities, reduced Government tax income, depressed town centre activity and a lack of diversity between enterprises.

By making sure that small business growth is not stifled by out of date and grossly unfair taxation systems the Government will send a clear message that Brexit does not mean that important domestic priorities are not being left on the back burner.

You can watch the full debate here: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/d88cb1dd-c90a-4665-bda6-3af9e6320b72

Important statement from the Prime Minister today. Southampton has a significant European community who I have been supporting in seeking clarity on their future status in the UK. I am very pleased by this announcement that existing European Citizens will now be able to plan for the future with certainty. PM OPEN LETTER As I [...]

The post Prime Minister’s Statement on EU Nationals appeared first on Royston Smith - At the heart of Southampton.

Social care largely delivered by Councils with the help of a range of contractors and service suppliers needs to work smoothly alongside the NHS.

Councils have a vital role to play in helping reduce the burden on NHS hospitals. It is too easy to place elderly and infirm individuals into hospital where they should be safe, even though they do not need hospital treatment. They may go in for tests, only to have to stay because there is no sufficient care package to allow them to go home alone. Hospitals are also open all hours and at week-ends, whereas social care services may be more restricted outside weekday regular hours.

Social care nurses or executives may think it prudent to send someone for tests after an incident even though there are  no signs of harm and even though the patient is saying they are  not in pain or difficulty. It often takes time to assemble a case conference and assessment to upgrade care so an individual can look after themselves with suitable support.

Social care also needs to work well alongside GPs, and with hospitals after the discharge of patients. Elderly and infirm individuals may need help with daily tasks, and need some supervision or assistance with a course of treatment at home. It can be cheaper as well as better to take the care to the patient, but needs organising successfully.

Councils say they need more resource to do their jobs well, whilst hospitals are worried that they are still having to look after people who could manage at home with suitable help. The border disputes between the NHS and social care go back a long way and have happened under a variety of governments. There is no easy solution,  but it would be good if Councils and the NHS can improve their joint working where there currently issues with bed blocking or inadequate medical back up out of hospital.

I would be interested in comments on this matter. I am not raising it as a result of any local complaints which I would handle in another way.

Speaking in Prime Minister's Questions, James Cleverly highlights new local training facilities in the manufacturing sector and calls on the Government to support both public and private sector trainers to help improve productivity.

Arun Mummalaneni and Sreeni Vavilala, Chair and Trustee of the Basingstoke Multi Cultural Forum joined local MP Maria Miller for a celebration of Diwali on Monday 16th October in Downing Street.  

Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, is the most popular of all the festivals from South Asia, it is also the occasion for celebrations by Jains and Sikhs as well as Hindus.

On Tuesday 17 October, Victoria Prentis and a number of other Oxfordshire MPs joined together in a Westminster Hall debate called by Witney MP, Robert Courts, to discuss the future of healthcare in Oxfordshire.

Opening the session, Robert Courts raised concerns about GP and maternity services, stroke care and the Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group’s recent consultation. His points were echoed by neighbouring MPs, including Ed Vaizey (Wantage), Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon), John Howell (Henley) and Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford on Avon) . Victoria highlighted issues relating to population growth, safety and communication. Within this, she emphasised problems with the processes followed by health chiefs in the County, particularly in relation to the split nature of the consultation and a lack of real engagement with local people. Towards the end of her speech, Victoria outlined the need for “reasoned and evidence based conversations about the future”, expressing the determination felt locally to protect vital acute services in North Oxfordshire.

After the debate, Victoria commented: “I am very pleased that my neighbour and fellow local MP, Rob Courts, secured such an important debate in Westminster this morning. It is clear that we are united in our frustration with local health providers.The Clinical Commissioning Group must engage and consult local people properly, and across county boundaries, to enable us to move forward safely. The fight for acute services and local health care continues.”

The below account is taken from the Official Report from Tuesday 17 October 2017

Victoria Prentis (Banbury, Con): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I made my first speech about the Horton General Hospital when I was seven. I apologise that many people in this Chamber will have heard it before, but I do not know that you have had that pleasure, so with your permission, I will carry on.

Let us remember what we are talking about. The Horton is not a community hospital. It has been a pleasure to listen to colleagues talk about their community hospitals; we have heard about Wantage and Abingdon, and one rarely meets my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) without hearing him mention the Townlands, of which he is very proud. I love community hospitals too; my mother helped run Brackley Cottage Hospital for most of my childhood and until recently, and I think that the marvellous hospital in Bicester still has untapped potential. However, the Horton General Hospital, which I will talk about, is quite different.

The Horton has hundreds of beds and treats about 39,000 people in accident and emergency every year—nearly one third of Oxfordshire’s A&E attendances. What happens at the Horton affects all my colleagues, due to the knock-on effects of closure. Our surgeons are among the top five in the UK for neck and femur operations. It is not a community hospital; it is a fully functioning, very busy district general.

We feel beleaguered. For more than 40 years, the John Radcliffe Hospital has viewed us as a smaller and less academic sibling that can be treated with contempt when staffing is short. In 2008—this is not ancient history; it is nine years ago—the Independent Reconfiguration Panel was asked to consider the last proposed downgrade of paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology and the special care baby unit. It conducted, as I hope it will again, a full five-month review and made five excellent recommendations, which I will read once more.

The first recommendation was:

“The IRP considers that the Horton Hospital has an important role for the future in providing local hospital-based care to people in the north of Oxfordshire and surrounding areas. However, it will need to change to ensure its services remain appropriate, safe and sustainable.”

On the proposed downgrades, it said:

“The IRP does not consider that they will provide an accessible or improved service to the people of north Oxfordshire and surrounding areas.”

Other recommendations were:

“The PCT should carry out further work with the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust to set out the arrangements and investment necessary to retain and develop services at the Horton Hospital. Patients, the public and other stakeholders should be fully involved in this work… The PCT must develop a clear vision for children’s and maternity services within an explicit strategy for services for north Oxfordshire as a whole… The ORH must do more to develop clinically integrated practice across the Horton, John Radcliffe and Churchill sites as well as developing wider clinical networks with other hospitals, primary care and the independent sector.”

I am afraid that none of that happened. The recommendations were made nine years ago, but none of them were followed. The only things that changed were that the traffic got worse and the population of the area grew. Our district council, I am proud to say, tops the leader board for house building.

Less than 10 years later, we now have no obstetrics or SCBU. They went in the blink of an eye, without any real attempt to address recruitment issues or work with us to do so, although we offered and offered. Locally, we remain deeply unhappy and frightened. Patients in the later stages of labour are travelling for up to two hours, and emergency gynaecological operations take place in a portakabin in the Radcliffe car park. We have heard stories locally—in fact, they are all people talk about—of babies born in lay-bys and in the back of ambulances. The data that show statistics of complete births—defined by when the placenta has been delivered—tell a different story; they do not register the reality of people’s experience.

I pay tribute to what my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) said about Google Maps. Locally, the impression is that the CCG and the trust massage the figures and use them when it suits their argument. I conducted a travel survey of nearly 400 people on their real-life experiences of how long it takes to get from our area to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Sadly, those data were not taken on board in any of the CCG’s reports, although the data set was bigger and better than the CCG’s. The CCG provided real data only when we had harangued, pestered and begged it to do so.

I will not go on about how worried I am; I will focus on what we can do to put the situation right. It is true, as all hon. Members have said, that local health providers do not talk to one another. Health Education England’s decision to remove training accreditation for middle-grade obstetricians was the straw that broke the camel’s back for recruitment, yet it remains aloof and makes decisions in a vacuum. Its recent decision to remove accreditation from certain grades of anaesthetists puts all the acute services provided by the Horton at risk. The dean did not communicate that decision to decision makers at the trust or the CCG; I had to tell them at a meeting in August. I do not think that that is an acceptable way to run a healthcare system.

The trust usually tells the CCG what to do. When it does not agree, there is stalemate. The trust, the clinicians and everyone else locally know that the A&E at the Horton cannot possibly be shut, because the knock-on effects on the rest of Oxfordshire and the surrounding counties would be catastrophic. The CCG, however, is determined to press ahead with its consultation that suggests otherwise. Owing to this impasse, we have ended up with a split consultation that means nothing to any of us. Patients’ needs appear to be an afterthought. South Central Ambulance Service, which bears the brunt of the transfers, is carried along as a consultee with no voice at the table when decisions are taken.

One of the main complaints is that local health decision makers do not listen to us. Our latest consultation report described the “universal concerns” of more than 10,000 people from my area who responded to our consultation. I cannot overemphasise the strength of local feeling. We all feel the same: all the elected representatives, of whatever party; a great campaigning group, Keep the Horton General; and even the local churches, which are praying for sense in the clinical commissioning group’s decision making. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) laughs, but I am afraid it is impossible to overstate how essential our local hospital is to people in our area. He may think it is funny, but we do not.

Mr Vaizey (Wantage, Con): For the record, I am laughing because I have never heard of a church praying for sense from a clinical commissioning group. That highlights the parlous state that we find ourselves in.

Victoria Prentis (Banbury, Con): Quite.

At our last meeting, the trust’s chief executive told me that my fears about the Horton were “irrational”, but those fears are shared by the IRP—at least they were nine years ago, and I hope they still are—and by about 170,000 people who are served by the Horton. Rather than try to answer my questions, the chief executive simply dismissed them. I do not think that that is an acceptable way to behave.

We still do not know whether a father can transfer with a labouring mother from the midwife-led unit at the Horton. If not, how on earth is he supposed to get to north Oxford while she gives birth? We still do not know—although I have asked more often than I care to remember—whether the static ambulance will be stationed permanently at the Horton while all this is sorted out. As we have heard from all hon. Members, the CCG and the trust do not communicate with us elected representatives or with the general public, and often not even with each other. It has been left to me to organise public meetings locally. NHS Improvement was absolutely appalled when I showed it the pile of unanswered letters that I had written to the CCG and the trust. Hon. Members beyond the county boundary whose constituents use the Horton are completely overlooked.

Local health services may well be devolved to commissioners and providers, but if this is devolution, Minister, it is not working. The chief executive and the clinical lead of the CCG are leaving before the end of the year. I cannot pretend that I am unhappy about that—I have hardly been uncritical of how the CCG runs its affairs—but I have to say that I am not optimistic that the necessary changes will be made. The new clinical lead, whose appointment was announced yesterday, will be the former maternity lead. Although I will work with her, and I hope very much that she will engage with the issues we face, I am not optimistic. The CCG is hellbent on continuing the split consultation, despite various judicial reviews—I can tell it that there will be more to come, if necessary—and three referrals to the IRP, which presumably will not have changed its mind since nine years ago, particularly given the unprecedented growth in the town. Whoever takes on the CCG job is inheriting a poisoned chalice.

I am not going to give up, and nor are the constituents I represent. After all, I do not think that Banbury elected a bereaved mother with a passion for maternal safety, 20 years’ experience of judicial review and a 15-year background of voluntary work for the trust by accident. In 2008, local GPs were pivotal in the fight to save the Horton, but this time, poor leadership and an ever increasing workload—particularly given the town’s growth—have prevented them from being the vocal force that they once were. However, I have found allies in NHS Improvement, which has been investigating the trust, and in the Care Quality Commission, which can prosecute. I look forward to working further with those allies.

If help with recruitment is the answer, we need the Department to step in. Salary supplements for trainee GPs are really welcome, not just for rural or coastal areas but for market towns that face unprecedented growth. The catchment is predicted to increase from 170,000 to 207,000. We really need obstetricians. The district council has made sensible suggestions for developing and improving the Horton site; I just wish the CCG and the trust would look at them. They were included in the response to the consultation—I also made a very extensive response—but when I mentioned them at the last meeting in August, none of this had registered with the decision makers. I do wonder about the depth and quality of the work they do.

I know that the Horton has a future as a provider of acute services. I am sorry to use the language of war, but I welcome the sight of my hon. Friend the Member for Witney defending my right flank, as he so often does. Ever since he was elected, he has been a real ally and friend in this fight. We in Banbury are most grateful to him for all his work and for securing this debate. I also welcome the support of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), who are both in Cabinet this morning but will be interested in this debate. They both feel as we do about our hospital in Banbury. My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) was present earlier; his district council has been a great ally, has brought one of the judicial reviews, and continues to support us—even though, as far as I can tell, it is not consulted about anything by the Oxfordshire CCG. I really feel that we are beleaguered, so it is lovely to see hon. Members appearing like battalions, with patients and GPs in their wake, to support all of us who use the Horton General Hospital.

We are not irrational, but we are passionate. We want a reasoned and evidence-based conversation about the future. We are very, very determined, so I am afraid everyone in this Chamber will have to listen to this speech many, many more times.

Today, I joined Vicky Young on BBC News to discuss the latest economic news and the EU negotiations. We heard on the Treasury Committee this morning from the Governor of the Bank of England that inflation should now drop back down in the next month or so and about the importance of cooperation on clearing to financial stability on the continent. No side wants to walk away without an agreement and a deal is in our mutual interests.