Dr Andrew Murrison
MP for South West Wiltshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“It is good to hear that the Government plan to replenish the dwindling stocks of Patriot missiles in Ukraine, which I suspect it will need this winter. However, Patriot is low volume and high cost. What the Ukrainians need is high volume and low cost.”
“Currently, the Royal Navy has an offshore patrol vessel permanently stationed in the Falkland Islands, but given the threat that is being faced and our need to demonstrate resolve—the sort of thing that, sadly, we did not demonstrate in the early 1980s, which led to miscalculation—will the Minister consider speaking to her MOD colleagues…”
“Since the Foreign Secretary is not going to get the co-operation, fulsome or otherwise, of the Israeli state in differentiating goods and services made in the settlements from those that are assembled, repackaged, produced and grown in Israel itself, how is he going to distinguish the one from the other?”
“The Government insisted on applying the social time preference rate to the disastrous Chagos deal to make an appalling deal look slightly better.”
“Will the First Secretary of State’s exercise in delivering democracy and local accountability and empowering local people include a look at large organisations that cannot be described as governmental or as quangos but that nevertheless exist firmly within the public domain, are established by statute, serve the public and are big employe…”
“I congratulate the Government on the hiring of Alistair Burt—he is a good hire and will do great things for some of these most complex of cases—but does the Minister agree that many of these cases are extremely difficult and exceptionally traumatic, and that it is far better to prevent them happening in the first place?”
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“I absolutely agree. The functioning of remuneration committees in universities needs to be addressed. Ministers have recently set out a vehicle for doing so, and I will come on to discuss the Office for Students and how it might be used to increase transparency about remuneration. Remuneration committees are, to put it mildly, opaque. How they are constituted and how they operate varies, and their willingness to be open also varies greatly between institutions, as the University and College Union has made clear. Bath is probably not an exceptional example of transparency in the setting of vice-chancellors’ pay, and that lack of transparency means that the quality of those settlements is likely to be diminished. We know that well in this place, because we have been through some of this in our not-too-distant past.”
“I am particularly concerned about university accommodation, as I said earlier. As I understand it, the position at the University of Bath is that accommodation is ring-fenced, in the sense that receipts from halls of residence are ploughed back into more halls of residence. The position in Bath is slightly unusual and it would certainly not be right, from what I have seen, to suggest that the University of Bath is using accommodation directly as a cash cow. However, it is certainly the case that the university is making a significant profit year on year from the accommodation it provides to its captive audience on the fringes of the city of Bath.”
“If it manages to achieve that through reforming not only remuneration committees, but the general atmosphere and ethos around this, it will have done a good job and that will be an early indication that it will be a worthy successor to the Higher Education Funding Council. The purpose of this debate was simply to discuss how we might restore some balance and confidence to this particular element of university finances. I fear that I have hardly ingratiated myself with senior university administrators. I hope very much that we will continue to remunerate appropriately these heads of our wonderful national institutions, but most can agree that pay for university vice-chancellors has become excessive and that, in the months and years ahead, we need to do something about it.”
“I do not blame her for her extraordinarily generous remuneration package; I do blame the system that has allowed it. I am pleased that a lot of the things the Government have been talking about recently—particularly the Office for Students, which I know my hon. Friend the Minister will talk about in a moment—will help in that respect. In particular, the OfS will add transparency to the way in which senior people in higher education are paid, bearing in mind the charitable status of those institutions, and the fact that they are in receipt of large sums of public money and the proceeds of student indebtedness.”
“At a time of pay restraint in the university sector, as well as in others, it seems to me wholly inappropriate for the leaders of these organisations to be complicit in a system that gives them a pay rise that is way out of kilter with that being awarded to their staff. That is wholly wrong and I hope that, going forward, we will see the same sort of restraint among the senior echelons of higher education as we have seen further down the pay scale. I shall finish by being nice about the vice-chancellor of the University of Bath, because Dame Glynis Breakwell has done a grand job, over many years, and the University of Bath is a fine institution. Dame Glynis deserves warm thanks and praise for all the hard work she has put in.”
“In short, remuneration committees appear to be unsatisfactorily shadowy for organisations operating in the public or quasi-public sectors. We see instances of minutes not being published, and of redacted minutes being published. When we are dealing with public funds and student indebtedness, that is unacceptable. My other concern is about leadership. Vice-chancellors are quintessential leaders; leading is what they do. If they are not leaders, they are nothing at all. Yet some of the most senior, such as the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, have been bleating about being paid less than footballers and bankers. That does not strike me as leadership.”
“In most walks of life, that would be considered a strange feature of a remuneration committee, even if the individual who was the subject of a particular discussion absented him or herself from the room while their issue was being discussed, because pay for an individual is not seen in isolation; it is seen against the backdrop of other senior pay within the institution and senior pay in other institutions. I perceive a cartel operating in higher education, with vice-chancellors, and senior university staff generally, sharing each other’s remuneration processes to their mutual benefit. I am of course not in any way suggesting that there is some deliberate attempt to do that, but that seems to me to be how it might work in practice.”
“2 in the catalogue is the vice-chancellor of the University of Bath, who in 2014-15 occupied accommodation worth nearly £3 million, which I think would seem excessive to most. It would probably seem excessive to the parents who have recently delivered their children to university halls of residence, many of which are distinctly shabby. My chief concern about all this is the lack of transparency. The University and College Union makes transparency the crux of its survey and report, and it is right to do so. In seeking the information it has sought, it has found that universities have in many cases been reluctant to engage, and we are beginning to see why. It found that 71% of those universities that responded had their vice-chancellors as members of their remuneration committees.”
“The Minister may well be familiar with the ability of Ministers to fly long haul by business class if they have a meeting the next day—most Departments would allow that for Ministers, and I certainly recall it—but for short-haul flights of less than three hours most certainly that particular benefit would not be got. It seems excessive for universities—remember the point about their charitable status—to have their principals and senior staff fly first or business class habitually. In this day and age, that seems wholly excessive. It gets worse still. Many universities provide accommodation for their vice-chancellors. The report lists accommodation occupied by vice-chancellors, and some of it looks rather attractive, particularly that in Bath. At No.”
“Twenty-one universities that responded to the request for information—there may well be more that decided not to respond, because they do not want to share their information, for obvious reasons—ranging from high-end Bristol to the frankly obscure, send their principals only by first-class or business-class air travel. That is a remarkable thing. The vice-chancellor of the University of Bath spent £23,000 in 2014-15 on air fares and, according to the report, flew exclusively by first or business class. Members of Parliament will know full well that IPSA will take a dim view of any Member seeking to claim for anything other than economy.”
“People will not often hear a Member of Parliament being nice about IPSA, but I am nice about it; for the record, I think it does a good job in general and it has pitched that about right, because we can certainly get accommodation in London for £150 a night or outside London for £120 a night and we will not be living underneath the arches. How someone can spend £448 or £313 a night, inside or outside London, is a little beyond me—it is probably beyond my experience. That is an example of what I mean about the use of funds for charitable purposes. In what way does that expenditure advance the charitable purposes of these institutions? It gets worse, however, because the report goes on to consider air fares.”
“The University and College Union’s report of February 2016, for which I am in its debt, sheds interesting light on this subject, because it discusses not only pay, but other benefits. Although many universities did not respond to the UCU’s request for information, and so we need to be slightly guarded about its conclusions, this report nevertheless gives us some useful data. For example, it shows that Bath’s vice-chancellor spends an average of £313 a night for hotel accommodation and that Middlesex University’s vice-chancellor spends an average of £448 a night, whereas the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority will allow MPs £150 a night in London and £120 a night outside it. I make no comparison between MPs and vice-chancellors; what I would say is that £150 a night seems reasonable.”
“If we are seeing such egregious examples of the misuse of public funds and student indebtedness, as I believe we are in this case, we wonder what is happening more generally in this sector. Universities have charitable status. The Higher Education Funding Council governs that, with this subcontracted by the Charities Commission, which has written to me on this subject. It is important that we emphasise that charities—universities, in this case—have charitable purposes; they are meant to use their moneys for charitable purposes, to demonstrate charitable good. They should not be using money unless they can demonstrate that that expenditure in some way satisfies their charitable purposes.”
“We need to be careful about performance-related pay, because it is set by remuneration committees and, unless its terms are available for scrutiny, the goals could be eminently achievable. That would make a mockery of the whole thing, which comes back to my central point: we must have transparency in how pay is set if we are to have any confidence in our current system. I absolutely accept that vice-chancellor pay and benefit packages are a tiny part of a multi-billion-pound consideration in higher education. That point was made clearly by Lord Willetts when he was the universities Minister. He rightly sought to put the whole thing into perspective, but my worry is that in the remuneration of vice-chancellors and senior people in higher education we have a window into what might be going on more generally in the universities sector.”
“Friend’s earlier point about performance-related pay, and in preparing for the debate I did look at those universities that had significantly increased the level of vice-chancellor pay in the recent past and compared that with improvements as judged by the Complete University Guide set of metrics, which is used by most pundits and commentators to compare universities. The students certainly look at those figures very closely when deciding where to go. I stared at the figures and compared and contrasted them for some time, and I could not see any correlation between improved pay for vice-chancellors and improved metrics. Indeed, there is some suggestion that there is an inverse correlation, which rather bears down on the point about performance-related pay. I can see very little evidence of it operating here.”
“I am at a slight disadvantage on my right hon. Friend’s latter point, because my interest in this matter was sparked by Dame Glynis Breakwell, the vice-chancellor of the University of Bath. She is right at the top of the pay league table, so my local experience clearly does not bear his point out. I would not be surprised, however, if that was the case. The trouble is that the lack of transparency around a lot of this material in the university sector means that it is quite difficult to make that comparison. Were it to be the case—and I suspect he is right—I would clearly want the universities to address it, as it is simply not acceptable. I was interested in my right hon.”
“While it lacks its 10 political members, the Northern Ireland Policing Board remains severely constrained. Although I hope that my right hon. Friend’s efforts bear fruit, in the event that the Executive are not restored, what contingency plans does he have to enable the Policing Board to function effectively?”
“One benefit from initiatives of that sort is better understanding on the part of those young people who, with the contraction of our armed forces these days, perhaps do not have the first-hand connection with the armed forces that our generation might have had. That is an incredibly powerful thing, which brings the events alive to today’s young men and women.”
“Throughout the four years, we have focused on young people for obvious reasons. It was people of their age who, 100 years ago, were right at the forefront of all the action. It is salutary to stand at a place such as Tyne Cot and watch the reaction of young people arriving on bus tours. These are typically cynical youths, but not when looking around a place such as Tyne Cot. Just look at their faces; the penny has dropped, because they are looking at row on row of headstones above the remains of people their own age. One of the most powerful things we have done as part of the battlefield tours is to ensure, wherever we possibly can, the presence of a contemporary serviceman, so that the connection can be made.”
“Some of this is actually quite uncomfortable, and it can be uncomfortable in surprising places. Our relationship, for example, with what is now the Republic of Ireland—more than our relationship with Germany—has been advanced quite significantly over this period. When we hear people in the Republic of Ireland talking about the service of their forebears in the uniform of George V, we know that something has changed. They would not have talked openly about that or displayed those campaign medals a generation ago. That is truly remarkable, despite the fact that a lot of this history is painful for many people, so the centenary underscores the importance of commemorating history, warts and all, and ensuring that at no point do we attempt to airbrush or finesse it.”
“Evidence suggests that one of the legacies of this centenary period will be a greatly improved level of understanding of this seminal period in our recent history. All the evidence suggests that people better understand the circumstances that led up to the great war, and the conduct of that war. As we get further into the centenary, the right questions are being asked. People are asking, “What does this actually mean?” and “How does it impact on how we live today?” The big question, of course, is “How on earth do we prevent it from ever happening again?” When we come to examine all this investment in time and effort over the four years, we should also look at the diplomatic deliverables. The value of commemorating shared history has really struck me.”
“That may be the case, but it certainly served the narrative that this was a war all about chateau generals sending other men’s sons to die in terrible circumstances—a narrative that prevailed in the 1960s when we were commemorating the 50th anniversary of the conflict, and which has only recently been corrected. Public appetite for this material appears to be pretty much insatiable. The Government have been surprised by the level of interest that the centenary has provoked. We have never done this sort of thing before, so we had no real idea at the beginning how much interest there would be in the material and, frankly, how sustainable it would be. Well, the public have surpassed all our expectations, as they are proving to be incredibly receptive.”
“Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) would agree that, when examining the historical record, we need to have a particular mind to those who were writing very close to the great war. They were there and had seen it with their own eyes. They were not seeing it through the fog of a century or so, as we now are. According to Liddell Hart, Lieutenant General Sir Launcelot Kiggell, when driving up to the front line in his staff car, is meant to have said, “Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?” Nick Lloyd’s book “Passchendaele: A New History” was published this year, and his more contemporary account suggests that that was apocryphal.”
“Basil Liddell Hart was writing in the 1930s, when he said that Passchendaele was synonymous with military failure and that it was “black-bordered” in the annals of the British Army. He had some experience of serving in the trenches, and he wrote his great works on the subject between 1930 and 1934. I am particularly moved by the accounts of historians of that time because they could remember; it was pretty much fresh in their memory. As Hilary Mantel has pointed out so recently in her Reith lectures, the difficulty with history is that it seems to change all the time. As generations go by, they seem to reinterpret history all the time. Well, Liddell Hart was reporting more or less in near time with his own recollections. I hope my right hon.”
“Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who spoke from the Opposition Front Bench, was quite right to point out that this cultural loss of wonderful creative men really brings home what a wasteful period in our history this war was. Just think of what the world might have been had those men lived to become fathers, grandfathers, doctors, poets and artists—to achieve their full potential. It is almost unimaginable. Yet, that is where we are left as a result of this terrible war. According to A.J.P. Taylor, third Ypres was “the blindest slaughter of a blind war.” We have heard that close on a quarter of a million British and British empire troops were either killed or injured between 31 July and 12 November; it was a similar number on the German side.”
“The word evokes such powerful sentiment, despite the fact that it was the part of the campaign that was right at the very tail end of the engagement. The battle began relatively well. It was preceded by Messines, of which we were reminded last week as we commemorated the death of a former Member of Parliament, Major Willie Redmond, who died at 56—think of that—at that particular battle. He was a truly great man, and his death reminds us of the great waste of life and lost opportunity. In the Minister’s excellent opening speech, he rightly mentioned Francis Ledwidge, the so-called poet of the blackbirds, and Hedd Wyn, the bard of the black chair, who died at Pilckem Ridge. The hon.”
“Was it the right thing to do, and was it worth the price? Those are two very different things. In Augustinian terms, it was a just war. It satisfied all the preconditions for a just war, and it is as well that it was a war that was won. But who among us would have signed up to such a thing if we had known in advance what the dreadful cost of the war would have been? We are reminded of that cost every day as we arrive here, when we look at our own war memorial at the end of Westminster Hall. That is replicated right across the country in our war memorials, which characterise every single settlement in the British Isles. It was a cost, indeed, and one that I suspect few of us today would be prepared to countenance. The third battle of Ypres became known as Passchendaele.”
“In debates of this sort, we have a tradition of fine oratory and thoughtful contributions, which we have certainly had today. I was interested in the intervention of the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock); he rightly raised the issue of tone, which was the first question considered at the very beginning of this commemorative period, when the Government were drawing up their plans for the four-year centenary, because really on that hinges all the rest. Commemoration and celebration are phonetically very similar, but semantically they are very different indeed, and throughout this period the Government have rightly insisted that this is commemoration, most certainly not celebration. Earlier in this commemorative period, we had to address issues such as whether this was a just war in Augustinian terms.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The thing that impresses one most of all about this commemorative period is the extraordinary amount of work that has been done right across the country—some of it sponsored and assisted by the Government, some of it not, and some of it quite spontaneous in its evolution. Together, that forms a wonderful patchwork of commemorative activity, and it just shows the passion the public have for commemorating this period in our history. That suggests to me that there will, indeed, be a very rich legacy when we come towards the end of our four years.”
“We will be among friends in Belgium—a country that is extraordinarily sympathetic to this country and a good friend of ours. It is important that, whenever we have the opportunity, we reinforce in the minds of our friends and neighbours in Europe our solidarity and comradeship with them. There can be no more enduring testament to that European engagement than the Menin Gate in Ypres and Tyne Cot at Zonnebekke.”
“I would just ask colleagues, as they look among those headstones and gaze up among those names carved in stone, to reflect on this country’s contribution to European history. Whether we are Brexiteers or not—and I am a completely signed-up Brexiteer—we need to understand that we are Europeans; that is what we have always been, and that is what we will always be. We should take absolutely no nonsense from those who, for their own purposes, try to suggest that we are in some way disengaged from Europe. I am proud of our history. This country has always been there when Europe needed us—when we needed to face down the general disturber of the peace. I am confident that we will continue to do just that. Two weeks’ time will be a solemn time for our country. The media will most certainly be focused on Tyne Cot and Ypres.”
“We will stand there among the row upon row of headstones, we will look at the Menin Gate, with its rank upon rank of names carved in stone, and we will be left with a sense of wonder. We will try to work out what it all means. In the context of the debate we are having about our future in Europe, one wonders perhaps what others think of us, too. There are those in Europe who say that this country is somehow less than European—that we are poor Europeans. I would just say this: it has always been the case, and it is the case now—this country was certainly demonstrating this full well 100 years ago—that there is no country in Europe that is more engaged in Europe than the United Kingdom.”
“Flanders is, of course, pasture land, and crops cannot be grown there, because it is far too wet. The reason it can be utilised for agricultural purposes at all is that it has an advanced system of water engineering. Bombardment means that that is completely destroyed. It was not for the first time in the first world war that the British Army knew the full consequences of the destruction of that system. The combination of heavy rainfall and the destruction of civil engineering in that area made it a complete quagmire, which gave Passchendaele its particular awfulness. I would like to finish on a contemporary note. In two weeks’ time, many of us will be privileged to attend the commemorations in Ypres and Tyne Cot.”
“It is remarkable that the third battle of Ypres was not only preceded by Messines—a victory that I think encouraged Hague in his dialogue with Lloyd George— but succeeded the success at Cambrai, which was remarkable for another reason, in that it introduced mechanised warfare realistically for the first time on the western front. That was the gathering note for what became a far more kinetic stage in the last 100 days of the war. For most people in this country, what makes Passchendaele special, as it were, is the mud and blood. It was quite different from the Somme, which resulted in far more casualties. That mud was caused by rain, of course, but also by the inundation of Flanders following the barrage of artillery that completely destroyed all the dykes and engineering that held back the sea from that part of the world.”
“It struck me that if the Canadians can do so well from a distance of 3,000 miles, we can probably do something rather similar from a distance of 200 miles. Right now, we have established the first tranche of our centenary interns, who will guide people around the principal sites for us—Tyne Cot and Thiepval—under the supervision of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. When colleagues and others visit the western front and the cemeteries and sites of importance in northern France and Belgium, I hope they will look out for the very obvious orange T-shirt uniforms of our centenary interns. Those I met last week when I visited Tyne Cot were people of exceptional quality, and I am sure people will be very pleased to see them and to be guided by them around those sites.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and she is absolutely right. That gives me the opportunity to say that this is, of course, not just about the western front. I am pleased that she mentioned Italy. It is important, as part of this four-year commemorative period, that people do come to appreciate that the first world war was, indeed, a world war, and the Italian campaign is an important part of that. May I also mention centenary interns while I am talking about young people? I hope this project will become an important part of our presence on what was the western front for people wishing to visit commemorative sites. The Canadians have, for a long time, had young people guiding visitors from Canada around sites on the western front that are particularly important to Canadians.”
“Will the Minister comment on the concern of the Bar of Northern Ireland that the criteria under which a challenge can be brought under section 7 of the 2007 Act is really very narrow and confined to exceptional circumstances? That concern comes out clearly in the consultation and is expected to be addressed in some way.”
“What a delight it is to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also congratulate the Minister; it is good to see her in the Chamber. I was very interested in the comments of the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock). We clearly need to be concerned about whether this arrangement risks verdicts being less safe than would be the case under the system that we enjoy throughout the rest of the United Kingdom. The hon. Lady has presumably seen table 5 in the consultation response. That interesting table shows quite clearly that the chances of acquittal are higher under a non-jury system. What I am slightly worried about, and this touches on the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee—”
“However, with that in mind, I certainly support the order.”
“As I said in my intervention on the Minister, the grounds for a legal challenge under section 7 of the 2007 Act are really quite stringent, and it has been pointed out by the chief executive of the Bar of Northern Ireland that we might like to review that. I very much welcome the review that the Minister spoke about, and I hope very much that this issue will be included in it. In our enthusiasm to ensure that we are as normal in Northern Ireland as in the rest of the United Kingdom, and that we do as little as is necessary to except Northern Ireland from the normal criminal justice system we have in this country, we do need to look at detail such as this to ensure that, when we can improve matters in the way the Bar in Northern Ireland appears to suggest, we do that, if at all possible.”
“However, we need to start thinking about how to put in place measures that will come into force after we decide that we no longer need section 7 of the 2007 Act, as most of us hope that that will be sooner rather than later. That may well mean some sort of protection for those involved in the system. The only other issue is the granularity I would rather like to see in table 5 so that we can know exactly—this touches on one or two comments that have been made this afternoon—who these people are who are being tried by this alternative means, because it is only with that information that we can really make sense of informatics such as that table.”
“In other words, what do we need to do to prepare for that point and protect those who are engaged, one way or another, in the justice system, so that people are not intimidated? The PSNI has made it clear, as we might expect, that it sees real problems in putting alternatives in place—that is, protecting people in the community from the sort of intimidation that the 2007 Act is meant to militate against. Having been a Minister in the Department, I can fully understand why the PSNI might shrink from the proposition that it could be an alternative to the provisions of the 2007 Act, as it would find that extremely onerous.”
“It is remarkable that all that is carried out in Northern Ireland, which is a small part of the country, and it clearly suggests that the situation in Northern Ireland is not yet sufficiently normal for us to consider setting aside the provisions of section 7 of the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 and relying instead on the 2003 Act. One or two respondents to the consultation asked a number of questions, one of which I touched on in my intervention. On the assumption that we will default to the 2003 Act as opposed to section 7 of the 2007 Act at some point in the future—sooner rather than later, I hope—one respondent asks what we need to put in place.”
“It is a credit to the system that we keep it under such regular review and that we are extremely cautious about the difference in Northern Ireland compared with the rest of the United Kingdom that sets to one side our precious jury system, which is so fundamental to the way in which criminal justice runs in the United Kingdom. David Seymour is absolutely right. Not enough has changed for us to consider not putting in place the extension at this point. We have heard about the five deaths last year, the 29 bombings and the 61 shootings. Most of us who live in the rest of the United Kingdom find that extraordinary.”
“The question will be when the situation is sufficiently normal in Northern Ireland to enable us to default to the position under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which, under very exceptional circumstances and using a very high hurdle indeed, allows for non-jury trials. It is pretty clear that we are not there yet. The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who speaks from the Opposition Front Bench, said that the independent reviewer appears to be content with the current situation and believes that the situation has not changed sufficiently for us to fail to pass this extension of two years at this point.”
“Well, let us say Chair of the Select Committee for the time being. I am slightly worried about these informatics and what the numbers actually represent. Who were the people given over to a non-jury trial, and who were those tried by jury? It is difficult to make head or tail of the figures without that granularity. But, taken at face value, the process looks safe. Indeed, several consultees suggested that that is the case, so we should derive some comfort from that. I support the proposition outlined by the Minister. It is important to understand that this is part of a process; it is not Diplock courts. When the original legislation was passed in 2007, it was felt that things were sufficiently normal in Northern Ireland to move to this next level.”
“One of the consequences of free movement in the European Union is that proportionately we take in rather fewer doctors, in particular, and fewer nurses from the Indian subcontinent and other places. What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the capacity to revisit the strong relationship we had with those workforces in the immediate post-war years?”
“Notwithstanding the commitment to parity in the Good Friday agreement, does my right hon. Friend agree that the military covenant needs to be applied throughout the country, regardless of where servicemen and women live?”
“I always listen to the hon. Lady with care and respect, but I appeal to her to look at the evidence base before making the remarks that she has. Words are important. We have established an inquiry that will establish the facts and make recommendations. Until then, with the greatest respect, I think that her remarks are premature.”
“Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) that we should achieve consensus through a cross-party commission on this issue, so that we can discuss, in the NHS’s 70th anniversary year, how to get sustainable funding for our NHS and make sure that this great national institution is fit for the next 70 years.”