Luke Pollard
MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“As the Member of Parliament for Devonport, where we not only base-port but refit Type 23s, I know that many of those ships that have given decades of service are no longer able to provide the capabilities we need.”
“It is unlike the SNP to be so positive about defence, isn’t it? The Type 83 and Type 32 were PowerPoints—there was no budget attached to them. That is why in the defence investment plan we set out a plan for a common combat vessel and a hybrid Navy to fulfil the opportunities that the retirement of the Type 45 presents for us.”
“If the right hon. Gentleman is talking about a salary of up to £1 billion, he is cosplaying as the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), isn’t he? Seriously, we are the third-largest cash spender in NATO. At the spending review next year, we will be setting out an increase in defence spending.”
“My hon. Friend really is the Member of Parliament for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, as she is determined to champion it so frequently. She will have seen in the defence investment plan our commitment to the new generation of fleet solid support ships, and she will have seen the work that this Government have undertaken since 2024 to address…”
“I say seriously to the House that my hon. Friend has been an incredible advocate for Rosyth. I have met him on a large number of occasions, and he has been absolutely determined to talk not just about the potential of Rosyth, but about the professionalism of the men and women who work there and the opportunity for young people to have a c…”
“We inherited a situation where the north-east was the region with the lowest Ministry of Defence spend in the country and we have made it a mission to increase defence spending in the north-east. We have an incredible talent pool in the north-east, with brilliant defence companies both large and small doing brilliant work.”
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“Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) asked a fair question about why the Government are pressing ahead with cuts to our armed forces before the integrated review reports. What happens if the integrated review says that we should have kept the capabilities and equipment that the Ministry of Defence is scrambling to scrap now? It is no secret that next-generation light anti-tank weapons have been vital to the defence of Ukraine, but the Secretary of State has yet to adequately explain whether a new contract to replenish UK NLAW stockpiles has been signed, and with whom. NLAW production will require old production lines to be rebuilt and restarted. If an order was placed today, how long would it be before a new NLAW rolled off the production line? Would it really be two years away?”
“The Defence Secretary previously argued against that, but now argues for it, which is a welcome U-turn from the Government. I know that the Minister has had a similar change of heart, and that is also welcome. However, the Government have given little signal as to what will be in the integrated review refresh and how it will be updated. I would be grateful if the Minister also set out what he believes needs to be updated in the integrated review. Does the review have clear terms of reference that can be scrutinised? Will he tell us which cuts to the armed forces he now wants to reverse and whether further Army cuts will be halted? At the last Defence questions, my hon.”
“And humanitarian support. In August, the Government announced that the UK and its allies would begin to establish a plan of action to support Ukraine into 2023, but we still have not seen one. Will the Minister say where it is and why there is a delay in producing the plan? We are running out of 2022—will the report and strategy be ready by the end of the year? What state is it in now, and is it a costed plan or just a set of ambitions? We ask those questions not to put the Minister on the hook or in a bad place but to press him, because we want to see the support gotten right, and scrutiny and clarity for the United Kingdom will help our allies to ensure that they are equally as robust in supporting Ukraine. Even before the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Labour had been making the case for an updated integrated review.”
“To conclude, let there be no doubt that Labour Members share the Government’s resolve to support Ukraine for as long as is necessary to defeat Putin. As the Ukrainian countryside turns to mud and then freezes over, we are about to enter an incredibly difficult winter, as military doctrine normally suggests, with frontlines frozen and civilian populations suffering further. The Ukrainians are showing incredible resolve in standing up to Russia, but they cannot do it without continued western support. How we use the winter months to prepare for the expected spring offensives—ensuring our supply lines, commitment, resolve and technologies are available to our friends in Ukraine—will be crucial in keeping the pressure firmly on the Kremlin and ensuring that Ukraine wins.”
“We are talking about not just state-sponsored hacking and cyber-attacks—that is one end of the spectrum—but all our constituents seeing things on their Facebook news feeds that are deliberately deployed and shared to try to split and degrade public opinion and create the impression that the United Kingdom’s support for our friends in Ukraine is somehow coming from a dark place, when it is not. That means further action to strengthen our work on social media. It means looking at where Russia is investing in disinformation and how we can strengthen our civil society against that in future. I hope the Minister and his colleagues, for instance those looking after the Online Safety Bill, will take that seriously, too. It is not just military grade activity we need to look at; it is everything through to how each of us uses our social media.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She is right. Putin has invested heavily in disinformation technologies and resources to spread misinformation and disinformation in social media news feeds right across the world, including here in the United Kingdom. That investment was not made on a whim. It was made against a clear strategy, with the wish being to divide, split and misinform western populations and use our democracy against us. To protect our democracy and our allies, we must be absolutely determined to tackle disinformation, misinformation and those dark cyber-activities online.”
“I declare an interest as a massive gay. As an England-supporting homosexual, it is not safe for someone like me to watch the World cup in Qatar. Because of the human rights abuses of migrant workers and of Qatar’s LGBT population, I personally do not think Qatar should ever have been awarded a major sporting competition. Will the Minister back the home nations captains in wearing a rainbow armband when they play at the World cup? Will he also apologise for the Foreign Secretary’s remark that LGBT fans should somehow show compromise, because it is never acceptable for a Government Minister to force LGBT people back into the closet?”
“On 20 October, I raised with the Minister whether the Home Secretary had shared documents not just by email, but on WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram. Does the hon. Member agree with me that the Home Secretary’s letter to the Home Affairs Committee only talks about email, but there has been no certainty over whether any document—confidential, secret or otherwise —might have been shared on other social media messaging apps?”
“Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine has led many NATO members to reboot their defence plans. The Defence Secretary now agrees with Labour that the integrated review needs updating. Would it not be absurd to cut the Army any further when Ukraine and our NATO allies are facing such clear and rising hostility? Can the Minister tell us which cuts he wants to reverse? Can he tell us whether further Army cuts will finally be halted, as Labour has consistently argued for?”
“I encourage him to look at how religious education can be not just a hallmark of the Department for Education’s approach to our young people, but part of our overall strategy to address rising hate in our society by working across Government to celebrate diversity and equip all our young people not just to understand the world they are going into but to thrive in it and benefit from the diversity in our communities and across our planet.”
“However, the same value that we come to the debate with should encourage us to ensure that every child has an understanding of the diversity of faith, the diversity of values and, importantly, the similarity of values. When hate is on the rise, we have a choice about what we do about it. We need to arrest the immediacy of rising hate—the hate crimes against people based on their religion, background or sexuality—but we do so best when we root out the causes of that hate. That is not just with a counter-terrorism strategy or increased policing; it is with education. I wish the Minister the best of luck in his role.”
“That is wholly insufficient if teachers are to understand the fabulous diversity of faith on our planet, let alone how to communicate it to our young people. I support the call for the Government to look again at reintroducing initial teacher training bursaries for RE. If we are to value RE in our school system, we must value the teaching of it and, therefore, the training of teachers in it. As mentioned, having a national standard for religious education to challenge Ofsted is really important. Worship is not religious education, but it is what many people come to this debate through. They are concerned that the values they were taught have somehow deteriorated or been eroded or removed.”
“It is not just a document to sit on a Department for Education shelf; it is a way of motivating RE teachers to see their own value and of saying to them, “What you teach our young people matters.” It is a way of saying that weak or invisible teaching should be challenged, whether by Ofsted, governing bodies, headteachers, parent governors or children themselves, with a focus on what has happened. Over the past five years, more and more teachers have come into our school system with zero hours of teaching in RE, so they lack a deep knowledge of religious education. Teacher training lasts five years, and 20% of teachers reported no RE training, and a further 20% reported less than three hours’ training.”
“We think there is importance in studying it.” We should therefore focus on how we train our teachers and ensure they are equipped with the deep knowledge to interrogate and communicate faith and share experiences with others. That is why the asks of the hon. Member for Cleethorpes were so powerful. The good folks at NATRE have done a great job in sharing briefing materials with Members—I am sure we will hear that a few times. In particular, I pay tribute to Katie Freeman, a brilliant young RE teacher from Plymouth, whom many hon. Members will have met. The way she expressed to me her calls for a national plan for RE made it human.”
“That is not to say that the subjects the Government have focused on in recent years are not worthy of focus—maths and English are important for everyone—but our education system should deliver well-rounded young people to the world. Without an understanding of RE, there is a hole in their education. RE is vital to being not only a good global citizen but a good British citizen, which is what we should seek to create. That is why this debate is about not just faith but politics. At the next general election, I would like every major political party to include a simple line in their manifesto stating that RE should be taught more in schools. Parties should say, “We recognise the value of this.”
“Teaching a child to engage in the differences in the sensitive area of religion equips them with the skills of critical thought and listening to others and with the attitudes of empathy and discernment, expressed with courtesy. Those words matter because that is the type of person I want to see leaving our school system: someone who has strongly held, thoughtful views of their own, but who can also listen to someone else, even if they disagree, and who can challenge their own views and help inform others. Like dance, modern languages and drama, RE is an endangered species in our school curriculum; it is being squeezed out by an attempt to focus on a smaller number of subjects.”
“Regardless of whether someone is religious or not, understanding our culture, philosophy and politics matters, and that will be so much harder unless we equip our young people from an early age with an understanding of religion, the different values within religion, the tensions between religions and the fact that, at the heart of every major world faith, is a similar principle: to love each other and to do good to one another. However it is formed, in whatever book it is written, and however people worship, it is the same human principle of looking after one another. Religious education matters, and it should matter to more of us more often today.”
“RE is often valued for its contribution to values education—the teaching of values, which are the foundational building blocks of our society. Our diverse society provides an opportunity for students to examine values from a variety of religious and secular points of view. That is at the heart of what teaching religious education can provide as an output. Although the west is increasingly secular, it is worth saying that we are an outlier globally. The vast majority of people on our planet lead a religious life in some way, and we are setting our children up to fail if we do not teach them the value of understanding different societies, so that they can draw on the benefits of that diversity in their own lives and in a way that benefits our culture as a whole. British culture would not be where it is today if it were not for religion.”
“It is good to see you in the Chair, Dame Maria. I thank the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) for introducing the debate so well and for clearly setting out his asks, which are shared cross-party. I declare an interest as the proud son of a theologian. My mum taught me from an early age the importance of not just understanding difference but celebrating it. That is at the heart of the utility of religious education—the teaching of religions in modern Britain. If a cause can unite a fabulously camp lefty MP such as me and Government Members, I have to say to the Minister—it is good to see him back—that it is a cause worth listening to, because it unites the entire stretch of parliamentary debate.”
“I welcome the Secretary of State, a fellow Devon MP, to his position. Will he agree to meet me and Barnardo’s to discuss the concerns of care leavers from Devon, whom I recently hosted in Westminster, who without a rent guarantor cannot afford a deposit on a rental property of their own. Will he consider a pilot to help those young people get a better start in life?”
“Can he explain why the Government continue to resist Labour’s proposal that the most serious cases, including murder, manslaughter and rape, should be tried in civilian courts instead of military courts? What progress has been made on the RAF’s review of allegations of sexual assault, which was announced in August? Will those findings be made public? Our armed forces are the very best in the world, and they deserve the very best, too. The Government must step up and protect those who protect us.”
“Women account for 11% of our forces personnel but, between 2019 and last year, 81% of victims of sexual assault in the military were women, and almost half of them were at the start of their military career. Behind these statistics are hundreds of women who have been let down. This cannot be allowed to continue. Victims of sexual abuse serving in our armed forces must have confidence in the processes that allow them to report their experiences, and they must know that robust action will be taken. I suggest that the Minister reads the Defence Committee’s report before coming back to the House to tell us how he will implement all of it. Will he make the investigation he has just announced a public investigation so we can see what action is needed?”
“I welcome the new Minister to his position. Those who serve in our armed forces should expect the highest standards of professionalism and personal conduct, which must be supported and reinforced by the Government. As the son of a Royal Navy submariner, I know that the Submarine Service is on the frontline of our national defence. Every submariner must be confident that the people they serve alongside in the Royal Navy have their back. These claims of abuse are extremely serious and must be thoroughly investigated, and those responsible must be held accountable. These reports lift the lid on a culture of abuse and cover-up in our armed forces. In far too many cases, victims are unable to raise their experiences within the chain of command.”
“The south-west is a great place to invest, and the Land Registry and the Valuation Office Agency are already prospering in our city. Will the Minister look ahead not only at allocating existing civil service roles, but at those we will develop in the future? Plymouth is building out a world-leading capability in autonomy, which has the potential to create huge numbers of jobs if we can create a cluster of Government and private sector expertise in one place.”
“At the moment, the three basic courses do not include a module on defence justice. Given the important role that defence justice plays for our service personnel and the confidence that we must have in defence justice, the ability for parliamentarians to have a passing understanding of how the defence justice system differs from the civilian system and why there is a difference would not only aid Committees such as this in scrutinising legislation, but would help us to understand daily service life.”
“A number of Opposition colleagues have participated in the armed forces parliamentary scheme, as I know have Government Members, which gives parliamentarians an opportunity to look at service life. Indeed, I have just returned from Estonia, where I saw the amazing work of the King’s Royal Hussars and 2 Rifles in defending our allies there. We need to make sure that the systems put in place are suitable for not only service personnel but, importantly, their families. I know that the Minister has an interest in defence families, which is a fresh injection into the way the Ministry of Defence works, and I wish her the best of luck with that. I will ask a few questions about defence families, but I encourage the Minister and all parliamentarians to fully participate in that scheme if possible. The AFPS could benefit from a slight tweak.”
“It is good to see you in your place, Ms Bardell. I welcome the Minister to her first statutory instrument Committee on the Front Bench. I hope that the Prime Minister was listening to her speech because, having sat through an enormous number of statutory instrument Committees since I was elected in 2017, it is good to hear a Minister on top of their brief and able to speak beyond the words given to them by officials. That is welcome, and I hope that the Minister stays in her place if any reshuffle comes her way. At a time of such severe international difficulties, we need good people who know our military and can make good decisions. Labour will oppose neither of the draft statutory instruments. They both move in the right direction. However, I have a few questions and a few points to make.”
“When a service person has a foster child, or when there is one in a defence family, I think that would be included within the broader remit, but I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed it for the record. May I politely challenge the use of the language “of the full blood or of the half blood or by marriage” in the Bill? There is language that, as parliamentarians, we should encourage movement away from. When we talk about the “full blood” or the “half blood”, it suggests that some children have a legitimacy that is different from that of adopted children, for instance. I encourage the Minister to look at whether in future SIs that type of language can be retired.”
“I know that it is not the Minister’s fault, and that officials who write such explanatory memorandums must use the house style, but there is a difference between no impact and no significant impact. When looking at the impact of any SI, it is unhelpful to have those blurred together. My final question is about the quite helpful expansion of what a “family member” means in the SI. As someone who believes that families should be at the heart of our community but that we should not specify what a family is because each of our families is different and each is loved by the people within them, I was interested to see how the Government have laid out what a family is and what a relation is.”
“Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent made a point about the explanatory memorandum. I am afraid that if the Minister is to serve on Delegated Legislation Committees with me, she will need to know that I, too, read the explanatory memorandums quite closely. I am interested in why the territorial extent of the regulations includes United Kingdom overseas territories but not Gibraltar. Considering the large UK military presence in Gibraltar, why is that particular overseas territory excluded from the regulations? Are the provisions replicated elsewhere, or is a separate statutory instrument needed to deal with Gibraltar’s specific legal jurisdiction? I am not a fan in impact assessments of the phrase “no, or no significant, impact” because I believe that those are two very different things.”
“That makes a clear distinction between service policing and the civilian role. We must understand the particular demands, stresses and secrecy that may apply in a military environment, and have examples of where that should not apply and where the expertise and familiarity of civilian policing could produce better results for victims and greater confidence in the justice system. The numbers speak for themselves. Ministry of Defence figures show that from 2015 to 2020, the conviction rate for rape cases tried under courts martial was just 9%. Recent data shows that the conviction rate was 59% for similar cases that reached a civilian court. We know that prosecution rates for rape are far too low in civilian courts, but that comparison shows a problem. I would be grateful if the Minister answered a number of questions. First, my hon.”
“In one case in which a servicewoman reported an alleged sexual assault, the Service Prosecuting Authority accidentally revealed the victim’s home address to the alleged assailant by sending to the alleged perpetrator a letter intended for the victim. That is clearly unacceptable. In another case, where a servicewoman reported sexual assault, court martial transcripts show that a judge advocate remarked of the “quite appallingly bad police investigation…how stupid was it not to interview the people who were at the scene”. There is still work to be done, and I encourage the Minister to look at whether that recommendation can be brought back. It is unsurprising that the recent service justice system policing review said: “The Service Police do not investigate enough serious crime to be considered proficient”.”
“I know the Minister has been in post for only a short time, but I encourage her to continue to provide challenge within the Ministry of Defence in respect of why the full recommendation was not included in the statutory instruments before us and on how quickly the change will come. Will she set out whether any work on that is in train in the Ministry of Defence? There is a litany of reasons why this issue is important, including serious backlogs, investigators missing obvious lines of inquiry and the unnecessary retraumatisation of victims. Let me give the Committee two examples taken from the written evidence submitted by the Centre for Military Justice to the Defence Committee inquiry on women in the armed forces.”
“I wish to put on the record the Government’s rejection of the headline recommendation of the Lyons review that murder, manslaughter and rape should be prosecuted in civilian rather than military courts when the offences are committed in the UK, with the Attorney General able to rule otherwise in exceptional cases. It is a shame that the Government have chosen not to adopt fully the proposal—the headline recommendation—but it is more than disappointing, because the Minister may not have listened to her own recommendations. I do not wish to embarrass her, but last year she co-authored a Defence Committee report on women in the armed forces that argued that the Government should remove court martial jurisdiction over cases of rape and cases of sexual assault with penetration, as well as for cases of domestic violence and child abuse.”
“I encourage the Minister, in the implementation of the SI, to look at how the language can be tweaked to make sure we have greater representation, which is particularly important when the board considers cases that include servicewomen or situations in which a servicewoman has been affected as a victim. The lived experience of the people who are judging someone and making decisions on their career and on prosecution should have an element of familiarity with the experiences of either the person on trial or the witnesses and victims. Some Government statements on upholding military justice are still more rhetoric than reality.”
“Likewise, it is welcome that the statutory instrument will ensure that there is at least one woman on the board of each court martial in circumstances where there are lay members on the court. A normal board will have between three and seven people, so it is a step in the right direction to have one woman there, but I would like to have a greater sense that we are moving towards balance. We need to see more women in our armed forces full stop, but the explanatory memorandum could have shown a greater sense of the direction of travel that Ministers wish to take. I would be uncomfortable with the idea that it is good enough that there is a woman on the board and that some additional women may, although not necessarily, be provided by the shuffle that the Minister explained. We need a sense of the direction of travel.”
“The Minister will know, because she and I have spoken about this many times, that the Labour party stands four-square with our armed forces and backs the Government’s effort in Ukraine to support our NATO allies, but we do need to make sure that we get all aspects of service life right. Although the rules are a step in the right direction, I have some questions about how we can make sure that they are delivered appropriately. It is entirely sensible to introduce the overriding objective that the Minister has set out for courts martial and to give the Director of Service Prosecutions responsibility for warning prosecution witnesses of trial dates. Those were pragmatic recommendations from the Lyons review, which we welcome.”
“I seek not to make a party political point; we need to make sure that we increase morale among our armed forces personnel if we are to retain their skills and experience, and honour our obligations as, in effect, employers. There are still clear failings when it comes to housing, healthcare, social care and other issues. As we approach Remembrance week, attention will naturally turn to how the covenant is implemented, and rightly so. As parliamentarians, we should not only ask questions publicly, but challenge constructively in private and ask when it will apply and whether the 2023 review of the covenant will include consideration of its greater applicability to central Government. I am afraid 2023 is already too late. Let me turn to the draft Armed Forces (Service Court Rules) (Amendment) (No. 2) Rules 2022.”
“In terms of the duties under the covenant, it is fine for this place to put additional responsibilities on local government—which has a lot of responsibilities already, but not the resources to go with them—but the Government need to walk the walk if they are to talk the talk, and that means applying these duties to central Government as well. This is not a small point. National Government oversee many policy areas that service personnel experience difficulties with, so they should have clear, measurable duties under the covenant to deliver for personnel, their families and veterans. Satisfaction with service life has dropped below 50%, according to the Government’s own figures, which should worry Members on both sides of the House.”
“Despite the Minister mentioning the 2023 review of the covenant, there are still no plans for the covenant to apply to central Government, including the Ministry of Defence itself. It is worth taking a moment to consider that omission. If the armed forces covenant is to be real, and if service personnel, their families and veterans are to have confidence in it, the Ministry of Defence must lead by example. I would like to see Ministers, including the Minister here today, put more effort into making sure that happens. A whole host of service charities, including the Royal British Legion, Help for Heroes and the Confederation of Service Charities, have expressed concern that central Government do not have a duty under the covenant.”
“There are other locations where the armed forces covenant sits gathering dust on a shelf, and the ability to make sure it is truly implemented and lived is a challenge that still has not been fully met. I would like the Minister to consider important ways in which the covenant could be strengthened. One of those is the extension of the covenant beyond education, healthcare and housing to include other areas of central Government activity—employment, social care, pensions, compensation and benefits, to name but a few. Our service personnel, veterans and their families should not incur unfair disadvantage in any walk of life, and the importance of the armed forces covenant as a principle needs to be extended to all public bodies. There is a second area where this SI could seek to go a little further.”
“I am grateful for that intervention, and I agree. It is quite refreshing to see the freedom that service personnel have to speak to parliamentarians on visits, and experiences of sexual violence within the forces, which the Minister will know about from her time on the Defence Committee, are very relevant to what we are discussing today. I will first talk about the covenant regulations and then move on to service justice. We need to recognise that it is not just our service personnel, their families and people who have served in the past who need to have a robust armed forces covenant that is as effective as possible. Across the country, there are some locations—Plymouth is one—that do the armed forces covenant very well.”
“I mean that in a constructive way, to encourage the Minister to challenge the Ministry of Defence further about whether that language could be updated—even if it is strictly defined by primary legislation elsewhere—and replaced with more inclusive language that reflects how service families are structured in real life. I know that she feels passionately about this and takes such concerns seriously. I wish the Minister the best of luck in her role. We need people with experience and expertise in the Ministry of Defence at this difficult time, and I hope that she stays there for quite some time to come—until she is replaced by a Labour Member in due course.”
“I am grateful for that intervention. We want the rules around service life to better reflect the way the world is. Having come from a service family myself—my old man was a Royal Navy officer—I recognise that the family that I grew up in was very different from the families that were on the marry estate on either side of us. The regulations must adopt the full range. That speaks to the need for us to develop a better understanding of what defence families are like. Parliamentarians and the Ministry of Defence have a good understanding of service personnel and an increasing understanding of veterans, though there is more work to be done there, but defence families are often a bit of an afterthought.”
“Is it possible for the Minister to publish the data, on an annual basis, of how many men versus women are on the boards? It would be useful to be able to see the change. The stats that the Minister gave earlier were useful, but seeing the direction of travel on an annual basis as part of normal MOD reporting could be helpful. Is that something she would consider?”
“May I press the Minister on that point? She is right about the Gibraltar regiment, but for non-Gibraltar regiment personnel stationed in Gibraltar—there are UK service personnel outwith that regiment—this legislation, according to the territorial extent, would not apply. Is that her understanding? That regiment and the additional personnel we have there seem to be dealt with differently.”
“It would be not only a nation-leading project for Plymouth but a trailblazer for healthcare in the rest of Britain.”
“For many people, today is the day they learned that that £41 million has been lost. Work was expected to start in just a few weeks’ time, and the news will be a gut punch for many of our GP services, which were hoping to move out of dilapidated premises and into the super health hub. It will be a real dent to our confidence. We know that the problems in primary care will worsen over the winter, and for many people, this was our hope that better days would be ahead. Such is the strength of feeling that I alone cannot hope to do justice to the case for the super health hub. Will the Minister therefore commit to visit Plymouth and hold a cross-party multi-stakeholder roundtable, so he can hear about the real benefits that the hub would bring to our community?”
“Richard Bingley, the Conservative leader of Plymouth City Council, said: “The Super Health Hub will critically reduce demand on Derriford Hospital and is a key development in addressing some of the vast health inequalities in the area.” Labour’s Councillor Mary Aspinall said: “I am absolutely shocked that the rug is being pulled from under this huge investment in our city which would provide about 3,000 appointments a day and employ 250 staff and we will fight for it tooth and nail. People in Plymouth do not deserve to be treated this way.” I thank all the NHS staff who have been working so hard on the project, not just in Plymouth but in the regional NHS and the national Cavell centre programme. I know the work that they are doing. I will be grateful if the Minister looks again at where £41 million could be found to support our work.”
“While the super health hub project is on pause until we find the funding, can the Minister give reassurances that the other ambitions for the health village—the dental development centre and the community diagnostics hub—will not be sidelined as part of that integrated plan? If the Minister is looking for shovel-ready projects that demonstrate the Government’s commitment to addressing ambulance times, backlogs, care, doctors and dentistry, this project would be an excellent way of delivering it and, importantly, delivering it quickly. The Minister needs to know that, although I am making the case for this project as a Labour MP, it enjoys cross-party support.”