Ben Coleman MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 Jan 2025 · New Hospital Programme Review · Hansard source

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  My predecessor in Chelsea and Fulham claimed to have secured funding for Charing Cross hospital. That claim went out on election literature throughout the constituency. At the time, I doubted it. Today’s announcement confirms beyond any doubt that the money was not there. What he was saying was not true. I welcome the honesty and realism of the Government’s statement today. It is about time the British people had a Government playing straight with them and telling them the truth. [ Interruption. ] Instead of laughing and jeering from the Conservative Benches, which is of no use to my constituents in Chelsea and Fulham who were promised the money for Charing Cross hospital when it was never there, I would like to see some contrition. On a more positive note, can the Secretary of State assure my constituents that the timetable that he has set out will be met?

• 20 Jan 2025 · Obesity: Food and Diet · Hansard source

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  That is a very good point. The poverty in this country now and the cost of energy is causing people in my constituency to go to food banks and ask for foods that they do not have to cook. We are offering people food that might not always be of the best quality, and food banks tell me that a lot of healthy, fresh fruit and veg goes to waste because people are either worried about the cost of energy or simply do not know how to cook. These are addressable problems; these are things that we can do something about if we want to do so. I strongly back the House of Lords report’s recommendation that the revenue from a salt and sugar reformulation tax should be used to make healthier food cheaper, particularly for those on low incomes. I would like some of the revenue to go to organisations such as Alexandra Rose, a charity operating in my constituency. It makes healthy food affordable and accessible to families on low incomes by handing out vouchers so that pregnant women and the families of children under five can buy fresh fruit and veg at local markets or independent shops. In the heart of Fulham, 376 families and 587 children have enjoyed £85,200-worth of fresh fruit and veg from our wonderful North End Road market, which has operated since late Victorian times. Alexandra Rose tells me that, six months after starting the project, 64% of children are meeting their five-a-day target, compared with just 7% when it began. As the Government develop their food strategy, I encourage them to consider supporting such charities to extend their work through national action. Another issue is the accessibility of food, and I do not think this point is addressed enough. Many parts of this country are healthy food deserts. In his annual report, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, said that “families in inner-city areas are less likely to have access to healthy, affordable food options” and as a result they will have shorter and unhealthier lives. We have to ensure that good food is available at an affordable price. I hope the food strategy will look at that, as well as at teaching basic cookery in schools—that is another important point. Change will take time, but it can be done. It just needs the political will. I hope we will reach a position where, if Mr Horniman could come back to see us, he would be delighted. After all, we must remember that he took immense pride in the tea his family produced; it was one of the very few to be declared free of chemicals and safe to drink in the 1850s. Let us hope we can say the same about our food in the future.

• 20 Jan 2025 · Obesity: Food and Diet · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s comments. I was not attempting to put together the whole puzzle, but additives are an extremely important part of the puzzle. We do ourselves a disservice if we pretend that sugar, salt and fats—eaten in the quantities they are today—and the ready food that can be bought so cheaply are not poisonous, and not huge problems that we need to address. I am not wild about the term “obese” because of the negative, pejorative connotations that can make people feel awful about themselves, as has been said, but it is the best term we have at the moment. Over a fifth of children in this country—22.1%—are obese. The figure is even higher in my constituency, which contains some of the country’s richest people, as well as many residents living in poverty. In the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, 23.4% of reception pupils, aged four to five, are obese. In the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, 22.4% of reception pupils are classified as obese. This is a problem everywhere, not just in the poorest parts of the country. It is therefore hugely good news that the Government have identified a shift from ill health to prevention as one of the three major objectives of their health mission. It is even better news that a cross-Government national food strategy is being developed. What would I like to see in that national food strategy? What should be done? I would like us to start by realising that it is time to stop placing excessive emphasis on individual responsibility. That may be hard to swallow for some people, but the Lords report makes it clear that 30 years of policies that rely solely on personal choice, rather than tackling the underlying drivers of unhealthy diets, have failed to shift the dial. Sadly, under successive Governments, these policies have contributed to widening health inequalities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi) noted, the Lords report rightly praised the last Government’s sugar tax on soft drinks. Officially called the soft drinks industry levy, it was a significant public health success—people are consuming less sugar. While obesity remains an overall problem, it has fallen to an extent, particularly among girls aged 10 and 11 in the most deprived areas. Fewer children are having to go to hospital to have their decayed teeth pulled out. That brings me to the lack of dentists after 14 years of Conservative Government, but I will not go there now. The sugar tax has saved millions, possibly billions, of pounds in healthcare costs, as well as a lot of misery. It is a pretty good example to follow, so I support the call by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud for the levy to be extended to more food products and for similar action to be taken on salt and fats. I am glad that the Government are delivering on their manifesto pledge to give children the best and healthiest start in life by banning the targeting of junk food at children. Just as advertising restrictions contributed to a decline in the number of smokers, I hope that restricting the advertising of unhealthy foods will contribute to a decline in childhood obesity. I also agree that labelling food better, to distinguish between healthy and less healthy products, is essential. It already works, as allergy sufferers are benefiting from Natasha’s law, which requires food businesses to fully label their ingredients. However, targeting unhealthy food is not enough. Even unhealthy food is better than no food, for those who cannot afford healthy ingredients, for those who cannot find healthy ingredients or for those who do not know how to cook them. I am not arguing that we should make crap food so expensive that people are forced to go elsewhere to buy even more expensive alternatives. As the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr Dillon) said, it is of fundamental importance that healthy food should be affordable to everyone and widely available wherever they live. At the moment, it is far from either. It is no good badgering people to eat five pieces of fruit and veg a day if they cannot afford to do so or if it is not available locally—that is just patronising.

• 20 Jan 2025 · Obesity: Food and Diet · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) on securing this hugely important debate. When I was writing my maiden speech back in July, I did some research into my predecessors, as one does. It was fascinating to see that it had been nearly 120 years since the voters of Chelsea elected a non-Conservative MP. He was Mr Emslie John Horniman, lately of the Horniman museum. His father, Frederick Horniman, was an MP under Queen Victoria. I was thinking that Mr Horniman senior would find a lot of similarities between his time as an MP during the Victorian era and the job today. The main building is largely the same, although it was possibly even colder in those days; some of the rules and procedures are the same; and he would probably even find some familiar faces among colleagues in both Houses. Thankfully, one of the big differences between Mr Horniman senior’s time and today would be the food. That is not just because the Victorians would not be enjoying the famous parliamentary jerk chicken, but because when it came to the food that people ate in Victorian times, the story was one of adulteration and contamination. Describing the Victorian history of adulteration and contamination of food, the US professor of history Anthony Wohl says: “The list of poisonous additives reads like the stock list of some mad and malevolent chemist”. If we had enjoyed a glass of beer here with Gladstone or Disraeli, we might also have been drinking strychnine and hallucinogens. With wine, we could have imbibed sulphate of copper. The mustard with our lunch would probably have come with added lead chromate. Our Gloucester cheese afterwards might well have owed its rosy hue to red lead. It is no wonder that indigestion cures in Victorian times were so popular. Thank goodness things are so different today. Thank goodness we have food standards. Thank goodness we do not allow people to eat things that make them so ill—except that we do. Day in, day out, food manufacturers add substances to food that, on the scale at which they are eaten today, quite legally damage people’s health. Supermarkets promote them and sell them. As a result, obesity, type 2 diabetes and the many other medical problems to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud referred have become huge issues in this day and age.

• 20 Jan 2025 · Obesity: Food and Diet · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member makes an excellent point that I will come to in a moment. The additives that cause so much harm today have simpler names: sugar, salt and fats. In moderation, all of those are fine, but the problem is that they are being shoved into our food willy-nilly in an effort to preserve it and—on the right hon. Member’s point—to make it cheap, alongside making it more addictive by design. As a result, we have what the House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee’s report rightly describes as a public health emergency. We now have one of the highest rates of obesity among high-income nations. Only tobacco shortens British lives more than poor diet.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Covid-19 Inquiry · Hansard source

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  I was a cabinet member during covid, responsible for public health. As I listened to my right hon. Friend’s statement, I felt so relieved that we are about to replace the chaos experienced by me and so many people across the country at that time with a forward-looking, orderly and strategic approach. Among the many things that have been mentioned, I was particularly pleased by the idea of creating a national vulnerability map. That is hugely needed. On hearing that the Department will monitor the implementation of the commitments made in response to the inquiry, will my right hon. Friend come to the House regularly to update on that implementation?

• 16 Jan 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse · Hansard source

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  Many of my constituents have contacted me to share their concerns about child abuse and child exploitation. They will be relieved that, unlike the previous Government, this Government are no longer allowing this matter to be kicked into the long grass and are taking action, not least through Baroness Casey’s rapid review. I think my constituents will be concerned that the official figures woefully underestimate the scale and nature of grooming activities. How can the Home Secretary reassure the House, me and my constituents that in future the reporting systems will be such that they can guarantee the confidence of victims and survivors?

• 14 Jan 2025 · UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue · Hansard source

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  My constituents, many of whom work in financial services, will have been amazed, just as I was, when the shadow Chancellor, in a fit of pique, demanded that the Chancellor should come home from China to talk to him in this House, rather than staying to promote growth, increase access to the world’s second largest market and win new licences and quota allocations for financial services businesses. As anybody who has taken the trouble to listen carefully to the Chancellor would recognise, there is more on the way. What does she think the City, and the banks that accompanied her, would have preferred in the long-term interests of this country: stay in China to win for this country, or come home to satisfy the shadow Chancellor’s fit of pique?

• 6 Jan 2025 · Health and Adult Social Care Reform · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, I take that personally, in a positive way. This is a very encouraging statement. It is great to start the new year with some good news and to be so clear that we are keeping our promises as a Government. It is also very good that we are taking the necessary time to create this cross-party consensus on social care while keeping the show so firmly on the road. Carers will be supported to carry out more health tasks, as they do already in my constituency with wound dressing and medicine management. The problem is they do not have any possibility of career progression. [Interruption.] I am sorry, Mr Speaker, I forgot your initial encouragement; I will bring this to a close. Does the Secretary of State agree that as carers are encouraged to do more health tasks, they need proper opportunities for career progression even within the NHS, in collaboration with local authorities?

• 6 Jan 2025 · General Election · Hansard source

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

• 6 Jan 2025 · General Election · Hansard source

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  This is where it turns into politics. By that, I mean that we very clearly promised in the manifesto not to raise income tax or national insurance on working people—that was directly understood—but the Labour party did not promise not to raise the national insurance contributions of employers, which is what has happened. I understand the concerns and problems that has raised; I am simply saying that we have done what we said we would do in the manifesto, and we have not broken our promises. [ Interruption. ] No matter how much you professional gentlemen who have been here for 20 years yell at me—I have been here for six months—it is simply the case that what is in our manifesto, which I am reading out word for word, is what we are delivering. I will finish by talking about borders. We said: “Labour will stop the chaos and go after the criminal gangs who trade in driving this crisis. We will create a new Border Security Command, with hundreds of new investigators, intelligence officers, and cross-border police officers.” We have already increased the number of enforced returns of those who have committed crimes and have no right to be here; the number is up by nearly 30% on the same period last year. We have also established and invested in the Border Security Command, as we said we would. Hon. Members may disagree with the things that we have done because they do not like them and have never liked them, but do not say that we have not kept the promises in our manifesto, because we have.

• 6 Jan 2025 · General Election · Hansard source

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  I am not here to say what should happen to the free breakfast clubs in secondary schools—we can have that debate another time. I am here to respond to anybody in this Chamber who says that the Labour party is not keeping its promises; I am reading out those promises word by word. I will talk about sewage, of which there is plenty. The manifesto says: “Britain’s coasts, rivers, and lakes are being polluted by illegal sewage dumping… Labour will put failing water companies under special measures to clean up our water.” We have brought in the Water (Special Measures) Bill, which has had its Second Reading and will strengthen regulation. Water companies and bosses can be fined; we can ban bonuses; and there will be new environmental standards. It is all there in our manifesto and in what we have done.

• 6 Jan 2025 · General Election · Hansard source

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  Happy new year, Mrs Harris. I appreciate that everyone is looking forward to the final speech—perhaps this will be the final speech before the Front Benchers. I did not know how this debate would go, so I was very interested to come here to hear what people would say. I hope it has been somewhat useful to people who are not used to being here, including those who, like me, have been here for five minutes. Like many Members here, I was elected in July, and I have a majority of 152, so I know that what I had to say was not universally popular with the all the people I was standing to represent. As the Member for Chelsea and Fulham, I know that I have a lot of work to do to persuade the people of the country that what the Labour Government hope and plan to do is good, and to prove to them in the long run that we should be re-elected. I know there is a lot of cynicism out there. We attack each other a lot of the time, but I hope we have learned some things today. How many years are we having to make up for? It is 14 years; I thought Opposition Members might have forgotten that. But today we have not really explored the crux of the motion, which is that our manifesto made promises that we have not kept—although a number of my colleagues addressed that very well in passing. My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead Central and Whickham (Mark Ferguson) said that we must proceed on the basis of facts and that, to paraphrase him, we must be decent in doing so. Other Members said that we are depressing, that we have talked the economy down and that we are bringing the country to a stalemate, so it is useful to remind them of what is good, positive and exciting about this Labour Government, who were brought in to effect change. I will do that in a very boring way: by reading words from the manifesto. I used to be the deputy leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council in London. I know that nobody believes what is put in a manifesto—it is almost a given that 10 commandments come down, and the manifesto is full of lies—so we used to stick up our manifesto on the wall of the council cabinet chamber, and tick off items as we went along; anybody who came in could see us doing that. So let me tick off a couple of things that have been mentioned today. We said in the manifesto—these are the words, which I appreciate that very few people other than keen Labour candidates such as me have read—that we will “immediately abolish Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions” to deal with the massive problem of the cost of rental and the crap quality of many of the places in which people are forced to live. We said that we will “prevent private renters being exploited and discriminated against, empower them to challenge unreasonable rent increases, and take steps to decisively raise standards, including extending ‘Awaab’s Law’”— which is about damp and mould—“to the private sector.” We have done that. We introduced the Renters’ Rights Bill. It was in the manifesto, and we have done it.

• 6 Jan 2025 · General Election · Hansard source

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  Forgive me. Thank you very much, Mrs Harris—I appreciate that reminder. I apologise to those in the Public Gallery for turning my back on them, if I may say that through you, Mrs Harris. As we are accused of not keeping our promises, I will boringly quote from the manifesto. On new homes, we said: “Labour will get Britain building again…We will immediately update the National Policy Planning Framework” to enable us to build 1.5 million homes. We are bringing in the new planning and infrastructure Bill. We said that we will “build an NHS fit for the future…Labour’s immediate priority on health will be to get a grip on the record waiting list.” I will not list all the things we have done; hon. Members can read tonight’s news. We have done masses and masses, including putting £25.7 billion into the NHS from money raised in the Budget. I appreciate that not everybody has liked the way we raised money in the Budget. They do not have to like it—there will always be differences of opinion—but we have taken the money we have raised and put £26 billion into the NHS. We also said in the manifesto that we would improve inclusivity for children with special educational needs, ensure that “special schools cater to those with the most complex needs”, and improve mainstream education for disabled children. Not everybody likes the way we raised the money in the Budget, but £1 million of that money has gone into improving education in mainstream schools for disabled children and children with special educational needs. We have a problem that people do not have enough money to live on, and the minimum wage is all that many people rely on, so we said: “Labour will…make sure the minimum wage is a genuine living wage. We will change the remit of the independent Low Pay Commission so for the first time it accounts for the cost of living. Labour will also remove the discriminatory age bands, so all adults are entitled to the same minimum wage”. We have raised the national minimum wage and the national living wage; that is a pay boost for 3 million people. We said in the manifesto that we would do it and we kept our promise: we have done it. We have asked the Low Pay Commission to end the discriminatory age bands and to look at including the cost of living. We have talked about Great British Energy; we made pledges there, and we have delivered them by establishing Great British Energy. We said: “Labour will fund free breakfast clubs in every primary school, accessible to all children.” We are doing that; we are introducing free breakfast clubs. I am sorry to quote from the manifesto at such length.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I am extremely encouraged by what the Secretary of State is saying. In my constituency—I have been following this for well over two years—the amount of sewage discharge has been absolutely contemptible. In 2023 alone, Thames Water pumped sewage into the river 116 times, for 990 hours, even when it was not raining. I am heartened to hear that, unlike the last Government, our Government intend to take serious measures to ensure that bosses are forced to clear up the mess that they create, and stop them doing it. Can the Secretary of State reassure me that, unlike the last Government, he will ensure that the regulators use the powers they are given and do not behave as feebly as they have for the past 14 years?

• 16 Dec 2024 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Gentleman think that the Bill would make it easier or more difficult for the Government to enter into successful negotiations on a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  I very much like the image of the law of unintended consequences poking its head around the door. One thing that has occurred to me during this debate is that we need, in Northern Ireland and Great Britain and the whole of our United Kingdom, to try to reduce the red tape that Brexit has introduced. One of the most important steps that we could take is to enter into a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement with the European Union, but if we are to do that, we will need the EU to trust us, and to accept that if we negotiate with it and reach an agreement, we will stick by that agreement. Is not the challenge, in the context of this particular Bill, that one of the laws of unintended consequences might be that the EU simply will not engage in the discussion and negotiation that we need in order to proceed with those red-tape-reducing measures?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  I find myself surprised to agree to an extent with the former leader of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith): we need to move away from some of the ridiculous, extreme language. There is no reason why the European Union would want to colonise Northern Ireland. Are we not talking about a sensible agreement that does not seek to impose sovereignty but instead seeks simply to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, to safeguard the Good Friday agreement in all its dimensions and, at the same time, protect Northern Ireland’s place in the UK and in the UK internal market? Should we not recognise that and stop using extreme language that does nothing to take the debate sensibly forward?

• 3 Dec 2024 · Home-to-School Transport: Children with SEND · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for securing this debate. It is fantastic to see so many hon. Members and hon. Friends sticking up for disabled children and young people and their families. That reflects the focus that we have had on SEND in this new Parliament. According to Contact, a charity for families with disabled children aged 25 or under, 79% of disabled young people are being denied or charged for school transport when they turn 16. One in 10 of them pays more than £1,000 a year, and nearly half of families experience increased stress and financial difficulties. Although I am pleased that in Fulham, which is part of my constituency, the Labour council has chosen not to charge for transport and to maintain free educational transport for disabled children and young people up to the age of 25, I recognise from all that I have heard today and all that I know that that is far from being the case elsewhere. We need to end that unfairness and change the statutory framework, and we need to make free educational transport available to all up to the age of 25. Finally, I encourage those who want to know more about the significant additional costs of caring for disabled children and young people to come to an event that I will be chairing in the Thatcher Room tomorrow at 5.30 pm, at which Contact will launch new research into this issue.

• 2 Dec 2024 · Grenfell Tower Inquiry · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I fully understand the challenge that you face, so I will do my best to keep to four minutes. It is an honour to follow the Deputy Prime Minister and so many hon. Friends and hon. Members, and to have so many people sitting up in the Public Gallery listening patiently to the debate, having suffered so much over the years. I begin by recalling, as others have, the 15 disabled people who died in the Grenfell Tower fire. There was no plan in advance to ensure that they could be evacuated in a crisis. I am pleased that the Government have announced today, in publishing their response to the consultation, that they will introduce a set of measures on residential personal emergency evacuation plans. However, I agree with Grenfell United that personal emergency evacuation plans for disabled residents must be mandated—that is essential. Let me turn to other matters that my hon. Friends have set out so well. The report is scathing about the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and its tenant management organisation. What leaps out in page after page of the report is the council’s absolute lack of respect for so many of its residents—how it refused to listen to people living in social housing when again and again they raised concerns about the problems with the Grenfell building that eventually contributed to the terrible fire; how it treated the most dissenting voices as enemies; and how, once the fire had happened, it treated its own residents. At the time, I was a councillor in the neighbouring borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The day after the fire, our council became aware, purely by chance, that Kensington and Chelsea council had placed Grenfell residents in hotels in our borough, because some of those residents happened to wander down to the local West Kensington and Gibbs Green estate, where they were given food, shelter and clean clothing. They happened to mention that they had been placed at the Holiday Inn Express in Fulham, and our council leader got council officers to go to all the hotels in the borough, which we discovered were full of Grenfell residents. No one from Kensington and Chelsea council had tried to tell us. The report talks about the council’s response being “muddled” and “piecemeal”, but perhaps another word is “cruel”. Teams from Hammersmith and Fulham council kept a close eye and visited every week to look after the residents as best we could. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) came and sat with Grenfell residents on the grass at the West Ken and Gibbs Green estate. They asked, “Are you really a Member of Parliament? Because no one official from our borough has been to see us at all.” I cannot speak highly enough of how the community responded. I am keenly aware that where Kensington and Chelsea council failed, the community got it right. The council in Kensington and Chelsea says that it is determined to learn from what it got wrong. That is very welcome, as is the fact that the scope of its review is going to explicitly consider racial as well as social discrimination—I look forward to that being the case. However, I still have serious questions about whether that council really gets it, because thousands of my Chelsea constituents live in social housing, and time and again they say that they do not feel that their voices are being heard, or that the culture has changed. The Friday before last, I decided to call a meeting on the World’s End estate to talk about some serious crime issues—sadly, a man from another estate had been stabbed in an altercation and had died. I invited all the residents to come and have a conversation with me about it. To my surprise, senior councillors from the Conservative Kensington and Chelsea council tried to dissuade me. They said that they had already engaged with residents and that another meeting would bring no more benefit. In the event, more than 50 residents came. We had a great conversation; not everyone agreed with each other, but everyone had a chance to speak and to be heard. Only one thing really shocked me, which was the number of residents who said at the end of the meeting, or even during the meeting, that they had lived on that estate all their lives or for decades, and that this was the first time they had ever been to a meeting like this on the estate—one where they felt listened to. To sum up, I hope that residents will be listened to. If I may, I hope that we will have a debate like this every year, so that we can look at the recommendations. I request that Front Benchers enable that to happen. I am grateful for your time, Madam Deputy Speaker.

• 18 Nov 2024 · Primary School Breakfast Clubs · Hansard source

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  In the Fulham part of my constituency, children in primary schools have enjoyed free breakfasts since 2019. The council initially negotiated that from developers and now it pays for them itself. It has also started providing free school lunches at one of the schools in Fulham. Does my hon. Friend agree that the threshold for children to receive free school meals is currently far too high, and that we ought to be aiming for every child to be given a free breakfast and a free lunch, to avoid the stigma that can damage children’s confidence and impair their performance?

• 5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source

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  I am sorry for interrupting my hon. Friend at the very last minute, but he raised the important issue of the rebuilding of St Mary’s. May I suggest to him that that should come alongside the full refurbishment of Charing Cross hospital and Hammersmith hospital, as they all form part of the Imperial College healthcare NHS trust?