HC Deb 22 February 1994 vol 238 cc141-2
10. Ms Hoey

To ask the Secretary of State for Health when she plans to visit the Lambeth community care centre to discuss an increase in services.

Dr. Mawhinney

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health visited the Lambeth community centre on 5 February 1993. Any increase in services at the centre is dependent on local health authorities and fundholders.

Ms Hoey

I hope that the Minister will take the time to visit that unique centre in Lambeth, which serves local people extremely well and is highly needed and valued in the area. Will he a commitment to expanding the services so that a second community care centre can be opened in the Brixton area, with a special remit for work with sickle-cell anaemia, a disease of which there is a large preponderance of sufferers in my constituency?

Dr. Mawhinney

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She will be pleased to know that some time ago I told my private office that I should like to try to fit in a visit to the Lambeth centre during the year, diary permitting, because I, too, want to see the excellent work conducted at that centre. She will know that, with the London implementation group and the primary health forum, we are considering a variety of ways in which to deliver increased primary health care and one of those is developing other centres.

Mr. David Evans

Does the Minister think that Lambeth ought to increase its services, since some of that lot over there have taken to being in bushes in Belgravia during the night—

Madam Speaker

Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is going to remain within order. I remind him that the question is specifically about Lambeth community care centre and I do not think that there are bushes outside that building.

Mr. Evans

I think that the Lambeth community care centre needs to instruct that lot to have caps and mufflers to keep them warm when they are hiding in bushes.

Dr. Mawhinney

My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that extra resources are devoted to the provision of community care in Lambeth. It will be for those locally to decide how best to use those extra resources.

Mr. Skinner

On the question of community care in Lambeth, or anywhere else, let me make it plain that I am prepared to have my conduct examined at the Dispatch Box if every Cabinet Minister will have his conduct examined there. Better still, let us have an election and let the people judge. After that, I shall be sat over there and some of those Conservative Members will want a fresh job.

Dr. Mawhinney

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman feels better for getting that off his chest, but it has nothing to do with the Lambeth community centre.

Mr. Blunkett

It is difficult to follow that. In accepting the need for support and care in Lambeth and in other inner-city areas and for a strategic approach to tackling drug abuse, would the Minister reflect on his actions and those of his Department when they received a report, commissioned in January of the past year, which suggested the need for a strategic approach to drug abuse? As that report came up with proposals to make the Government's actions central to such a strategy, they sent it back to be rewritten. May I have an assurance that what will be published will be the original report from Roger Howard Associates and not the fiddled report, which denied Government responsibility for a strategy against the important issue of drug abuse in our community?

Dr. Mawhinney

As is almost always the case, the hon. Gentleman has got it wrong. The report was commissioned to investigate the provision of local services. The hon. Gentleman will know that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary announced just before Christmas the setting up of a co-ordinating unit to help the Government in combating drugs. There will be a central Government strategy. What we need is a local and regional strategy to supplement it and it was on that that the report was commissioned to advise.