Paulette Hamilton: What steps he is taking to improve patient access to primary care.
Paulette Hamilton: Under the Tories, the number of qualified GPs has fallen to a record low, which is hitting local communities across the UK very hard. In January, in Erdington, Kingstanding and Castle Vale, more than 2,000 people had to wait more than a month for a GP appointment. Is it not the case that the longer the Tories are in power, the longer patients will have to wait?
Paulette Hamilton: I am the daughter of immigrants. My parents’ generation faced injustice through the mistakes made by the Windrush scheme, which are taking years to unravel. Last year set a record high for small boat crossings, with 46,000 arrivals. Why on earth should our constituents trust the Conservative Government, when under them, small boat crossings are going up rather than coming down?
Paulette Hamilton: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make an estimate of the number of (a) occasions that schools in Birmingham, Erdington constituency have screened pupils using metal detectors and (b) weapons that have been recovered as a result of screening pupils in each of the last five years.
Paulette Hamilton: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many instances of knife crime have been recorded in (a) the West Midlands, (b) Birmingham and (c) the Birmingham, Erdington constituency, in each of the last five years.
Paulette Hamilton: To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps she is taking to educate (a) workers and (b) businesses on ways to reduce negative health impacts of night-time work.
Paulette Hamilton: It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. I thank the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) for securing this important debate. For many of my constituents, the sad reality of living in Tory Britain is that antisocial behaviour is increasing in our town centres, and there has been a loss of confidence in the police. The Government have hollowed out neighbourhood policing,...
Paulette Hamilton: I absolutely agree. I have street pastors in my constituency. This is not their fault, but the problem with street pastors is that, because we lack the police and people from other local agencies to work with them, it is becoming unsafe at certain times of the day and night for them to do their valuable work. Given the lack of police and other services on the high street, does the hon. Member...
Paulette Hamilton: To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, if she will have discussions with (a) Uber and (b) other private hire operators on their practices for deactivating drivers’ accounts.
Paulette Hamilton: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) on securing this important debate. I refer the House to my declaration of interests. In March, I had the pleasure of visiting Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. I was blown away by the unbelievable resilience of the Rohingya people living there. Over 1 million refugees live in Cox’s Bazar, with more than 900,000 of those...
Paulette Hamilton: I absolutely support what my hon. Friend says. This has to come to an end. When I went to Bangladesh, it was an absolute honour to go to those camps. Sometimes, it does not matter what you read; you have to see it and experience it. When I went there I saw the conditions that people were living in. The hon. Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) talked about the small house that a number of...
Paulette Hamilton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department are taking to help (a) specialist disability providers and (b) other social care services in Birmingham Erdington constituency (i) recruit and (ii) retain care workers.
Paulette Hamilton: I beg to move, That this House has considered global food security. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard, and I want to thank all Members for attending the first debate I have ever hosted in this place. I will start by setting out what we mean when we use the term “global food security”. The UK Government define it as “stable global production and a...
Paulette Hamilton: I thank the hon. Member for her intervention, and I absolutely agree. Famine is also projected in parts of Somalia this month. Up to 60 million children worldwide could become acutely malnourished by the end of this year. Evidence from previous famines shows that young children are the most vulnerable in times of crisis. During the Somalia famine in 2011, more than half the deaths were among...
Paulette Hamilton: We heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who highlighted the important contribution of agriculture in Northern Ireland to our food security. We must ensure that no one feels they are left behind. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), who talked about the right type of support for farmers and people having access to markets to sell the products they...
Paulette Hamilton: Time and again I meet people in my surgery who can barely afford to feed their family, let alone afford rent hikes. Does my hon. Friend agree that people in communities across the country cannot afford to pay the price of a Tory Government?
Paulette Hamilton: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Paulette Hamilton: I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests because I am an independent lay manager. Everywhere we look in Britain at the moment, public services are crumbling. Chronic neglect by the Conservative Government means that people across the UK can no longer trust that they will be able to access mental health services when they need them. As a lay manager in...
Paulette Hamilton: What recent progress her Department has made on reducing the use of hotels as contingency asylum accommodation.
Paulette Hamilton: I recently received an email from the Home Office that said that the use of hotels to house asylum seekers is “inappropriate”, and that reliance on them must be reduced. In the same email, the Home Office informed me that it planned to increase the use of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers in my constituency of Erdington by 159%—the single biggest increase in the whole of...
