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Public Health (England)

I do not represent a rural community, but I imagine that that would be of huge concern to those communities where it happens, because they bear the majority of the cost of looking after that person, although they are not in receipt of 95 per cent. of the normal funding. May I talk briefly to Ministers about drugs? We have a number of excellent local support service providers within Hertfordshire. They are very small niche providers, but they understand the communities that they serve perfectly, and they provide a variety of services. One of the great joys of being a Member of Parliament is meeting truly fantastic people who for no financial reward, and with very little recognition beyond their peer group, work immensely long hours with extremely difficult and troubled people. I am concerned that local groups such as those that I have referred to might be squeezed out by the imposition, or the promotion, of national or large regional contracts—admittedly the large organisations to which they are awarded are charities, but charities that operate on a far wider scale, and do not have many of the attributes of locally based organisations. I would urge the Minister to take my concerns seriously—but I shall not do so, because I know that she will indeed take them seriously. I also urge my own council to listen to the concerns of local service users about the type of services that they are accessing, because small and local solutions are often best suited to address the problems that we as a community are trying to resolve. We in Broxbourne have all the problems that are prevalent in other constituencies. Broxbourne has a Conservative Member of Parliament, but in Waltham Cross, for example, there are many of the problems associated with inner cities. It is not a particularly wealthy town; it has a high incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, high levels of addiction, and high levels of mental health problems. I congratulate the Government on the Sure Start programme. It has been hugely welcome and successful, but recently we had to fight hard to ensure that we could get continued funding. I hope that that is the last time that we have to fight for that, because the service provided is of such outstanding quality and excellence, and its benefit to the community is so high, that I hope that in future it will be taken as a given that people in Waltham Cross will be able to access that high quality of service. Public health is a massively important issue, and I am glad that we have had such a sensible debate. I am also glad that there is such a committed slimmer on the Labour Benches as the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard). I have not quite reached his degree of thinness, but I will work on that over the next few months.