LibDem Leadership announcement expected today

08:17 Thursday 16th July 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: Big political movement later on this afternoon. The new Leader of the Liberal Democrats is going to be chosen, Nick Clegg’s successor. Voting closed yesterday. There’s been a face-off between the party’s former President Tim Farron and ex-Minister Norman Lamb. I’m joined by our Political Correspondent Paul Rowley. Now Paul I know you’re a football fan. Can I have a score prediction please.
PAUL ROWLEY: Tim Farron three to two majority I would have thought. Three to two victory. I think he should win by about 60% of the vote. 40% to Norman Lamb. Tim Farron popular with the grass roots, what’s left of them after their annihilation at the General Election. His rival Norman Lamb much respected. He was a Minister in the last Government. maybe that’s a problem for him, because that’s possibly one of the reasons they were punished at the ballot box for going into coalition with the Conservatives. At the time Tim Farron was free to vote against his party on things like university tuition fees, which was such a damaging issue for them, and what became known as the bedroom tax. But whereas this is a party Dotty with fifty seven MPs when they entered Government, including when Julian Huppert was the MP for Cambridge. They’re now down to a rump of just eight of them, their lowest total since the Liberal Democrats were formed. Indeed you’ve got to go back to the General Election of 1970, the year Tim Farron was born incidentally, the year the Beatles split up, and I think the year that Cambridge United entered the Football League when it was worse than this. The old Liberal Party had just half a dozen seats under the late Jeremy Thorpe.
DOTTY MCLEOD: So you’ve been following the campaign. What’s it been like?
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Norman Lamb On The Francis Report Into Stafford Hospital

17:16 Tuesday 19th November 2013
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[J]EREMY SALLIS: Hospitals in England are being ordered to publish details online every month on how many staff are on each ward. The move, to take effect next year, follows the abuse scandal at Stafford Hospital, where hundreds of patients died from neglect. In addition, the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told the Commons that senior medical staff face being struck off for poor treatment, even in cases of near misses. Well I asked our political reporter Matt Cole to explain the terrible incidents at Stafford Hospital that led to today’s announcement.
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MATT COLE: Indeed, there were some serious serious failings that led to the deaths of many many people between 2005 and 2008 at Stafford Hospital. Robert Francis QC was brought in. He did a number of reports. This second one though wasn’t so much specifically just about Stafford Hospital. It therefore expanded a little into thinking about the wider issues of care. Now there were some 290 recommendations made when that report was published earlier in the year. Today Jeremy Hunt the Secretary of State for Health said that he accepted, in principle at least, all 290, in fact 281 actually fully accepted, and 9 not, but the substance behind them was accepted. He just said in the Commons today that things had gone so badly wrong at Stafford Hospital they didn’t want them to happen again.
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Norman Lamb – Minister On A Mission

17:23 Tuesday 17th September 2013
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[C]HRIS MANN: Liberal Democrats at their annual conference have voted for tougher powers to crack down on poor quality care homes. Delegates in Glasgow say the watchdog The Care Quality Commission should be cracking down on care home owners if standards aren’t good enough. They’re also demanding better training and pay for care workers who visit people at home, and more time to do their jobs. The Care Minister is Norman Lamb, the MP for North Norfolk, and he joined me earlier.
(TAPE)
NORMAN LAMB: We’re acutely aware that there are too many examples of care falling down. I had an elderly constituent recently, a lady who talked to me about different care workers turning up every day, male care workers who she’s never seen before coming to shower her. Now this is an assault on your dignity. That’s not acceptable to me. She also talked about care workers turning up with just one day of training, people giving her the wrong medication, and on one evening no-one turning up at all, so she was left stranded in her chair through the night. Now we have to confront these unacceptable standards of care.
CHRIS MANN: Who’s to blame for this? And how do you fix it? Continue reading “Norman Lamb – Minister On A Mission”