Health Bill media featuring Andrew George MP:

February 20th 2012

London Evening Standard

Mirror

From the Financial Times August 24th 2011.

“The revelations have prompted unease among some Liberal Democrats about their coalition partners. Andrew George, MP for St Ives, said that “David Cameron’s judgement has been put into question”.

“This is extremely bad news for Cameron, in particular, because it points the finger at him, his judgement and his ability to ask questions about the probity and honesty of people that he has appointed to an extremely powerful and significant job,” Mr George said. “There was already a cloud of suspicion hanging over Andy Coulson at that time. Did Cameron really question him, did he really put him in a vice and go through all the issues with him?”

The full article can be read here.

From the Western Daily Press, July 10th 2011

“David Cameron faces a rural revolt from Coalition backbenchers after an MP accused the Prime Minister of treating the countryside as a “chocolate-box” playground for the rich.

Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have condemned the decision to abolish the Rural Advocate, who acts as an independent voice for villages across England. The post is currently held by Stuart Burgess but is due go with the abolition of the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC), of which he is also chairman, under the much-heralded “bonfire of the quangos”. Critics say it will be the first time there has not been an independent voice for the countryside since David Lloyd George was Prime Minister.

Ministers are expected to come under pressure to reverse the decision in the Commons this week when the Public Bodies Bill receives its second reading.

Cornish MP Andrew George, the chairman of the Lib Dem environment policy committee, said he hoped to persuade the Government to perform a U-turn.

“It is particularly important to protect rural communities and ensure they don’t just become an exclusive reserve of the better off,” he added.

“The big risk is that the small and weak voices tend to get ignored.

“They have the added problem of trying to persuade the powers-that-be that the superficial image of the countryside as a rather well-heeled place of rural tranquillity is not true.

“You have to punch your way through the chocolate-box image. It is that important role that I think will simply get lost if the Rural Advocate is removed.”

Read the full article here

From The Independent July 10th 2011.

“The issue is expected to become a flashpoint of dissent among Tory and Lib Dem MPs still reeling from Defra’s abortive plan to sell-off forests, which allowed Labour to position itself as the party of the countryside.

Andrew George, the chairman of the Lib Dem environment policy committee, said he hoped to persuade the Government to perform a U-turn. “It is particularly important to protect rural communities and ensure they don’t just become an exclusive reserve of the better off.

“The big risk is that the small and weak voices tend to get ignored. They have the added problem of trying to persuade the powers-that-be that the superficial image of the countryside as a rather well-heeled place of rural tranquillity is not true.

“You have to punch your way through the chocolate-box image. It is that important role that I think will simply get lost if the Rural Advocate is removed.”

Read the full article here

From The Guardian, July 4th 2011

Lib Dem MP Andrew George said his party would be “very keen” to push forward care reform as an issue that distinguished them from the government.

He told Radio 4′s Sunday night programme, Westminster Hour, that Dilnot was pushing things “in the right direction” by pushing the bill “back towards the taxpayer”.

“Certainly that is something we would be very keen to push for and certainly if you take our policy back over the last decade or more we have been very clear in this area in believing that this is an extension of the welfare state which we should protect,” he said.

From The Guardian, July 02nd 2011

Campaigners reject this as risible. Andrew George, the Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives who leads the Grocery Market Action Group, said: “The cost to each retailer for the costs of the adjudicator is put at £120,000 per annum. It’s a gnat bite – nothing, given their record profits in the depths of the greatest recession of modern times. Are they saying that it will cost them more to behave decently and legally in their dealings with suppliers?”

From The Guardian, July 2nd 2011.

“Three thousand farmers and other suppliers have gone out of business in Britain as a direct result of supermarkets’ bullying and unfair buying policies, according to Andrew George, MP for West Cornwall, who heads the Grocery Market Action Group. He said the potential cost of the adjudicator to the retailers was “a gnat bite”, as long as they carried out their business fairly.

“Andrew George MP said: “We need this measure: food producers here and in the developing world want to concentrate on being able to provide healthy food for customers, they do not want to perpetually fight the supermarkets for survival.”

From The Guardian, June 22nd 2011

David Cameron has rejected a call for Britain to “put right a wrong” that dates back just short of two centuries by returning the Parthenon marbles to Greece.

Andrew George, the Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives, reopened the issue of the marble sculptures, currently in the British Museum, when he incorporated the Greek financial crisis in a Commons question.

George told Cameron at prime minister’s questions that Britain could do its bit to help Greece by returning the sculptures to Athens.