Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

May I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the competition authorities make their decisions based on what is in the best interests of patients and do not hold competition as an overriding ideology? He is right that we need to work closely with those authorities to ensure that they have the expertise to take decisions in the right way and with trusts to ensure that they have the expertise to ensure that they do not stumble when they go through those processes.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

How can the public have confidence in their health service when police officers are taking patients who are sick and injured to A and E because ambulances are backed up outside A and E and take longer than an hour to arrive?

[Mr Hunt]

I will tell the hon. Lady why the public can have confidence in their health service: compared with three years ago, on broadly the same budget, the NHS is doing 800,000 more operations year in, year out; MRSA rates have halved; and the number of people who wait for a year or longer for operations has gone down from 18,000 to fewer than 400.