NHS: Targets

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Wills]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what they propose the role of targets in the National Health Service should be.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

My Lords, from 2012-13 the NHS commissioning board will be responsible for the delivery of NHS services, based on the NHS outcomes framework. The operating framework for the NHS published last week sets out the priorities for the NHS for the transition year of 2011-12 and details how the NHS will move to a health economy driven by outcomes for 2012-13.

[Lord Wills]

I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. He will recall that, in October, the Health Secretary said that the coalition never committed to a one-week target for cancer patients to get their test results

“because there is not enough clinical evidence to support it”.

However, in November, the noble Earl the Minister told this House that a

“one-week access target would not be the best use of the resources that we have”.—[Official Report, 11/11/10; col. 319.]

Why exactly did the Government scrap the target? Was it the cost, or was there a clinical justification? If it was both, which justification was the most important? If the clinical evidence played any part in this decision, could he please place the evidence in the Library of the House?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the announcement made by the previous Government for the one-week target was an unfunded, as well as very expensive, commitment. At the moment, the median wait for the 15 key diagnostic tests is 1.8 weeks—it fluctuates between 1.5 weeks and thereabouts. To bring that down to a maximum of one week would have cost many hundreds of millions of pounds. We judged that there are better ways in which to speed up access to diagnostic tests for a lot less money. That is why we recently announced that £25 million will be made available next year to help GPs to get direct access to tests for cancer without first having to make an appointment with a specialist. That money will buy up to 150,000 extra tests. We have thought round this problem—if I may put it that way—and thought around the conventional referral pathways. I believe that we will arrive at a very satisfactory result.