National Health Service

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burns]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), then I will give way to the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) and the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), then I will stop giving way for a time to make progress.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Earlier this year I was delighted to be able to open a new digital mammography unit at Crawley hospital, a hospital which under the previous Government saw its accident and emergency unit closed down. Does my right hon. Friend find it odd that the Opposition refuse to match the spending commitments on the NHS that this Government are delivering?

[Mr Burns]

My hon. Friend is right. As he would probably expect, I shall deal with that issue later in my speech. While I am responding to his intervention, let me say that not only was his hospital fortunate in having that fantastic equipment to look after his constituents, but I had the pleasure last week to be in his constituency to visit Elekta and Varian, which are world leaders in making equipment to help with radiotherapy.