Oral Answers to Questions

John Healey Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, I can. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. Over the last year in hospitals in particular we saw what was approaching a 15% reduction in productivity. That is why we are proceeding with ensuring that across the NHS we recognise not only that there are increasing demands on the NHS, which is why we are increasing the NHS budget by £ll.5 billion over four years, but that that money must be used increasingly effectively to deliver efficiency savings in excess of 4% each year so that we can improve the quality of services for patients.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State spoke in glowing terms of the last year, but the last year has been a catalogue of confusion, incompetence and broken promises. So will he now accept that the Government’s massive mishandled NHS reorganisation is piling extra pressure on NHS services, with nearly £2 billion promised for patient care being wasted on the internal changes? Will he admit that it is patients who will suffer as front-line NHS staff lose their jobs, treatments are cut back and waiting times start to rise again under the Tories?

[Mr Lansley]

The right hon. Gentleman asked about performance last year. I told him what the financial performance was. Let me also make it clear that, for example, for hospital in-patients, referral to treatment waiting time has gone down from 8.4 weeks in May 2010 to 7.9 weeks in the latest figures in March, and for out-patients the figure has gone down from 4.3 weeks in May 2010 to 3.7 weeks in the latest figures, so waiting times have improved. We have established the cancer drugs fund, with more than 2,500 patients benefiting from that. We have published and driven down the number of breaches of the single sex accommodation rules: a 77% reduction in those breaches, which Labour never achieved. In the last year we have reduced the number of MRSA infections in hospitals by 22% and C. difficile infections by 15%. I applaud the NHS—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think we have got the thrust of it and are most grateful.

[John Healey]

The Secretary of State mentioned a lot of things, but I notice that he did not mention the Prime Minister’s five new guarantees. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State shakes his head as if they do not matter, but perhaps he was not consulted on them. People have seen the Prime Minister make and then break promises on the NHS before, but this time he is breaking his pledges as he is making them. The King’s Fund says that waiting times are going up and the Nuffield Trust says that health funding is being cut in real terms. Privatisation, the break-up of integrated care and the removal of national standards at the heart of the health service are exactly what his health Bill is designed to do. Is that not why MORI shows public concern about the NHS rising rapidly and why people are right to conclude that they cannot trust the Tories on the NHS?

[Mr Lansley]

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made it very clear that we will not let waiting times rise and that we will improve performance in the NHS right across the board, which was what I was illustrating. I remind the right hon. Gentleman again that waiting times in hospitals are down from 8.4 weeks to 7.9 weeks for in-patients and from 4.3 weeks to 3.7 weeks for out-patients. That is what we are committed to. Chris Ham of the Kings Fund was on the “Today” programme this morning and said on waiting times, “There hasn’t been a great deal of change since the election.” What has changed since the election is that we are improving performance, driving down the number of breaches of the single-sex rules, increasing access to dentistry, cutting the number of managers and increasing the number of doctors. Those are the things we are doing in the NHS, and it is to the benefit of patients that we do.