National Health Service

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr George Howarth]

rose—

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Burns]

I shall make a little more progress.

Let us not stop at waiting times. The £600 million cancer drugs fund that has helped more than 12,500 patients to access the drugs previously denied to them, the screening programmes for breast and bowel cancer, potentially saving an extra 1,100 lives every year by 2015, the world-leading telehealth and telecare whole systems demonstrator programme, which saw a stunning 45% fall in mortality and is set to transform of 3 million people with long-term conditions over the next five years—

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Valerie Vaz]

The Minister is very fond of statistics. Can he say whether GP referrals have gone up, and whether A and E admissions have gone up or down?

[Mr Burns]

The hon. Lady will know that GP referrals have gone down slightly, but the referrals to A and E have risen slightly.