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Health and Education

My hon. Friend raises an issue of great concern, particularly in Leicester and Leicestershire. I have, of course, discussed it with the chief executive of the Leicester hospitals trust, as have my hon. Friends. I do not intend to issue instructions from my office as Secretary of State about how hospital trusts should best balance their budgets or how they should make provision, which we would all want them to make, to ensure that, for instance, patients who need repeated hospital treatments or people who have to visit regularly can be exempt from such charges. We have spelled out in the latest annual report the really remarkable achievements that are a tribute, first and foremost, to the hard work and dedication of the 1.3 million staff—considerably more staff than eights years ago—in the NHS. We should be proud of those staff, just as we should be proud of the unprecedented investment that has also made those achievements possible. Health service investment has doubled since 1997 and is set to be three times as much as eight years ago by 2007–08. But we should also be proud of the reforms that have made those achievements possible. We will certainly continue those reforms, such as NHS Direct and the walk-in centres—I visited one 10 days ago in New Cross—that are available to patients, whether or not they are registered with a GP, 12 hours a day, 365 days a year. That is a model of primary health care in a disadvantaged inner-city area. We should be proud, too, of reforms such as the specialist treatment centres, including the mobile cataract surgery units that are giving patients more control and choice over their health care. All that is available free at the point of care, as NHS treatment always will be—at least, under a Labour Government.