---

Health Bill

I make again the point that I have made before: thanks to our investment and unprecedented funding for the NHS, which the Conservative party failed to make available, and thanks to our reforms, we are bringing waiting lists down, and as more capacity becomes available to the NHS both in NHS hospitals and in independent sector treatment centres, as is happening now, it will be possible to get the waiting lists down even further, with lower bed occupancy rates, which in turn will help to build on the good results already being achieved with infections. The other point to consider on this particular issue is that, if a hospital is still failing to abide by the new code and to reduce its infections, even after an intervention by the Healthcare Commission, I—or in the case of the foundation trusts, the regulator—have the power to intervene.