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Health Bill

No, because other Members want to speak. [Interruption.] Labour Members want to speak, too. The reason why the ward had not been closed was that the hospital had a target throughput of so many operations to do that day from that ward. The patient was moved to the end of the ward, and new admissions were taken into a ward containing a patient with MRSA. That is targets. Another factor that contributes to hospital-acquired infections is also illustrated by what happened in my day. We were not allowed to go home or travel back to work in our uniforms. Now, one sees nothing else but nursing and medical staff going home in their uniforms. They may not even wash them, and then they travel back in them. Even if the ward is clean, 25 per cent. of infections are brought into the hospital from outside. We could have a statutory code of practice saying that medical staff must not wear their uniforms to go home, that there is to be no hot-bedding in the wards, that the wards must be clean, and that auxiliary staff are to be brought back into the wards. We used to supplement the cleaning staff. I shall not continue, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I want to finish my speech in less than my five minutes, but I hope that the Minister will take what I have said on board, and will consider making the code of practice statutory.