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Private Sector (NHS)

I have so many points to cover that I will not give way. At the heart of the debate and the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham is the scanning contract with Alliance Medical. For the benefit of the Chamber, I should explain that under that contract about 65,000 scans have been provided to NHS patients much faster than would otherwise have been the case. My hon. Friend raised concerns about the local scanning facility in his constituency being underutilised and asked a good question about why we do not just give that trust more money to employ more staff and put on extra scanning sessions. By way of introduction to my five quick points of response, I should say that money is available in PCTs. Questions are often asked about the availability of radiographers, in particular, when the Government have invested and will invest to fund more. My hon. Friend made a non-ideological argument about putting the founding principles of the NHS into action. After an 19 Oct 2005 : Column 293WH extensive deconstruction of his argument with the Department over the past two or three days, I am able to reply with five points. If I have missed out bits of his analysis, I will write to him afterwards. First things first. By 2008, if not before, the University hospital of north Durham, in common with all NHS hospitals, will need to use its scanning capacity to the full, either by employing extra staff or by making more effective use of NHS staff. As I said, where there are staff shortages, we shall continue to invest to overcome that. Secondly—and this will probably make the biggest difference—funding is in the system for delivery of the 18-week target, which, for the first time, includes diagnostics. Durham and Chester-le-Street PLC will have its funding increased by more than £30 million—18.5 per cent.—over the next two years. We cannot reach the 18-week target unless we use the money to ensure that local scanning capacity is used to the full. I know my hon. Friend's methods of persuasion and argument and I am sure that he will help his local PCT to see the logic and wisdom of directing the extra funding into the university trust. Thirdly—and this may be the coup de grâce—we are introducing a programme called choice of scan, which is a catchy name for something that means that from November, any patients waiting for an MRI scan who do not have a date scheduled within 26 weeks will be offered the choice of going to another provider, with the money following them. I have no doubt about what that will mean in my hon. Friend's constituency, because at the moment, as he says, patients are forced to go to Middlesbrough, but they should have the choice and the chance to go somewhere local, if that is better for them. Fourthly, we must ensure that we approach the questions with our eyes wide open. Last year, we specifically included diagnostics in our capacity planning exercise. In particular, we asked strategic health authorities two questions: how much MRI scanning do they need to hit the 18-week target and how much of it do they need to obtain from the independent sector? We want to know how much capacity they already have—which they need to use to the full—and what the gap is, representing what they will need to obtain elsewhere. 19 Oct 2005 : Column 294WH Finally, my hon. Friend made several reasonable points about answers that he received, suggesting a lack of information centrally. Most importantly, data on waiting times for MRI scans—which have been a particular bugbear for him—are not currently collected centrally, but the Department will introduce such data collection later in the year, to examine the waiting times for some diagnostic tests and procedures. In the three minutes left to me I shall try to cover some of the more general points that were made. I have nothing further to add about PCT reform to what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has talked about.