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Department of Health

I join hon. Members in complimenting my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) on securing this debate, which has had some thoughtful contributions. I appreciate his great experience as a former shadow health spokesman, and well remember working with him in opposition when the health service was very different from the one we know now. Back-Bench scrutiny of the searching variety that we have heard today is the most testing of Ministers and deserves the most thoughtful response. I will try to give that. I wish to cover three main areas. I cannot guarantee that the whole of my response will be completely thoughtful—one or two contributions merited something less—but I will try. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) had an interesting column in last week’s Health Service Journal, which I commend to the House. The title was, ““Stop focusing on the size of the deficit and start looking forward to creating a stronger financial framework””. I echo that. I will not quote him selectively, because he is also critical, and we need to consider some of the criticism. He says:"““Payment by Results is essential””." He continues:"““Accumulated deficits cannot be written off””," as that would send the wrong signals. He then goes on to criticise what he describes as ““top-slicing””. I will come to that in a moment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley rightly pointed out that the NHS budget has doubled since 1997 and will have almost trebled by 2008 to more than £92 billion. It is right that we examine where the extra resources have gone and the way in which those resources are being used. The extra resources have helped to deliver a transformation of health services. It is important that the House does not lose sight of that. My hon. Friends the Members for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey), for Dartford (Dr. Stoate), for City of York (Hugh Bayley) and for Crawley (Laura Moffatt) recognise that, as do a number of others. It would take too much time to record all the improvements that we have seen. In 1997, however, it is fair to say that almost 300,000 people were waiting more than 15 months for their operations. Now, no one waits more than six months, and the average is about eight weeks.