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Primary Care Trusts and Ambulance Trusts

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments and am grateful to him for making an important point. I think hon. Members on both sides of the House realise that the NHS has perhaps not run the best consultation exercises and has not been as good at listening to local communities as it should be for the fine organisation that it is. The exercise, for all its difficulties—I recognise that there have been difficulties along the way—has produced a good outcome. The NHS has shown that it can listen to local opinion and come up with structures that respond to concerns expressed on the ground. My right hon. Friend is right. There is a lot of talk about the need to have joint working between health and social services, but often that talk runs ahead of the reality. His predecessor as Chairman of the Select Committee on Health, David Hinchliffe, the former hon. Member for Wakefield, was passionate about that. He often made that point when I served under him on the Select Committee. I, too, am convinced that we will see real improvements when we have much greater integration of health and social services in my right hon. Friend’s constituency and mine.