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Independent Sector Treatment Centres

Absolutely. They are not willing even to contact patients on another hospital waiting list or to overcome the travel problem by providing taxis. But why should they? There is no incentive. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One way in which to make the take or pay contracts deliver something approaching value for money is to extend the length of the contract to take up unused activity. However, that will not help if patients do not want to travel. That problem can be resolved only if Burton provides services generally unavailable elsewhere in the health economy. The treatment centre is adding some capacity to publicly funded health care. But after all that was the original objective of ISTCs, and one with which I have no problem. Obviously, it makes sense. Clearly, they have a role. However, over the last 10 years, the health service has changed vastly; it has even changed vastly since the programme was established. I cannot understand why if everything else is up for change, the programme cannot be. PCT’s deficits are being increased as a result of being locked into treatment centre contracts that will not deliver to local people. Surely, the Government will not commit themselves to another £550 million a year for a second wave of ISTCs without addressing those changed circumstances. Already, waiting lists are down massively, so why are we looking at a second phase. Clearly, circumstances have changed significantly. The Department tells us that before an ISTC is agreed, there is a robust—its word—process to ensure that there is local support and a capacity need for each elective ISTC. From stories I hear, that does not appear to have happened in Staffordshire. It was more like the Shropshire and Staffordshire strategic health authority presenting it as a done deal—a fait accompli. That was the very same strategic health authority that tried to force a Staffordshire-wide primary care trust on us. Ministers intervened then and gave us the local primary care trust for which I campaigned over nine months. I am very grateful to Ministers for doing that. I urge the Minister to intervene on the Burton treatment centre to ensure that it pays its way and delivers something approaching value for money; to ensure delivery of a service that people want, either by changing the case mix or ensuring that that purpose-built facility delivers; to ensure that PCTs do not have to spend thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of pounds for a service that it is not getting, and to ensure that it deals effectively with patients and that it does not just sit back and expect GPs to transport patients—it cannot even be bothered to ensure that its services can be contracted electronically. I know that the Burton centre has been open for less than a year, but I do not believe that an NHS facility would be allowed to fail as conclusively as that treatment centre. I therefore hope that the Minister will urgently talk to the treatment centre and to the strategic health authority to find out what is going on. It is not fair to expect primary care trusts to deliver on their deficits, to plan and to ensure that they cut back on their over-expenditure when they are having to drain money away to a centre that is not delivering for local people in my constituency.