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Polyclinics

One of the most disappointing things about this debate and the motion is that they are focused entirely on the providers and not on where they should be focused—on the patients. That says an awful lot about the stance of the Conservative party. The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) said that nobody had spoken in favour of polyclinics, although my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) just did so. One of the reasons why that has been the case is that nobody has a health centre in their constituency. Interestingly, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) was calling for pilot schemes. I can tell him that we have quite a number of pilot schemes. In fact, he referred to some of them, in the sense that 12 areas have health centres, and Wigan is one of them. Indeed, Wigan was one of the first boroughs to have a local improvement finance trust—LIFT—centre. Parts of the borough have some of the worst health statistics in the north-west and, thus, in the whole country. It is also one of the most under-doctored areas in the country. The King's Fund, which was cited by the hon. Member for North Norfolk, has made a number of comments about health centres. I do not recognise those comments in respect of how we run the health centres and our LIFT programme in Wigan. For instance, it mentioned poor management, but each of our six health centres has a manager in charge to ensure that the organisation within, and between, the services provided is properly carried out. The King's Fund also mentioned a lack of innovation, but Wigan has a new and important innovation—our ““Find and Treat”” approach, whereby local GPs, through the health centres, go into the community seeking people who are particularly vulnerable to strokes and cardiac problems and try to bring them into the health centres for treatment. Rather than waiting for people to come once they have had their stroke or heart attack, when it is often too late, GPs are going out to ensure that we can treat them before that happens.