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Health Care (Sutton)

First, I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) for arriving two minutes into his speech. I had anticipated that we would reach this point at 10 o'clock, so I had to hot-foot it in from my constituency to be here in time for the debate. I thank my hon. Friend for giving me a couple of minutes, and I shall not detain the Minister for longer than that. It is incumbent on my hon. Friend and me to confirm that there is some good news in Sutton. I am pleased that in Wallington, at the Shotfield health centre, we can see major works under way with lots of scaffolding. Significant progress is clearly being made and, in the next 18 months or so, we will see a large, new, purpose-built, fit-for-purpose health centre. It will replace the health centre that my family have used, which is completely inadequate at present. That will be a fantastic, positive and modern development and I want to praise the GPs for the way in which they have worked with local residents, local residents' groups and local councillors to come forward with a scheme that is acceptable to everyone locally. I also want to take this opportunity to praise Carshalton Fields surgery, which organised a vocal campaign on the issue of polyclinics, expressing support for continuing to operate as a local family practice. I welcome confirmation from the PCT that the surgery can continue to do that if it so chooses. I also welcome the ““Clean Your Hands”” campaign, which has been organised by the primary care trust. It is clearly beginning to have an impact both in the primary care trust and the acute trust. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has been to St. Helier hospital recently, but wherever one walks there are machines that dispense hand creams and that talk to people as they walk past, encouraging them to make use of them. That is a positive development. The final positive development is the substance of my hon. Friend's debate, and that is the proposed business case. My hon. Friend and I both await a positive outcome and the confirmation that the £140 million that will be required to enable that case to proceed will be forthcoming.