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Health and Education

That will be tackled. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there are unacceptable waiting times in mental health care, but I will come on to mental health in a minute. The leader of the Liberal Democrats described mental health as being in crisis in this country two weeks before the World Health Organisation said that we had the best mental health services in Europe. I will come on to mental health, because I believe that a chunk of time needs to be devoted to it. Apart from waiting times, there has also been dramatic progress on tackling health care acquired infections. In September, we announced that we had achieved and exceeded our ambitions of reducing MRSA cases by half—achieving a 57 per cent. reduction in three years. In October, we announced that clostridium difficile cases had fallen by 38 per cent. among the over-65s. We have seen dramatic improvements in primary care. GPs see patients for longer—the length of consultations has gone up by 50 per cent.—and the number of consultations per year has risen from around 221 million in 1997 to nearly 300 million this year. Following the agreement reached with the British Medical Association earlier this year, which Opposition Members opposed, 65 per cent. of GP surgeries are now offering additional weekend and evening appointments—again, meeting and then exceeding our ambition, which was to have half of all surgeries opening for longer by the end of the year.