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NHS Expenditure (Reduction)

Polyclinics in London—GP-led health centres in other parts of the country are a slightly different type of NHS institution—are providing a great opening for people. They offer extended hours and deliver the services that patients want. We have to accept that the NHS will not be frozen just as it is now. What we have to see, particularly in the years to come, is a resolute focus on quality and improving patient care within reasonable budgets. We need to ensure that managers in the health service are focused on that, which means innovation and change. Change will come to the health service, and the changes that we want to see will improve the quality of patient care. We want to ensure that managers know that there is not a crisis. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) is right: sending the wrong message at this stage would be very dangerous. The NHS budgets are increasing this year by 5.5 per cent. and next year by 5.5 per cent., if the Government remain in power at least. We have said in the pre-Budget report that we are committed to protecting front-line NHS spending for the following two years, growing it in line with inflation. However, the demand for health care from an ageing population, new technology and ever higher patient expectations mean growing pressures on the NHS budget. That is clear, so along with commitments on spending, we have set out the quality and productivity challenge that the NHS faces. In four years' time, the NHS needs to be making efficiency savings of between £15 billion and £20 billion a year. Importantly, those are not cuts. Let me make that clear. The money will not be taken out of the NHS by the Treasury. After all, we are not Thatcherites. Importantly, those funds will be kept within NHS budgets. Our aim is that every penny of those savings will remain within the budgets, allowing us to realise our vision of continuing to improve the quality of care for all. Essentially, we envisage no cuts in NHS front-line funding. In previous times of financial challenge, patients have borne the brunt through longer waiting times, reduced availability of drugs and treatments and, ultimately, poor-quality care. Managers lacking in imagination made slash-and-burn cuts. That approach is indefensible when the scope for improving quality and productivity in the system today is still great. Patients should not pay the price of poor managers who are unable to handle budgets. The Mid-Staffordshire lesson is a lesson for every manager in the system. We need imaginative managers who will focus on the quality of care. I make no bones about it—I will name and shame managers who are making slash-and-burn cuts across the health service. Just in the last couple of weeks, I saw a press release from Gloucester hospital that deeply concerned me. I wrote to the managers at Gloucester hospital, expressing concern. They have said that the economic situation means that they have to slash a load of beds—a couple of hundred beds. That is nonsense. Thankfully, they have now decided that that sort of slash-and-burn announcement is unnecessary and needs to be looked at with care. It is a product of a lack of imagination by managers, and managers need to be very careful when they go down that route.