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Health Care in London

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has had the benefit of speaking both to the chief executives of the hospitals and to Ruth Carnall from the strategic health authority. He would find that she has confirmed that there are no plans to take away the accident and emergency departments from those hospitals. I turn now to my local primary care trust, NHS Brent. Four years ago, I was extremely critical of Brent PCT and was in part responsible for initiating the turnaround plan. Today, NHS Brent is one of the two fastest improving PCTs in the country based on the Care Quality Commission performance ratings for 2008-09. It is a borough that recalls 19-hour waits on trolleys in A and E under the Conservatives, and it is meeting its targets on four-hour waiting lists. In particular, it has exceeded the 93 per cent. target for cancer waits of no longer than 14 days. Critically, this is about not only improved targets, but lives saved: mortality—not only for cancer but for cardiovascular disease— has vastly improved. All mortality has improved from 87 per 100,000 only two years ago to 79 per 100,000 now. Health inequality lies at the heart of this debate, and in the south of Brent, in Stonebridge ward, the average life expectancy is almost 10 years less than that in some of the more affluent wards that I represent in Brent, North.