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National Blood Service

Having not served under your chairmanship before, Mr Williams, I now find myself doing so twice in a day. It is a pleasure. I congratulate the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Jim Dobbin) on securing the debate and I pay tribute to his experience of this sector. I also echo the tributes that he paid to the staff who are part of such a fantastic organisation and who are one of the reasons why it has such a high reputation. The debate is an important opportunity to discuss an issue that is not only important to the NHS and the public but which has been the subject of very unhelpful rumour and speculation. I become very disappointed when I see scare stories in the press that are not necessarily based on any foundation and that will only result in scaring people off donating blood, tissue or organs. Those stories are not helpful. I urge the hon. Gentleman and the other hon. Members sitting beside him that if they want to clarify the situation they should please feel free to contact me. That is much better than running scare stories, or a story getting out of hand, so that the issue becomes a disservice to the public we are all trying to serve. Contrary to what some people have been saying publicly and indeed privately, there are no plans to privatise the blood service, which is part of NHS Blood and Transplant, or NHSBT. I can say categorically that we are not selling off the service. If I do nothing else in this debate, I want to knock that rumour on its head. The Government have said previously that we will retain a single national system for blood with NHSBT at its helm and we stand by that statement. Under its current management team, NHSBT has done a great job and it continues to do so. It has maintained—indeed, greatly improved—the stability and security of the blood supply. It has also improved productivity in blood processing and testing by more than 50% in three years, which is a true achievement.