District Health Authorities (Hansard, 19 April 1983)

§ 12. Mr. Mike Thomas
asked the Secretary of State for Social Services in how many district health authorities the amount deducted from their 1983–84 budget for efficiency savings exceeds the amount determined to be growth money for the same period.

§ Mr. Kenneth Clarke
The information requested is not available centrally because regional health authorities are responsible for allocating resources to and agreeing the targets for efficiency savings with district authorities.

§ Mr. Thomas
Is the Minister aware that we shall not be surprised that he read that wholly devious answer extremely quickly? Is he also aware that the level of statistical performance of the Government is on a par with that of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who told me that the Government had produced 4,000 doctors, which he repeated in a party political broadcast last week? The number turns out to be 3,500 doctors, rounded up to 4,000 by his officials. The truth is that there is hardly a health authority in the country whose allocated growth money exceeds the efficiency savings that have been made. It is part of the fabric of lies—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I presume that the hon. Gentleman is not accusing the Front Bench of lying?

§ Mr. Thomas
Merely the Government, Mr. Speaker.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. That is not good enough. The hon. Gentleman must not lower our standards to that extent. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw any charge of lying.

§ Mr. Thomas
The Government's statistical record—[HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw"]—could be described as one of terminological inexactitude.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman will withdraw the charge of lying.

§ Mr. Thomas
If you were to impute, Mr. Speaker—

§ Mr. Speaker
There is no need for argument. All the hon. Gentleman has to do is to say that he withdraws the 154 charge of lying. I apply the same rules to all hon. Members and they must apply to the hon. Gentleman. We must try to maintain our standards.

§ Mr. Thomas
If you ask me, Mr. Speaker, I must of course, out of respect to you, withdraw that charge.

§ Mr. Speaker
I am very much obliged.

§ Mr. Clarke
In reply to the question, in so far as I remember it, I do not know how much money the hon. Gentleman wants us to spend on collecting these damn-fool statistics, which, when he gets them, he tries to misuse. We have 192 district health authorities and we could, if we wanted, collect centrally the details from all of them of the growth money that they have been allocated by their regional health authorities and the efficiency savings that they have been asked to make. If it is the specific concern of the hon. Gentleman, we could collect figures for any one district health authority, but there is no point in someone at the Elephant and Castle collecting the details from 192 authorities. The hon. Gentleman wants the figures to demonstrate that, somehow, we are not increasing growth in the Health Service. Spending on the Health Service has gone up 16 per cent. ahead of the RPI since the Government came to office and, making allowance for pay and price increases and the extra cost of the Health Service, growth stands at 7.5 per cent. The hon. Gentleman is trying to prove the impossible. If he gets the answer from all the district health authorities, which he can do by going around to them all, he will not be able to prove his preposterous thesis.

§ Mr. Joseph Dean
The Minister is aware, because I have written to him recently about the problem, that in the Kirkstall area of Leeds, because of present allocations, the long-awaited building of the clinic has had to be postponed, not because of the capital costs — the authority was ready to go out to tender—but because the insignificant sum of £27,000 per year could not be found for revenue costs. Will the Minister use his good offices to ensure that the clinic goes ahead and that the expectations of the people of Kirkstall are realised as quickly as possible?

§ Mr. Clarke
The hon. Gentleman has already had a word with me about the problem in Kirkstall and I shall, of course, look into it for him. As I understand it, that district health authority is having to make a choice between competing priorities in its district. That has always been a feature of the Health Service and will always be, whatever happens, but across the country as a whole the Government have exempted the Health Service from any cuts in public spending. In fact, we are greatly increasing the resources going to the Health Service for obvious and perfectly understandable reasons.