HC Deb 16 July 1991 vol 195 cc206-7
3. Mrs. Margaret Ewing

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many health authorities have now met the targets set for the time scale of results of cervical smears to be relayed to general practitioners and patients.

The Minster for Health (Mrs. Virginia Bottomley)

Health authority laboratories must aim to return the results of cervical smear tests within one month to the doctor who took them. Latest figures show that 173 district health authorities—that is 93 per cent.—were meeting the target.

Mrs. Ewing

The Minister will appreciate that that is an improvement on the previous statistics. Does she recall that on 21 February she said that one third of the laboratories were not meeting that target and that there was a waiting list of about 7.5 weeks for the processing of tests? What is the waiting time in areas where the target is not being met?

Mrs. Bottomley

Thirteen districts are not meeting the target, the longest wait, at the latest date, being 13 weeks. The vast majority have waits of much less than that. The particular case is being closely investigated, but there has been a substantial improvement. Last July, about two thirds of districts were meeting the target. Now, 93 per cent. of them are. Perhaps even more important, nine out of 10 GPs are obtaining their target payments for making sure that they take cervical smears in the first place. This is real health promotion and disease prevention.

Mr. Marlow

Health Ministers are rightly introducing initiatives to deal with the health care of women, but half the population, by and large, is made up of men. What health care initiatives does my hon. Friend intend to put forward to look after us?

Mrs. Bottomley

I have every sympathy with my hon. Friend and I shall enter into urgent discussions with him to see what further steps we can take to improve the health care of men. Women not only make up the majority of the population; they make up the overwhelming majority of those who work in the NHS, and for the most part, they are the decision makers and communicators in their families about health. I agree, however, that we must give further concern to the health care of men, whose life expectancy is not, I regret, as great as that of women.