HC Deb 05 July 1994 vol 246 cc135-6
4. Mr. David Shaw

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on new patient-treating capital equipment installed in hospitals in the past five years.

Mr. Sackville

In recent years, there has been a rapid rise in the use of non-invasive and minimal invasive techniques which has involved the acquisition of much high-tech medical equipment.

Mr. Shaw

Is my hon. Friend aware that in east Kent we now have available in our hospitals a new £1.25 million linear accelerator and a new computer tomographic scanner? Is he further aware that more patients are being treated by the new magnetic resonance imaging scanner, and that we are looking forward to tomorrow's visit by the Secretary of State formally to open the scanner?

Mr. Sackville

All that equipment has led to new techniques, with shorter hospital stays and better recovery. My hon. Friend's area has an enviable record, and about £1 billion worth of such equipment is now being acquired each year throughout the country.

Mr. Ashton

Is the Minister aware that it is not much use having all that magnificent equipment if anyone can walk in and fiddle with it, as has happened at Bassetlaw hospital's intensive care unit on 16 occasions? The Secretary of State has said that that has nothing to do with her, because the hospital is run by a trust. Three days ago at Nottingham, somebody walked into a hospital and walked off with a four-hour-old baby, who has not yet been found. Will the Secretary of State again say that it has nothing to do with her because it is all down to the trust? Will there be investigations into the way in which hospitals are run, or are five stars just awarded ad lib?

Mr. Sackville

We are very aware that security needs to be much higher on the agenda of each hospital, but we cannot dictate what level of security to impose on each hospital. Hospitals are open places where people expect to visit their friends and relations, and each hospital must find a balance.

Dr. Liam Fox

Has my hon. Friend had a chance to assess the amount of new equipment opened and the number of new patients treated in the Birmingham area? Has he had a further chance to assess whether those have any link whatever with falling church attendance and church closures in the area?

Mr. Sackville

The bishop and I had some exchanges at a distance over the weekend. That is probably sufficient.

Mr. Blunkett

Does the junior Minister agree that if the Secretary of State opens something tomorrow, there is a fair chance that it will be closed within the next six months? Will he take this opportunity to whisper in the right hon Lady's shell-like ear that her credibility and future prospects could be enhanced today, on the 46th anniversary of the founding of the national health service, if the £150 million spent at Philip Harris house and the £44 million donated in charitable giving were put to good use and saved by the right hon. Lady announcing today that she will save Guy's from her closure plan?

Mr. Sackville

I remind the hon. Gentleman that right through two severe recessions in the 1980s and 1990s we saw a constant rise in the hospital building programme—in sharp contrast with an earlier Government who, faced with a little local trouble in 1976 as a result of their own financial incompetence, reacted by slashing the NHS capital budget.

Mr. Oppenheim

As to capital equipment, does my hon. Friend agree that a caring and a more business-like approach in the NHS are not mutually exclusive, but mutually interdependent? Fine words and hand wringing do not treat more patients, but using necessarily finite resources does. Conservative Members, together with hundreds of thousands of people working in the NHS, can be justifiably proud of the enormous increase in NHS services since we came to power in 1979.

Mr. Sackville

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. Nothing could be more un-Christian than running the health service in such a way as to produce longer waiting lists and less patient care.

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