HC Deb 18 April 1995 vol 258 cc2-3
2. Mrs. Angela Knight

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what proportion of NHS hospitals in the Trent region are now run as trusts. [17572]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Tom Sackville)

I am delighted to report that all hospitals in the Trent region are now run as national health service trusts.

Mrs. Knight

Will my hon. Friend therefore join me in congratulating all those in the Trent region, and especially the Southern Derbyshire health authority, which covers my constituency of Erewash, on the excellent job that trust hospitals such as Derbyshire royal infirmary and Derby city general do? Is he aware that the DRI is increasing the number of eye patients that it treats by a further 1,000 this year? Does he therefore find it deplorable, as I do, that a hospital that is doing such an excellent job would have its trust status removed by the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) if she had half a chance, thereby jeopardising health care to her constituents as well as to mine?

Mr. Sackville

I agree with my hon. Friend that hospitals have enormously benefited from trust status, as I saw when I recently had the honour of opening a new day case surgery and endoscopy unit at Derbyshire royal infirmary, with the permission of the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett). I know that that unit, for example, will allow for 3,500 day cases a year. That will enormously reduce waiting lists and enormously better serve my hon. Friend's constituents.

Mr. Barnes

Is the Minister aware that I have received more complaints from constituents about the operation of trust hospitals since the NHS moved towards that system, and that that has not been helped by some of the other measures that have taken place at the same time, such as GP fundholding, the peculiar interface between community care and hospitalisation, and the development of the rip-off of private nursing homes? Is it little wonder that no one trusts a trust in north-east Derbyshire?

Mr. Sackville

The hon. Gentleman is one of those politicians who treats the health service as somewhere to go and have his photograph taken and to stir up some trouble. The fact is that more patients are satisfied with the NHS, although they see a completely different picture in the press, and the NHS is going from strength to strength with trust status.