HC Deb 17 January 1995 vol 252 cc572-3
7. Sir Peter Fry

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how the number of patients treated on the NHS has increased since the establishment of NHS trusts.

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

The number of acute patients admitted to hospital between 1991, the year before the first trusts were established, and 1994 increased by 18 per cent. That represents an additional 3,000 patients treated each day.

Sir Peter Fry

I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Will he confirm that in the Oxford-Anglian region, my own region, some 25 per cent. more patients have been treated by trusts and that some 50 per cent. more day cases have been treated? Does he, like me, find it difficult to understand why the Labour party wishes to sweep away trusts and thus deny the benefits of their success to our constituents?

Mr. Sackville

I agree with my hon. Friend. I congratulate his region on its exceptional performance. I agree that, under the sort of shower that the Labour party would bring to the health service, there is no way in which the number of patients treated could increase.

Mr. Pike

If the figures are so good, why do so many people find it necessary to pay for their first appointment to see a consultant, in the knowledge that, if they do not do so, they will have to wait months?

Mr. Sackville

Waiting times have come down. All districts are obliged to publish the length of the waiting list of each consultant for out-patient appointments. Waiting times for both in-patient and out-patient appointments are coming down. I should have thought that the Labour party would congratulate the NHS on that.

Dame Jill Knight

Does my hon. Friend agree that not only the figures should be noted? The fact is that more patients have been treated with infinitely more complicated and expensive operations, treatments and drugs than ever before in our history and that thousands of people are alive today who would have died from their condition even five or 10 years ago.

Mr. Sackville

My hon. Friend describes the successes of today's NHS in her own way.

Mrs. Beckett

Does the Minister recognise that the figures that he gives are largely meaningless as they include so many elements of double counting because they count treatments and not patients? If the Minister really wants to look at patient episodes in that way, is he aware of the substantial increase in the number of private patients treated in national health service hospitals? Does he recognise that most British people think that NHS patients should have priority in NHS hospitals?

Mr. Sackville

I am aware that the right hon. Lady is only just learning her job. She accuses us of double counting. The figures are now collected on the basis of finished consultant episodes because that is the best way to measure NHS activity. The difference between that figure and the old way of counting based on deaths and discharges is about 3 per cent. and all comparative figures reflect that.