§ 8. Mr. HinchliffeTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how often he meets the chairs of the NHS regional executive to discuss current regional health issues. [5617]
§ Mr. HoramThe Secretary of State meets regional chairmen regularly to discuss a wide range of regional and national issues.
§ Mr. HinchliffeHas the Minister raised with the chair of the Northern and Yorkshire regional health authority its failure to honour clear obligations given to Pinderfields hospital to compensate it for the loss of regional neuro-surgery provision to Leeds? The Minister knows full well that my constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) were lied to and clearly misled during public consultation on this matter. He is directly responsible: what is he going to do about it?
§ Mr. HoramThe hon. Gentleman's health authority is over target and has ample resources. It received a further increase this year. The local health trust has a specialist eye unit and a skin graft unit, which are doing marvellous work. Wakefield is in very good shape.
§ Mr. Jacques ArnoldWhen my hon. Friend meets the chairman of South Thames health authority, will he pass on the congratulations of the people of north-west Kent on last week's decision to develop the private finance initiative for Darenth Park hospital at a cost of £102 million, which answers my constituents' dreams?
§ Ms JowellWill the Minister assure the House that, when he next meets the chairmen of the NHS regional executive, he will set a timetable for making good the Government's promise to patients that they can expect to be treated in a single-sex ward? Does he recall the Prime Minister's admission at the Dispatch Box two weeks ago that the Government had broken that promise to patients? Would he care to explain to the House why a report on the performance of NHS trusts on the patients charter standard on mixed-sex wards—which he promised in April would be published shortly—has still not seen the light of day? Is that report being suppressed because its findings confirm the inhumanity of mixed-sex wards, and offer further proof that Tory promises to patients are not worth the paper that they are written on?
§ Mr. HoramI am surprised that the hon. Lady took such a long time to ask a question that had just been answered by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. He has made plain the Government's commitment in the patients charter to move towards the elimination of mixed-sex wards. That is clearly in the public interest and in the interest of patients, and I am surprised that the hon. Lady thinks that we would renege on that commitment.