HC Deb 18 February 1997 vol 290 cc734-6
5. Mr. Mudie

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what has been the annual change in the number of patients in the Northern and Yorkshire region who have had operations cancelled on the day they were due to go into hospital or after admission since 1994–95. [14731]

Mr. Dorrell

Between 1994–95 and 1995–96, cancelled operations in the Northern and Yorkshire region increased by 14.8 per cent. The most recent information for the current year shows a fall in cancelled operations of 25 per cent.

Mr. Mudie

The Minister will confirm to the House that, under the patients charter, cancellations of operations on the day of admission should not happen at all, yet he has confirmed an increase of 14 per cent., which means 830 additional cases and brings the total in the past year to more than 6,613 cancellations. How does he explain those figures to the House? In view of the distress that cancellations cause to patients and their relatives, will he take this opportunity to apologise to those patients on behalf of his Department? Will he pledge that there will be no cancellations in the coming financial year?

Mr. Dorrell

No Health Minister can pledge that there will be no cancellations. The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), on the Opposition Front Bench, could not make that commitment and it would be absurd if he tried to do so. The hon. Gentleman did not listen to my answer. He had the opportunity to congratulate the health service in the Northern and Yorkshire region on the 25 per cent. reduction in cancelled operations in the current year.

I have even better news for the hon. Gentleman and his constituents in Leeds. In the current year, the number of operations that were cancelled there fell by more than half. The hon. Gentleman might have taken time off to congratulate those who are responsible for delivering health care to his constituents on the improved service that they are delivering in the current year. I look forward to his having the opportunity to remedy that failure.

Mr. Sykes

Will my right hon. Friend ignore the claptrap from the Opposition Benches? Will he remind people in the country, and the House, of the distress that was caused by union members and Labour party members who picketed hospitals in 1979?

Mr. Dorrell

My hon. Friend is quite right to say that the Labour party, with its close links with the trade union movement, must bear its responsibility for the failures in health care that typified the winter of 1978–79 and the period before that. It is worth reflecting that, although cancelled operations account for roughly 1 per cent. of people coming off the waiting list, the number of operations that are cancelled because the patient does not show up at hospital corresponds to roughly 5 per cent. of the total. It is worth bearing that figure in mind when reflecting on the number of cancelled operations.

Mr. Simon Hughes

Will the Secretary of State be less aggressive and more apologetic about the figures that are the answer to this question? The answer that the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam), gave me last month showed that, in the Northern and Yorkshire region, there were 1,200 cancellations on the day of admission or after, and 75 which failed the citizens charter standard. In my area, the corresponding figures were 350 and 75. Nationally, there were 50,000 cancellations and 6,000 cancellations that failed the citizens charter standard for readmission within one month of the original date.

What will the Secretary of State say to the family of Queenie Harrild, who died in Guy's hospital and whose inquest is this week, when the citizens charter is regularly breached and thousands of patients continue to be admitted to hospital and then sent home, some of whom die before their operation?

Mr. Dorrell

To an individual patient, if the service fails, of course I express regret. I have never pretended that any human institution can deliver a perfect service. However, when we talk about the cancelled operations record of the national health service, let us start by remembering that when the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) held the job now held by the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury, she predicted that there would be 300,000 cancelled operations in the national health service last year. The actual figure was not 300,000 but 54,000, and in all but 6,000 of those cases the patient was then operated on within a month.

That is the record of the national health service—against the background of 5.5 million people being taken off the waiting list every year to receive the care that they need in our health service. The hon. Gentleman might do better to report those figures more often.

Mr. Batiste

The drop of more than 50 per cent. in operation cancellations in Leeds is extremely good news. Can my right hon. Friend give some idea of why that outstanding performance has been achieved this year? Does it owe something to the improving quality of management, which is always subject to criticism and attack from the Labour party?

Mr. Dorrell

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It is nice that he, at least, can welcome that improvement in the health care delivered to the people of Leeds on behalf of the people of Leeds.

My hon. Friend asks why the improvement has been brought about. I suggest that there are two reasons. First, the health service is better managed than it used to be; secondly, the Conservative Government are committed to the growth of the national health service—as the Prime Minister said at last year's Conservative party conference, real growth, which has happened every year since 1979, will happen year on year on year on year on year through the five years of the next Parliament. I wish the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury well in his negotiations with the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown).

Mr. Chris Smith

Is not the reality that patient after patient in hospital after hospital is having his or her operation cancelled, frequently just before or just after going into hospital? Is not the real position, which the people of this country know, very different from the Government's rosy version of events?

When hospital trusts talk openly about the judicious elimination of numbers of patients due to go in for operations, does not that show that the Government are fiddling the figures? Is not the truth that no one can trust the Tories with the health service?

Mr. Dorrell

The answer to every one of the hon. Gentleman's questions is no. His problem is that he has not been able to secure the backing of his Front Bench for a commitment to a growing health service.

Let me give the hon. Gentleman some other statistics that measure the growth of the health service under the present Government. Because we are committed to extra resources for a growing health service, I was able to announce increases in intensive care provision in the NHS. Over the past five years, the number of places for day surgery has roughly doubled. That is why, under this Government, the number of patients treated has increased by a third in the last six years. That is a record to which the hon. Gentleman cannot begin to measure up, because his hon. Friends will not allow him to make the pledge to a growing health service that the Prime Minister has made.

Sir Donald Thompson

Is it not a fact that Northern and Yorkshire health authority is one of the best in Europe, and are not the Labour party's politically motivated attacks on the health service now leading directly—it is Labour's responsibility—to difficulties in the recruitment of nurses and other hospital staff?

Mr. Dorrell

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Along with the rest of the health service, Northern and Yorkshire health authority is treating more patients, and offering a broader range and better quality of care than ever before in its history.

The original question was asked by the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie). A Leeds Member might have been expected to welcome the fact that in the past 15 years—quite apart from a growing current health service budget in Leeds—we have invested an extra £130 million in improving hospital structures in the city. We are committed to increasing the capital stock of the health service in future through the private finance initiative—which the hon. Gentleman will not back—and to a growth in the number of patients who are treated. We are committed to growth; the Labour party is not.