HC Deb 02 June 1998 vol 313 cc157-9
4. Mr. Stephen Day (Cheadle)

If he will make a statement on the composition of health trust boards. [42178]

The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Frank Dobson)

At the general election, we promised to make health trust boards more representative of the communities that they serve. We have kept that promise. I am proud to tell the House that, of the 1,000 people whom I have appointed to boards since 1 May last year, half have been women—for the first time in the history of the NHS—and the proportion of black and Asian board members has almost doubled.

Mr. Day

Given that the Secretary of State has appointed so many Labour councillors to trust boards, why has he threatened to sack them but not offered to resign himself, if his waiting list promises are not met?

Mr. Dobson

The hon. Gentleman, like every Tory and Liberal Democrat Member, as well as every Labour Member, was invited to nominate people to serve on boards in his area. He was either too idle or too careless to respond.

Audrey Wise (Preston)

Will my right hon. Friend consider appointing to each trust board someone with special knowledge and understanding of the importance of carers to the NHS? Will he also study the 1990 Social Services Committee report on carers, which was unanimous and cross-party, except for the vote of the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe), who rejected and opposed the report on the grounds that she recognised no such thing as a carer?

Mr. Dobson

I share my hon. Friend's views. Of the various criteria laid down when judging who should be appointed to trust boards, involvement in caring is one of them. A substantial number of people are so involved. I should have thought that, generally speaking, most people would think that sensible.

Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey)

Has the Secretary of State any plans for marking the 50th anniversary of the NHS by extending democracy on NHS boards? Is not the problem the fact that, if people were chosen to sit on boards, from the people, by the people, rather than being dependent on the Secretary of State's patronage, the demand for more funding for the health service might become so loud, and Ministers so embarrassed, that they would be forced to recognise what everybody else knows: the NHS needs more money? The Government are the only ones who have not agreed with that.

Mr. Dobson

I am not entirely sure that either history or the future would bear out the hon. Gentleman's suggestion. My impression is that, generally speaking, the NHS does rather better from central Government funding than from local government, despite the fact that people deciding things in local government are elected. No party, as far as I know, has ever been committed to the idea of elected health authorities or trusts. The NHS is a national health service, and we must keep it that way.

Mr. Ivan Lewis (Bury, South)

Is my right hon. Friend aware that he recently appointed—or reappointed—a certain Vera Stringer to serve for a further two years on Bury Healthcare NHS trust board? Not only does she frequently attack Government policy in the local media: she also happens to be chairman of the North-West Conservative party. I would have thought that the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Day) would have been aware of that. Does not that show that the Government are serious about objectivity in appointments and reappointments to health trust boards?

Mr. Dobson

Yes, indeed.

Miss Ann Widdecombe (Maidstone and The Weald)

Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the question so clearly asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr. Day)? Given that he has filled trust boards with his own choices, and that he has threatened to sack all of them if they do not implement some of his rasher promises, how much further must waiting lists rise, and how much farther back must he put Labour's so-called pledges before he will consider it appropriate to sack himself?

Mr. Dobson

I welcome the right hon. Lady to her new post. She is the third shadow health spokesman that I have faced in just 13 months, and she and I are matching accessories in the sense that neither of us counts as being at the fashionable end of politics.

As my hon. Friend the Minister of State pointed out, our pledge is that, by this time next year, waiting lists will be down to the level that we inherited. We will then reduce them by another 100,000 before the next general election. In doing that, we will achieve something that the Tory party did not manage during its 18 years in office, and we will be proud of that achievement.

Miss Widdecombe

My question was terribly simple, but the right hon. Gentleman has failed to answer it. He gave us another raft of promises that will not go down well in the corridors of hospitals that have already been carpeted with the broken pledges of the Labour party. The question is not what he will keep on promising, but how much further the pledges must be broken before he will take responsibility. Last month, there was another rise in waiting lists. How much further must they rise, and how much farther back must he put implementation of a so-called early pledge before he will take responsibility and resign? Three times the question has been asked: how much worse must it get before he will resign?

Mr. Dobson

To set the record straight—[Interruption.] The parliamentary Tory party was so concerned about waiting lists that it did not manage to table a single question on the subject for this Question Time.

We will get waiting lists down, and by doing so, we will keep our promise. To those who ask me to take responsibility, let me say that this time last year I said that we would help the health authorities to get through the winter and would find extra funds to enable them to do so. I asked them to concentrate on dealing with emergencies, and I accepted that, if they did so, waiting lists would rise. I take responsibility for that, and for everything that I do. I do not blame the people who work in the health service, as all my Tory predecessors seem to do.

Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West)

In making appointments to hospital trust boards, has my right hon. Friend ever knowingly appointed anyone who advocates chaining women prisoners to their beds as an aid to childbirth?

Mr. Dobson

No, but I work on the supposition that no one is perfect.