§ 2. Mr. Michael Fabricant (Lichfield)If he will make a statement on waiting times from GP referral to in-patient admission in the South Staffordshire health authority area. [88238]
§ The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr. John Denham)The Department has never collected data on patients' total waiting time from general practitioner referral to in-patient admission. However, I am pleased to say that during 1998–99, in-patient waiting lists in South Staffordshire fell by 2,233. Lengthy waits of over nine months fell by 7 per cent.
§ Mr. FabricantIt is not waiting lists but waiting times that count. I found out in January that patients hoping to go to the Good Hope hospital have to wait twice as long if they live in the South Staffordshire health authority area as people who live in Birmingham, for treatment for exactly the same clinical problem. I wrote to the Department of Health in January, and eventually got a reply in March from Baroness Hayman. She agreed that it was an anomaly and that it was wrong, and she stated that she had therefore asked her officials
at the West Midlands Regional Office of the NHS Executive to meet with the Health Authorities and Trust to see if there is scope for improving waiting times".Since then, I have heard nothing, despite writing. Surprise, surprise, I got a letter today—
§ Madam SpeakerOrder. We have had a very bad start to questions. These are really Adjournment debates. Will the hon. Gentleman put his question to the Minister now?
§ Mr. FabricantThank you, Madam Speaker.
The letter today stated that there would be no change. My question is this: is it morally right that someone suffering from an illness who happens to live in one postcode area has to wait twice as long to go to the same hospital as those with exactly the same complaint who live in a different postcode area? Is that right or is it wrong?
§ Mr. DenhamOne of the things that we must tackle is the unacceptable variations in access to treatment and care, which were the legacy that we inherited from the fragmentation and divisiveness of the previous Government. May I say to the hon. Gentleman and 806 his constituent that in drawing a comparison with Birmingham, the hon. Gentleman is drawing a comparison with one of the five best performing health authorities in the country. Birmingham has the shortest waiting times for patient treatment and the shortest lists per head of population. It should be congratulated on that. The median waiting time for in-patient treatment at the Good Hope hospital is just under 12 weeks. For South Staffordshire, it is between two and three weeks longer than that.
§ Dr. Liam Fox (Woodspring)When will the Minister produce the figures that matter to patients in South Staffordshire, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) mentioned, and publish the waiting times from referral by their GP to their actual treatment?
§ Mr. DenhamThe reason why this Government have not collected the figures from GP referral to in-patient admission is, I believe, the same reason why the previous Government did not do so: not all GP referrals end up with an in-patient admission, so that would not provide a meaningful statistic about the health service. I remember that under the previous Government, of whom the hon. Gentleman was a member—I should have congratulated him on his new appointment—many, many people waited longer than 18 months for treatment. For nine months in a row, there have been no reports of people in the NHS having to wait for 18 months.
§ Dr. FoxThe constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) will have learned from the Minister what the true position is. The Government will not collect the figures because they know that they are creating waiting lists for waiting lists. When one adds the number of patients waiting to wait to the number of those actually waiting, one gets a much bigger number than the Government's fiddled figures. The Secretary of State promised to give us the figures back in September. The Minister is in charge of a health service in which junior doctors are betrayed, the British Medical Association says that morale is at an all-time low, complaints are up and confidence is down. The truth is that health is getting worse under Labour.
§ Mr. DenhamThat is simply not true. The hon. Gentleman makes claims about fiddled waiting list figures. He knows that the only change that this Government have made in the collection and publication of waiting list data is that we publish the information far more often than the previous Government did. As waiting lists come down—and they have come down—waiting times are coming down as well.