Primary Care Trusts (Hansard, 1 February 2000)

§ 12. Mrs. Diana Organ (Forest of Dean)
What progress he is making with the development of primary care trusts. [106249]

§ The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr. John Denham)
Excellent progress has been made towards primary care trust development, with 68 primary care groups proposing to make applications to become 904 63 primary care trusts this year. Of the 19 applying for an April 2000 start, 17 will become operational in April and the other two will start in October 2000.

§ Mrs. Organ
Does my hon. Friend agree that the introduction of primary care trusts and groups has led to increased effectiveness and efficiency in the use of NHS resources? However, in Gloucestershire several primary care groups that want to develop into trusts face funding problems due to Gloucestershire health authority's funding difficulties last year. What reassurances can my hon. Friend give to the primary care group in the Forest of Dean that it will receive sufficient funding in future to be effective, efficient and successful and to consider being developed into a primary care trust?

§ Mr. Denham
My hon. Friend is right about the advantages of primary care groups and trusts. From April, we shall devolve about £20 billion to those organisations, which is three times the amount devolved to front-line clinicians by the previous Government's fundholding plans. That will enable services to be developed more efficiently and effectively.
On the question of Gloucestershire, my hon. Friend will know that following last year's increase of 5.5 per cent. in the health authority allocation, this year's allocation has gone up by 6.31 per cent., which is a significant increase. However, it is for local people to determine the size and shape of primary care trusts, taking into account the views of all the people in the local health system. That means that the right balance must be struck locally between the need for an organisation that can stay in touch with the communities that it serves, and the need to keep management costs well under control to make sure that money is spent on patients, not bureaucracy.

§ Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden)
Will the Minister confirm that the introduction of primary care groups has resulted in patients now having to go to the hospital selected for them by their primary care group? The last vestiges of patient choice have been abolished, and patients, with the agreement of their GP, are no longer allowed to be referred to another hospital with a shorter waiting time or with a better success rate for the operation concerned.

§ Mr. Denham
No. The right hon. Gentleman needs to pay a little more attention to what is happening in the national health service. Nothing that we have done removes clinicians' right to make the appropriate referral for a patient. Indeed, a legal change in their position would be required to remove that right.
The unplanned system introduced by the previous Government was bureaucratic, expensive, unfair and uneven, and we have got rid of it in the interests of patients, doctors and NHS resources, because it is better to make sure, through proper planning and commissioning of services, that patients can get the service that they want at the highest quality and at their closest local hospital. If we contrast our vision of making sure that services are of a high quality and provided as close to patients as possible, with the right hon. Gentleman's vision in which a few patients chase all over the country trying to get on the lists of a handful of doctors, we all know which one patients prefer.