Waiting Times (Hansard, 6 June 2000)

§ 9. Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset)
What the maximum waiting time is for a patient to enter a national health service hospital. [122868]

§ The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Alan Milburn)
The standard, which was introduced by the previous Government, is that nobody should wait more than 18 months for admission to hospital. Most patients are seen much more quickly than that, and about 70 per cent. are admitted within three months of being placed on a waiting list. However, there is little doubt that too many 155 people are waiting too long for treatment, which is why, in formulating the national plan that will be published next year, we are considering the best way of getting waiting times down.

§ Mr. Bruce
I am sure that the House will be aware that the Secretary of State did not answer the question on the Order Paper, so I shall ask him an easier one. In the 13 million propaganda leaflets that he recently put out, he stated that he now wanted the national health service to put patients first. Will he tell the House whom he thinks that doctors and nurses have been putting first for the past 50 years?

§ Mr. Milburn
Of course doctors and nurses put patients first. However, in their responses to the leaflet campaign and in my discussions with them on visits, they say that all too often they feel that they are having to fight the system, with which many fundamental things are simply wrong. The system does not work at its best for patients or staff because, for example, there are too many professional demarcations between staff and organisations. All hon. Members know from constituency experience that the divide between health and social care particularly bedevils the care of elderly people and people with disabilities. To deal with those problems, there must be radical reform and wholesale investment in the NHS to ensure that we win the war on waiting throughout the health service.

§ Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston)
I am sure that my right hon. Friend recognises that one way to improve waiting times is to solve career gap problems. Indeed, the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), has already referred to nurse recruitment. What advice would my right hon. Friend give to one of my constituents who, having been accepted, tells me that lack of child care prevents her from getting through the process?

§ Mr. Milburn
That certainly is a problem. Our advice to NHS trusts is that they need to get a grip on those precise issues. Many barriers stand in the way of people coming into nursing and, indeed, staying in the profession. Although there are concerns about pay, it is a question not just about pay but about the conditions under which people are employed. Sometimes, the NHS is too inflexible as an employer. If my hon. Friend examines employment and pay structures in the NHS, he will see that they owe more to 1948 than to the 21st century.
We must change that. Of course, we must put money in to recruit doctors and nurses and give the system more beds, but we now have an opportunity to reform radically the way in which the whole system works.

§ Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport)
In January 1999, one of my constituents was told that she needed a triple heart bypass operation for which the waiting time was nine months. Eighteen months later, she is still waiting, despite the fact, a month ago, the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), told me in a written answer that the waiting time for cardiac surgery in my area was 15 months, although the aim was 156 to reduce that to 12 months. Will the Secretary of State apologise both to my constituent for not giving her timely treatment and to the House for giving an incorrect reply?

§ Mr. Milburn
I am not aware of that particular case, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to write to me, I will of course look into it. As I have continually made clear, there is no doubt that waiting times for treatment, especially heart surgery, are too long. That is because we have a historic under-capacity in heart surgery. I cannot conjure heart surgeons out of thin air; it takes six or seven years to train a heart surgeon, and there are only 171 operating in the NHS in England because the Government whom the hon. Gentleman supported failed to make the battle against coronary heart disease a priority. We are putting that right.