§ 12. Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West) (Lab)What progress has been made in reducing waiting times for hospital in-patients since 1997. [169834]
§ The Secretary of State for Health (Dr. John Reid)We have made huge progress in reducing waiting times. In 1997, there were 118,000 patients in England waiting longer than nine months for an admission. I look forward to the publication of figures this Friday, which I am confident will show that the nine-month waiting list has been eliminated in the same way as the 12-month, 15-month and 18-month waiting lists, on which now only a handful of people remain.
§ Dr. StarkeyI remind my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that thanks to the Government's overseas clinical teams initiative, Milton Keynes general hospital has just benefited from a team of anaesthetists and clinicians from France using our spare operating theatre capacity at weekends. As a result, the waiting lists for varicose veins and hernias have been reduced from over nine months to under six months. While thanking the Secretary of State for the additional money he has given to Milton Keynes to cope with population growth, I remind him of the extremely high rate of that growth. Will he continue to keep the situation in Milton Keynes under review so that if additional funding is needed, we can keep those waiting lists at their current low level and, if possible, reduce them still further?
§ Dr. ReidI can assure my hon. Friend that I will keep the situation under review. We have only recently made an additional allocation that I hope assists in that direction, not least because of the efforts made by the hospitals in Milton Keynes. My hon. Friend will know that we have met our targets to abolish 18-month, 15-month and 12-month waits. Our target now is to go ahead and abolish nine-month waits, on our way to eliminating six-month waits, on our way to reaching a target of a maximum of three months by 2008. I am glad to tell the House that, in Milton Keynes, there have been no breaches of the 12-month target for over a year. I fully expect that there will be equal success in eliminating nine-month waits.
§ Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)Whether the Secretary of State likes it or not, being at the heart of Europe means that we have to take on the working time directive. How many extra staff will be needed post-1 August to ensure that waiting lists and times do not spiral out of control? Are there any specialties where we are having more difficulty in recruiting? Will we have to scour the world age in for nurses and doctors to ensure that those waiting times and lists do not increase?
§ Dr. ReidFirst, I thank the hon. Gentleman for the congratulations to NHS staff on achieving the reductions in waiting times that I am sure he would have given in his question had he time. Secondly, enormous efforts are being made to make sure that we can balance fairness to staff, through the working time directive, with the continuation of services to patients. A word of caution; to use expressions such as "scouring the world" in relation to the many members of NHS staff who, over the last 60 years, have come here and provided marvellous health care to the people of this country is to do those staff less than justice, despite the Conservative party's intrinsic dislike of foreigners.
§ Lawrie Quinn (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)Given the welcome and encouraging earlier answer from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, does he share my concern about a leaflet being circulated by BUPA Heartbeat personal health plan that is well out of date, by over two years, and claims that well over 1 million people are currently waiting for an operation? Does he agree that BUPA needs better information and must get up to date, and that in trying to put facts into the public domain, it should not rely on past propaganda?
§ Dr. ReidI do not want to make any comment about any particular private care operator. [HON. MEMBERS: "Go on."] I genuinely do not, because, Mr. Speaker, you will have read in the Financial Times and other newspapers recently that the NHS is now beginning to improve not only itself, but the whole of the health market. If anyone has a publication that says that more than 1 million people are on waiting lists, those concerned are way out of date; they are obviously thinking of the last Government. We now have considerably fewer than that figure and have had for each of the last 12 months. I suppose that by the time they reprinted the leaflet with today's waiting list figures, it would be out of date, such is the rate of reduction in waiting lists and waiting times.
§ Hywel Williams (Caernarfon) (PC)Can the Secretary of State confirm that the NHS in England has had to hail out the Labour-run Welsh Assembly Government with extra hospital places? Despite the Secretary of State's heroic efforts, however, because of that Government's incompetence more than 6,000 people in Wales are still waiting for a first out-patient appointment, 8,500 have waited 12 months for their first in-patient treatment and 1,401 pour souls are still waiting more than 18 months for in-patient treatment in Wales.
§ Dr. ReidIn all the time that I was a territorial Secretary of State I never had a compliment from a nationalist, and it is nice to receive one today. However, I am afraid that I cannot respond to the hon. Gentleman's point because figures for the Welsh health service are outwith my responsibility.