Hospital Waiting Lists (Hansard, 26 October 1988)

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, on 31st March 1988 the in-patient waiting list stood at 678,800. That is 1.3 per cent. lower than March 1987 and almost 10 per cent. lower than March 1979.

§ Lord Ennals
My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for that Answer. Does it mean that the report in the Observer of 9th October which listed down to the last figure the number in each health authority and which showed an increase of 690,000 to 704,000 from September 1987 to March 1988 was erroneous? Can the noble Lord assure me that that information contained in that newspaper—I never saw a statement afterwards from the DHSS—was incorrect?

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, I tend to trust the department's figures. Any more recent figures will essentially be raw data collected from the regions and unvalidated by regional departments. They may not be on a comparable basis with previous figures.

§ Lord Ennals
My Lords, will the Minister look into this matter carefully? I gave him the date of the very full report. Unless the Minister can correct me, I understand that the report has not been challenged by the department. It indicated a subtantial increase. Will he check the report so that Members of your Lordships' House and I may know and press a further Question on the Minister?

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, the difficulty is that until the figures have been centrally calibrated I cannot answer the noble Lord's question.

§ Lord Mackie of Benshie
My Lords, is it not a fact that raw data means uncooked?

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, I sincerely hope not.

Lord Winstanley
My Lords, in computing the costs of reducing waiting lists—we know that the Government have computed them recently—to provide extra money, will consideration be given to the cost to public funds of paying benefits to people who are waiting to go into hospital. For example, if a manual labourer who is married with four children has to wait and not work for a year until he has his inguinal hernia repaired, the cost to public funds must be very great indeed.

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, the basis of all the Government's activities is to try to be as efficient as possible. I fully appreciate the point that the noble Lord makes. However in terms of our commitment, I must point out that expenditure on health per head of the population since the Government came to office in 1979, after adjustment for inflation, has risen by 22 per cent.

§ Lord Mellish
My Lords, is the Minister aware that in the past 10 years there has been a dramatic change in available medical treatment? There have been remarkable innovations. Has the Minister any idea how innovations such as heart transplants, hip replacements and so on, which were not available 10 years ago, affect waiting lists?

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, treatments of acute patients in the health service since 1979 (in numbers) have risen by 19 per cent. Furthermore, day cases, which are increasingly important because of the advances in medical science that allow treatments to be carried out on a day-care basis, have risen by 87 per cent. At the same time, waiting lists have been reduced by 10 per cent.

§ The Countess of Mar
My Lords, will the Minister bear in mind that 46 per cent. of the National Health Service acute hospital resources is used by between 5 per cent. and 6 per cent. of the population; that is, the over 65s? Does he care to comment upon public statements which have been made in the West Midlands area by general practitioners who say that they are not referring patients, except elderly emergency patients, for consultations in hospitals because of the anxiety caused by the length of time that they have to wait?

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, I have a fair number of statistics here, but if I had every statistic I would probably need a wheelbarrow. The median waiting time for admission in the past 12 months has fallen from seven weeks to five weeks.

§ Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, irrespective of whether the figures quoted in the Observer or those of his department are correct, does the noble Lord agree that the figures are much too high by any standards? What are the Government going to do to reduce those figures significantly in the future?

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, the figures will always be too high. As I said in answer to an earlier question, we have already demonstrated our good faith by the 1613 massive increase in real terms in the level of expenditure that we have made. I draw the noble Lord's attention to the commitment we made to the waiting list fund which we commenced a year ago.

§ Baroness Masham of Illton
My Lords, how many health authorities are buying facilities from military and independent hospitals which may be under-used at the time and which may help to shorten waiting lists?

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, with the introduction of the waiting list fund we introduced a series of special projects to try to take advantage of hospitals such as military hospitals which the noble Baroness mentioned. We hope that that is the start of a successful further development of integration and of successful practice within the health service.

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, do not the criticisms of noble Lords opposite have something of a hollow ring? I mention in particular the Government's record when the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, was in office when their spending on the NHS as a percentage of GNP fell, when nurses' pay fell by one-fifth, when spending on hospital buildings fell by one-third and when waiting lists in particular—the subject of this question—rose by 50 per cent.

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for taking the opportunity of reminding your Lordships' House of those facts, with which I entirely concur.

§ Lord Leatherland
My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether in view of the information he has given the Government have any plans for very considerably increasing the number of hospitals?

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, the only fact on which I know I am right in answering that question is that the greatest ever hospital building programme since the founding of the National Health Service has taken place under this Government.

§ Lord Ennals
My Lords, will the Minister be prepared to put into the Library the full statistical details which he gave us in his Answer to my Question? Clearly there is a misunderstanding of the published figures. Secondly, will he check on the figures that were given by the noble Baroness in relation to the period between 10 and 13 years ago? Perhaps the noble Baroness will check. She may see that those figures are absolutely incorrect, because I know them to be so.

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, I fear that I shall not be extending this debate satisfactorily if I reduce it to an argument between the department and the Observer.

§ Lord Ennals
My Lords, I think that there is a misunderstanding. I asked whether the Minister would put the figures that he quoted to me from his department in the Library for reference.

§ Lord Hesketh
My Lords, they will be in Hansard, we hope.