§ Mr. McCrindleasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he has plans to require that sporting injuries to the spine should be notifiable and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. John PattenNo. To justify the introduction of such a system we should need to be clear about the value of the information and the uses to which it would be put. As stated in my reply to the right hon. Member for42W Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) on 10 April at column 201–2 the health services information steering group has recommended in its first report that health authorities should use the "E" codes of the ninth revision of the international classification of diseases, which record the direct physical cause of an accident and where it occurred. Health authorities have been asked to plan on the basis that this and the other recommendations in the first report should be implemented by April 1987.