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Mr. Horam: I am interested in my hon. Friend's remarks. A great deal of what he says is accurate, particularly his comments about the attractions of a new hospital with new facilities. The accident and emergency department has clearly been extensively and generously utilised. The hospital trust has behaved extremely well in taking on patients from other parts of the neighbourhood and referrals from other hospitals.
Of course, the process is reciprocal. Having considered the experiences of accident and emergency departments last winter, we now have a more co-ordinated system. The chief executive of the NHS has an emergency team to look at the co-ordination of accident and emergency departments throughout the country and co-operation between neighbouring departments. I hope that the problem that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North referred to will not occur this winter and that there will be good co-ordination between the various accident and emergency departments.
To complete the point that I was making about the quality of health care at King George's hospital, we should also remember that health care is not just about buildings and services, but about people. The hospital now has 20 consultant posts--a 30 per cent. increase over the past four years.
The hon. Member for Barking referred to the hospital's performance in the patients charter tables, but she selected only three areas in her dossier. There are performance indicators for more than 40 areas. In all the other areas, the performance of the hospital was much better than in the three that she singled out. It is easy to pick on some areas where the hospital is clearly not performing so well and to neglect whole swathes of performance indicators that are clearly much better.
The hon. Lady also brought up the old issue of underfunding. She knows that the money follows the patient in the NHS these days. For those of her constituents treated at King George's hospital, her health authority of Barking and Havering pays the bill either directly or indirectly, through GP fundholding. Barking and Havering health authority has more to spend on health care than ever before. Its revenue allocation this year was £173 million--£6.3 million more in cash terms and £1.7 million more in real terms than in the previous year. As the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes) know, a huge increase of £1.6 billion was announced in yesterday's Budget.
Ms Judith Church (Dagenham):
Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Horam:
I shall not because I have only four minutes left. Four hon. Members have already spoken.
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An increase of £1.6 billion for the health service was announced. We wait to see whether the Opposition will match the real-terms increases that we have made year after year after year for 17 years and that we are committed to continuing year after year after year after year after year for the five years of the next Parliament. That is a huge commitment to the national health service that the Opposition cannot match. They do not say a word. They are like Trappist monks on NHS funding.
Mr. Horam:
I shall not give way because I have only three minutes left now.
Mr. Horam:
The hon. Lady is objecting to being called a Trappist monk. Perhaps we should call her a Trappist nun, but Labour Members are saying nothing about the crucial issue of funding. That is a great pity.
The treatment of the problems by the hon. Member for Barking has not been helpful. She has attacked the hospital by publishing a dossier at the same time as it has had the commissioner cases. She says that her dossier shows that the local health service is in crisis. She should think how the doctors and nurses must feel when a local Member of Parliament criticises their hospital. As a result, the hospital is vilified in the media. Patient confidentiality and professional ethics prevent the staff from responding, even though they know that her dossier is riddled with inaccuracy. They hold their heads up high as best they can and get on with their jobs, reassuring their patients. The dossier mentions 40 cases out of 750,000 attendances over the past three years.
Some of the cases in the dossier are simply a restatement of those in a dossier that the hon. Lady produced 12 months ago. We are not talking about new cases. The hon. Lady is simply recycling old news. The cases are anonymous, as they must be, but that makes it difficult for the trust to investigate them. The ones that the trust manages to investigate often contain implications and allegations that are simply not true.
When the hon. Lady was leader of Islington council, she reacted with outrage to the campaign by the Evening Standard claiming that there was child abuse in Islington council homes. Those claims were subsequently proved true.
Establishing the truth in the particular circumstances that the hon. Lady raised today is a complicated matter, and she should take a balanced view in the interests of the patients involved. She should also consider the morale in the hospital and the care of the patients. It is not good enough--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse):
Time is up.
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Mr. Bob Dunn (Dartford):
I am grateful for the opportunity to bring to the attention of the House the problem of traffic congestion on the A2 in north-west Kent. I am grateful too for the presence of my hon. Friend the Minister for Railways and Roads, who will respond to the debate. I am also pleased to see my hon. Friends the Members for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) and for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold), who share my concerns and anxieties about the A2, as it runs through our constituencies. They hope to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, later in the debate.
The A2 and its problems were the subject of an Adjournment debate initiated by me. On 15 February 1991, I raised the problem caused by continual and continuing roadworks. Many of the descriptive passages that I used in that debate are relevant today, although this debate focuses on a different matter. However, it would be wrong to imply in any way that roadworks and their associated problems are a thing of the past. They most certainly are not.
The House will appreciate that the A2 trunk road is one of the most significant roads in Britain. It provides access to and from London and Dover and the channel ports and cuts across the M25 orbital route near the Dartford crossings. It is also a major access route for Bexley, Dartford, Gravesham and the Medway towns. As a major road, it carries a huge volume of domestic and international traffic, including the private car, passenger carriers and heavy commercial vehicles.
It was stated in 1991, and is certainly true today, that the A2 carries far more traffic than it was built to take. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, in a letter to me dated 18 November, stated:
I congratulate the editor and staff of the Dartford Times on the responsible and public-minded way in which they have mounted their A2 campaign, which has my full support. Local Members of Parliament are grateful to them for the dossier of sad and tragic events that they have published in recent weeks. It gives me no pleasure, but, out of necessity to enlighten the debate, I remind the House that, in five months, five people have been killed on the A2 in north-west Kent and there have been countless more non-fatal accidents. The accident toll is published by the Dartford Times and certainly makes grim reading.
We all extend our condolences to the families of those who have died in accidents on the A2. We would be failing in our duty as Members of Parliament for
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Safety is an important issue and much of what has been done and needs to be done will depend on the ability, tolerance, understanding, expertise and wisdom of individual drivers. However, much can be done, and initiatives are in hand to improve road safety along the A2. When accidents occur, there is a sudden shock for the individual and an immediate and devastating shock for the bereaved family, but we also have to consider the delays in access to work and leisure and in access to the continental ports and the channel tunnel for our goods and services. Any such delay has a huge cost to the national health and industrial well-being of our country.
1.30 pm
"Kent County Council, on behalf of the Highways Agency, recently carried out an accident study of the A2 between the M25 junction with the A2/A282 and the M2 which confirmed that the accident rate along this stretch was relatively high".
He continued--this is relevant to north-west Kent--
"Contributory factors include the very heavy traffic flows, the large number of HGVs using the route, and the number of junctions and accesses to premises."
Hon. Members may point out that our arguments and concerns apply to many roads throughout the region, given the increased car ownership over the past decade and more. However, the A2 is a nightmare for my constituents and, although much is being done to improve conditions, it is still an accident black spot in north-west Kent.
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