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8.35 pm
Mr. Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne): I am delighted to have the opportunity to participate in the debate, having only recently renounced my Trappist vows as a parliamentary private secretary in the Department of Health.
In discussions and debates on the national health service in this country, we owe it to the Opposition to do them the courtesy of adopting their definition of success. The definition of success that we can rely on is that of the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), who said that the acid test of the success and effectiveness of the NHS in this country was the number of people treated. He speaks from some knowledge and experience as it was his party that cut spending on the NHS in real terms during the last Labour Government in 1977-78. To bring the matter up to the present day, despite all the bluster and the individual case studies about which we have heard today, we have still to hear a commitment from the Opposition Front Bench to match the Government's pledge to increase NHS funding year on year above the rate of inflation.
All that we need to do to see the success of the NHS is to look at the figures. Despite all the arguments about finished consultant episodes--a basis for gathering statistics, the origin of which lay in the last days of the last Labour Government--so long as we use the same yardstick, we can track an increase in the amount of treatment available to individual patients in the NHS. When all the rhetoric and party politics are stripped away, that is what really matters.
We know that more than 3 million more treatments were carried out in 1995 than in 1979--and 1 million more than in 1991, when we introduced the NHS reforms. That means that 3,500 more treatments were carried out each day. Do not those statistics put into stark perspective the individual cases culled from hon. Members' constituency correspondence? The number of hip replacements is up from under 29,000 in 1978-79--and from zero not many years before that, when the operation was not available--to more than 58,000 last year.
Another acid test of whether the NHS is working well is waiting times, about which we hear much less from Opposition Members than we used to. Could that be because since 1987 the number of patients waiting more than a year for hospital treatment has been cut from more than 200,000 to just 15,000? Half of all patients are seen immediately and half of the remainder are seen within five weeks. Nearly 75 per cent. are seen within three months and 98 per cent. within a year.
Another commonly accepted yardstick of the health of a specific nation and of its health service's success is life expectancy. We know that in Russia male life expectancy has decreased in the past few years, but a child born today in this country can expect to live two years longer than a child born in 1979. Over the same period, the proportion of babies dying in the first year of life has fallen by almost a half. By any standards, those are impressive figures.
We have heard about the increase of 55,000 in the number of nurses and midwives and of 22,500 in the number of doctors and dentists. We hear a lot about
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Of course, measuring the success of the NHS is not only a matter of figures; it also depends on the experiences of individual patients who present to their doctor or their local hospital. As I go around local GPs' surgeries and local hospitals, I think that the experience of patients is much as is reflected in the figures. Record numbers of patients are being treated--some 39,000 were treated last year in Eastbourne hospitals, and that figure is likely to be exceeded this year. Around 40 per cent. of the electorate in my constituency is of retirement age or older and, on average, as happens across the country, the elderly members of the population account for a greater proportion of NHS spending than other age groups, as is absolutely right and proper.
The increasing figures do not happen simply by accident; they are the result of the magnificent efforts of doctors, nurses, ancillary workers and--yes, let it be said--managers. We have increased funding year on year and we have promised to continue to do so. This year's increase for my area was the second largest in the country--some £15.8 million extra in cash terms for the local health authority, which represents a real-terms increase, after inflation, of 2.38 per cent. Even the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) was good enough to describe such increases as "relatively generous" and he was absolutely right.
A primary care-led NHS is a cornerstone, if not the cornerstone, of Government policy. Primary care is doing well, not only in my constituency, but across the country. By April, some 60 per cent. of patients in this country will be part of a fundholding practice. Only the other day, I visited one such practice in my constituency--that of Dr. John Clarke and his partners--and was present at the unveiling of a new bone scanner to gauge conditions such as osteoporosis. The scanner was installed at that practice, but it will be available for use by other GPs throughout the area. That would have been almost inconceivable in the old NHS and it is a perfect example of the flexibility and high aspirations of the modern NHS under the Conservative Government.
Another exciting development in and around my constituency has been the recent setting up of a pilot total purchasing project, which involves family doctors and all 15 practices in Eastbourne and the surrounding area and covers a staggering 135,000 patients with a total purchasing power of £70 million. It is an incredibly impressive scheme and I believe that it is the largest in the country. The board represents some 70 GPs in nine non-fundholding and six fundholding practices, as well as the health authority and the community health council. I foresee provision in many other parts of the United Kingdom developing in a similar manner and our local total purchasing project will show the way.
We have heard a great deal in the debate about winter pressures. The problem tends to happen every year: it is a combination of influenza, cold weather and illness among medical staff. Like other hon. Members, I keep in touch with the accident and emergency department at my local district general hospital and staff there have been coping well. I spoke recently to the consultant, Mr. Rowland
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Nationally, we have learnt the lessons of previous winters. As mentioned, we have set up the national intensive care bed register and we have pumped an extra £25 million into the system to help it to cope with winter pressures. In my area, arrangements for handling emergency hospital admissions have been agreed between East Sussex, Brighton and Hove and the aim of that co-operation between hospitals in our area is to ensure that hospital beds will always be available for emergency patients. The hospitals have agreed to keep the Sussex ambulance service up to date with how many beds are available and to work together, sharing the pressure, if one hospital is full. Local GPs are also being kept informed. That is a sensible, straightforward way of dealing with the inevitable peaks and troughs of pressure on accident and emergency departments.
Finally, I turn to Opposition policy on the national health service--if policy is not too ambitious a word to describe the ragbag of prejudice and anecdote that we have heard today from Labour Members. The problem facing the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) is this: the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) has bowled out his middle stump--indeed, he has gone further and broken the hon. Gentleman's cricket bat over his knee. The hon. Gentleman therefore has no way of promising extra money for the NHS--it would appear that that option has gone. Either the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East means what he says, in which case a Labour Government--if such a thing were ever to happen--would apply Conservative spending plans, or the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury is right to promise extra money for the NHS and his right hon. Friend is wrong. Which is true? We should be told.
The Labour party is now apparently committed to working on the basis of the Conservative Government's spending plans if Labour were to win an election--this at a time when Labour has still not matched nor come close to matching our pledge on NHS spending. The British people do not need to take our word on NHS spending--they need only look at our record to see how, year after year after year, we have increased spending on the NHS in real terms and how the Government have made it a priority. NHS spending has increased by a massive 74 per cent. in real terms since 1979; as we have heard, it now represents spending of £724 for every man, woman and child in this country, whereas the equivalent figure in real terms for 1978-79 was only £444.
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