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Mr. Dobson: The hon. Gentleman speaks a little quicker than his predecessor, but he does not talk much more sense. The first target of his mockery was the Government's chief medical officer. I would rather stick by that distinguished doctor more than the one who has just been speaking.

In talking about people dying, the hon. Gentleman apparently upbraided me for choosing the measure of suicides. As a doctor, he ought to know that, if suicides are successful, they involve people dying. If we can reduce the number of suicides, we will reduce the number of deaths. That seems to be a reasonable proposition.

The hon. Gentleman complained that we are not getting on with fluoridation. My understanding is that the data at present available in the Department of Health are rather out of date. We want an up-to-date assessment. I have never for one minute made any secret of my view that fluoridation works and should be introduced, but in fairness to those who have what they see as legitimate doubts, it is only right and proper that we have an independent review in which people may put their point of view and we may come to sensible conclusions.

On the rest of it, it was very interesting that the hon. Gentleman never seemed to recognise that ill health is caused by unemployment, poverty, low pay, crime and disorder--that soared under the Conservative party--or poor housing. We are addressing all those matters. We are improving the NHS so that it can make a bigger and better contribution. The point that I was trying to make was that all the Government and all the country must be involved.

If the hon. Gentleman thinks that it is class war for me to suggest that I would like the people whom I represent to be as healthy as those in the constituencies of my Tory predecessors, he believes in a strange version of class war. Most decent people in his constituency, or in the Surrey constituency of one of my predecessors, would probably agree that it is a good idea for us all to be as healthy as one another, and to achieve that by raising, not lowering, standards.

Mr. David Hinchliffe (Wakefield): I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend's statement. Does he agree that for the previous Administration, public health was politically inconvenient--for the reasons that he has set out--and that as a consequence they sidelined, for example, the crucial Black report, on which we should have acted in the early 1980s and which would have delivered so much in public health to the generations who are being born today? Did they not also sideline the public health function?

I want to pick up one point on which my right hon. Friend knows I feel strongly. One thing lacking from what he said today is the restoration of the public health function to the political mainstream in local government, where it used to be, alongside housing, social services, education and environmental health. Will he consider that point, which is crucial to achieving the objectives that he has rightly set out today?

Mr. Dobson: I agree with my hon. Friend's point about the previous Government refusing to address health

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inequalities. Not only that--they banned the use of those words in the Department of Health, so that officials were forced to refer to variations in health because the Conservatives practised inequality but were not willing to preach it.

We appointed Sir Donald Acheson, who had been one of the previous Government's chief medical officers, to produce a report. His excellent report on various sources of inequality in health put forward many sensible propositions on how we should go about reducing those inequalities, and I am glad to say that we are getting on with that.

As my hon. Friend knows, I sympathise with his view about the disappearance of the post of medical officer of health from local government--but when we consulted, in opposition, on whether that post should be restored, local government had little enthusiasm for the idea. That is one of the reasons why we placed in the Health Act 1999 a duty on health authorities to draw up a health improvement programme to identify the health care needs of their areas. That must be done through co-operation and consultation with local government and voluntary organisations. I hope that the report and that approach will eventually have the status that the chief medical officer's report had in times gone by.

Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey): We very much welcome the White Paper as far as it goes, but why is it much more timid than it was originally billed to be? Are the Government yet committed to putting more resources from our national wealth into national health? Are they committed to putting more resources into public health, or will those resources come from the money allocated to the NHS? What indication is there that there will be, for example, a great programme to make sure that people do not live in badly insulated, damp flats and that local government has the money to deal with that?

Why were there 21 targets under the previous Government, but only four targets now? Why is there no target to reduce smoking? Why is there no target to reduce traffic? Above all, why is there no target to reduce health inequality, which is meant to be at the centre of the whole policy?

Will all Government policies be audited? If so, will we be given a guarantee that there will not, for example, be policies to take away benefits from single mothers, to reduce help to asylum seekers or to prevent pensions from increasing in line with national wealth, none of which can be great for health equalisation?

Did I understand the Secretary of State to say that the Health Education Authority--the one body that might be able to stand up and speak independently about what the Government are or are not doing--is to go? We want a body that can tell the Government when they are not meeting their targets and hold the Government to account. If the Government are tough on themselves, they might deliver; but if they are weak on themselves, they will let the rest of us down.

Mr. Dobson: It sticks in the gullet to listen to a Liberal Democrat say that the Government are not putting money into measures that combat ill-health, when his party voted against imposing the windfall levy on the fat-cat utilities. That money has been invested in providing jobs and

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training for young people--and as the hon. Gentleman should know, the only group whose mortality and morbidity figures were increasing was young, unemployed men. We are reducing those figures, and we are doing so with money that the hon. Gentleman did not want to collect, so he cannot complain about the way in which we are spending it.

We are putting £96 million into the public health development fund.

Mr. Hughes: Is it new money?

Mr. Dobson: It is new money. It is money that was not previously intended for that purpose, so it must be new. We are putting £5 billion into building new houses and improving old houses. Much of that money is intended to make sure that houses are well insulated, and it will concentrated on families who are poor and old people who are poor. That is more money that we are spending.

Mr. Hughes: Is it new money?

Mr. Dobson: The hon. Gentleman talks about new money as though there were something different about it. It is money. It gets houses built and improved; it gets jobs for young people; and it gets all sorts of other improvements.

When talking about health, we must remember that the Tories wanted to spend only £500 million a year extra. We want to reduce inequalities, but it is sensible to measure them in particular localities. It is necessary to be a statistical freak to obtain any significant run of figures about reducing health inequalities in less than about a decade.

The hon. Gentleman should know, having burbled on about pensions, that they have increased faster than wage inflation.

Mr. Kevin Barron (Rother Valley): My right hon. Friend's statement will be welcomed by right hon. and hon. Members and by many of those who have worked in the medical profession for many years. Does he agree that the rant about the national health service from the Opposition Front Bench shows little understanding of public health? If economic and social environments lead to ill-health in certain regions and if getting rid of it is a war, it is a war that should have been fought many years ago.

Mr. Dobson: When it comes to fighting a war against poverty or one against ill health among the poor, the Tory party would only qualify for white feathers.

Mr. Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood): Is it not extraordinary that the Health Secretary can come to the House to make a statement about his future policy towards public health and spare virtually not a word for the future of the medical profession? Rather than inventing entirely spurious party political differences between the Labour party and the Tory party, should he not have devoted himself more seriously to his statutory responsibilities for the national health service on the day after Dr. Bogle accused the Government of achieving total alienation from the medical profession? Does the right hon. Gentleman remember the speeches that he used to make

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in opposition about how morale in the health service had reached an all-time low? That is what he and his hon. Friends used to say. Has he not used his two years in the Department of Health to prove himself wrong?

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