| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover): Is my right hon. Friend aware that we have just about got rid of the two years of Tory spending plans, albeit that he secured a little extra money for health? We are now moving into an era where my right hon. Friend will be able to spend £21 billion over the next three years, which is about 10 times as much as the Liberals wanted and more than twice what the Tories wanted. Does he accept my opinion that he must ensure that not a penny of that money is wasted? Come the general election, when some people will be prattling on about the euro and all that crap, we should be talking about saving people's lives.
Mr. Dobson: I say to my good and hon. Friend that I hope that by the time of the next general election there will be some signs of improvement in people's health. However, we can only measure those signs locally, not nationally.
Mrs. Virginia Bottomley (South-West Surrey): The right hon. Gentleman will know that I applaud the strategy, unpopular as it often is, and difficult as it is to win battles with colleagues in delivering it. However, I ask him to look again at some of his comments. Why did his party vote against the new GP contract? It provided bonus pay for GPs in deprived areas; it paid them for the first time to screen new patients; and it gave them additional resources for hitting targets on immunisation and cancer screening. There are few practical steps that could do more to raise standards in poor areas.
Secondly, I applaud the reappearance of mental health as a target, but regret that a more sophisticated target has not been found than suicide figures. Will the right hon. Gentleman examine the effect of NHS Direct, which is starving of resources Samaritans and Saneline, which offer a practical service for people with mental health problems?
Finally, is it the right hon. Gentleman's policy to make the sick healthy by making the healthy sick? Mr. Roger Humphreys was admitted to the Royal Surrey hospital at 2.30 on Sunday. He was not found a bed on the ward until Monday night. He is 90, and he happens to live in a healthy area. People in that area feel that the Government's policy is to starve them of resources.
Mr. Dobson:
We are not starving any area of resources.
Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex):
Yes, you are.
Mr. Dobson:
The craw can wait. Every part of the country is getting more money in real terms this year than last year, and that is an increase by anyone's standards.
I congratulate the right hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley) on some of the things that she did when she was Secretary of State, but not all that many. We are devoting more resources to mental health now
than have ever been devoted in the past, and we are paying great attention to that aspect. It is fairly significant that of the Nye Bevan awards that were awarded yesterday, three were for mental health projects. The overall winner--the Nye of Nyes--was also for a mental health project, because we believe that in the past mental health has not had the attention that it deserves.
It is rather foolish of the right hon. Lady to start attacking NHS Direct, which is a good service. It has worked well. When I announced its extension, it was welcomed from the Tory Front Bench, which is a fairly novel experience for me, at least. NHS Direct provides a first-class service and offers help to people with physical and mental health problems. It is not draining resources from anyone. It is providing a 24-hour nurse-led service in 40 per cent. of the country now; it will cover 60 per cent. of the country by December; and it will probably cover the whole country by this time next year. When an independent survey of satisfaction was carried out, 97 per cent. of the people contacted were satisfied.
Mr. John Gunnell (Morley and Rothwell):
How will my right hon. Friend judge public opinion on fluoridation in a particular area? My family, who were brought up in New York, still benefit from the fluoridated water that they used there. I hope that we will introduce fluoridation and give the right instructions.
Mr. Dobson:
Our proposal, subject to the outcome of the independent review, is that the law should be changed so that local councils conduct the process of consultation, because they have a democratic legitimacy that the local health service does not have in that respect. We would then have to sort out the form that the consultation would take in order to meet the requirements, whatever they were. Once that consultation had been carried out, and if there was a local majority, the water company serving that area would be obliged to fluoridate.
Dr. Peter Brand (Isle of Wight):
I very much welcome the consultation on social inequality in the report, but I am extremely worried about the loss of the national targets. They seem to have been shoved off into some never-never land of local targets. When the Green Paper was issued, the Minister gave an undertaking that he would place the local targets, in amalgamated form, in the Library, so that we could see whether they were being met through local endeavours.
Primary care groups have been working to health improvement programmes--and no doubt setting targets--for the past two months, yet we have not seen any Government figures to indicate what targets are being set, let alone what they are trying to achieve. When will we have a statement on these matters?
Mr. Dobson:
The hon. Gentleman speaks as though the "The Health of the Nation" project succeeded, but it did not. It failed. It did not make the progress that it should have done. It is our view, and that of a substantial number of people who could be described as practitioners of public health--although I accept that it is not a universal view--that it is better to have a series of local targets and
Dr. Brand:
Will the targets be published?
Mr. Dobson:
Yes, the targets will certainly be published. Everything is published. The health improvement programmes themselves are published and the progress reports will have to be published. That brings pressure to bear on those on whom it should be brought to bear--the local people who are supposed to be doing the job.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington):
My right hon. Friend said earlier that mental health is a much-neglected area of public health. Does he agree that the mental health of black and ethnic minority people is an even more neglected area, even though a disproportionate number of black people are diagnosed as schizophrenic or are in the mental health system?
For three years, successive Health Ministers have told me that the Department is collecting figures nationally. For three years, successive Health Ministers have told me that they still do not have figures that they can make publicly available. Will my right hon. Friend take steps to ensure that his Department does what it says it has been doing for the past three years--collect figures on the number of black and ethnic minority people in the mental health system so that strategies can be developed to give the whole community the service it deserves?
Mr. Dobson:
As my hon. Friend knows, I am determined to make sure that every individual and group in the country receives the proper, targeted attention they deserve, but, as she knows, one of the problems is that there are disputes about whether some black people are being diagnosed in what might be described as a racist way as suffering from mental illness, or a particular form of it, when that is not the case. We are wrestling to get statistics on which we can genuinely rely, rather than publishing statistics that we believe to be unsatisfactory and possibly misleading.
Mr. Peter Brooke (Cities of London and Westminster):
Where does the thinking behind the White Paper take the Department's contribution to the debate within the Government on the future of housing benefit?
Mr. Dobson:
We are involved in all debates and all discussions within Government on housing policy generally, which is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister. They include all aspects of housing policy, including benefits. We are involved, and we have to try to make sure that people have homes that are safe, secure and healthy at rents that they can afford.
Mr. James Wray (Glasgow, Baillieston):
Does my right hon. Friend believe that including fluoridation in the White Paper will set alarm bells ringing all over the United Kingdom? Is he aware of the moral, medical and legal aspects of fluoridation? Does he know that fluoridation breaches the Medicines Act 1968, the Water Act 1945 and the Food and Drugs (Scotland) Act 1956? No one in the medical or dental professions decided that fluoridation was good for people's health; that decision
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |