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David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con): Given what was said by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey), let me remind my hon. Friend that the report that first mentioned 5,000 deaths a year from MRSA in this country was the National Audit Office report, which specifically excluded a series of categories. Under this Government, those who die at home are not counted, along with youngsters and those on immunosuppressant drugs. The hon. Lady should take no comfort from the 5,000 figure, as the true figure is probably much higher.
Tim Loughton: That is why I said that my estimate—not my estimate, in fact, but a widely accepted estimate—was conservative. It also relies in part on the way in which hospitals account for hospital-acquired infections. Many hospitals will not necessarily treat infections as hospital-acquired if they manifest themselves a certain amount of time after the patient has left the hospital. Hospitals such as my own—the Worthing and Southlands Hospitals NHS Trust, in Sussex—do play by the rules and account for all infections in hospital and, within a certain time, after leaving hospital. Indeed, they do rather well, but other hospitals, because of the management pressures imposed by the Government's targets, do not.
Kali Mountford (Colne Valley) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman mentions the dedicated service of hospital staff. Will he therefore consider the Royal College of Nursing's observation that alcohol wipes are the best way to deal with the problem, and that ward closures would exacerbate it by spreading disease further?
Tim Loughton: I should point out to the hon. Lady that the RCN welcomed our manifesto proposals on giving power to matrons and on infection control, so she needs to look a little beyond the headlines.
Mr. Michael Foster (Worcester) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Tim Loughton:
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, and then I will make some progress; otherwise, we will be here until the Division.
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Mr. Foster: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I can assure him that when I took part in Monday's NHS cleanliness awareness day, the matrons at the Worcester royal hospital told me that they do indeed have the power to close down wards when they fear infection.
The hon. Gentleman is concerned about how the infection figures are compiled. Does he agree that although the compilation of such statistics is an issue, the more fundamental problem is how people like us use them? We have a duty to use them carefully and properly in considering these matters, so will he denounce the comments of his colleague the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), who said:
Tim Loughton: The problem is that nobody knows what to believe and what not to believe. The hon. Gentleman is lucky if he found a matron who says that matrons have the power to close wards, because according to the experience of most of us, they do not, and they are too often overruled by management.
The plethora of half-baked knee-jerk reactions that the Department of Health often foists on NHS staff has served to increase the pressure on them yet further. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire pointed out in an earlier debate,
"Doctors and nurses across the country tell me that they know how to deliver infection-free environments and that they have experience of doing that. They know that they can do it if they are given the support and the freedom to deliver the requirements of patient safety without being contradicted by Government targets and bureaucracy. That is what is urgently required now".—[Official Report, 8 September 2004; Vol. 424, c. 792.]
But they have been bombarded with no fewer than 23 initiatives in the past four years. In February 2000, departmental guidance was issued. In May 2000, the Department adopted and published "Standards of environmental cleanliness". In July 2000 there was the Government's NHS plan, which included a campaign to clean up hospitals. In December 2003, "Winning Ways Together" was published. There has been no lack of paperwork on these subjects, so why, after all those publications and initiatives, is the situation continuing to deteriorate?
The situation culminated in last week's ONS statistics and the designating of this Monday as "think clean" day. It would be laughable if it were not so serious. Every day should automatically be a think clean day. It is symptomatic of this Government's tick-box mentality that they think that, simply by having a think clean day, they can in some way sort out the problem.
Mrs. Iris Robinson (Strangford) (DUP):
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Dr. Peter Maguire, a consultant anaesthetist at Craigavon Area hospital in Northern Ireland, has called within the past couple of weeks for automatic screening of NHS staff? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that should be done as a matter of urgency to instil confidence in the patients who are being treated by these very staff?
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Tim Loughton: The hon. Lady makes an important point about screening, and I hope to ask a specific question of the Minister about screening in a moment.
Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): My hon. Friend mentions pieces of paper. Does it surprise him to hear that when I recently visited a friend in hospital—in a mixed ward, incidentally—there was a piece of paper on the wall at the entrance to the ward stating, "All visitors and staff to wash their hands with the gel on the trolley on entering and leaving the ward"? There was no gel, and there was no trolley, so how on earth can a piece of paper be said to contribute to hygiene on the ward?
Tim Loughton: My hon. Friend is lucky to have seen a piece of paper giving advice. So often, during my many visits to hospitals, I have had to remind staff that I wanted to wash my hands or use the gel before visiting patients, and staff sometimes tell me that the stuff is not available.
The news has been even more worrying recently. The Minister's reply to my parliamentary question revealed that, between 1997 and 2003, the number of reports of MRSA in children up to the age of 14 trebled. More worryingly still, a study by the Patients Association released this week revealed that hundreds of babies, many just a few days old, have been infected with MRSA in hospitals around Britain. As Professor Hugh Pennington of Aberdeen university, a microbiologist and expert in hospital-acquired infections, is reported as saying:
"If babies are getting MRSA, that is of concern, because it shows there is something seriously wrong with the infection control procedures."
Hospitals in the survey included the Portsmouth Hospitals NHS trust, which admitted to having 38 babies aged under four weeks with MRSA. Eastbourne district general hospital in Sussex admitted that it had to close its baby unit for a whole week last year because five babies were carrying MRSA. Those figures alone suggest that the parliamentary answer by the Minister for Public Health, to which I referred, seriously understated the extent of the problem. In the other place, Lord Hanningfield asked a parliamentary question about the incidence of MRSA among children under five. The answer, provided by Lord Warner, estimated 71 cases in 2003, but that must be seriously awry simply on the basis of the figures that I have just provided.
Last Friday evening, I visited the neo-natal unit—the Trevor Mann baby unit—of the Royal Sussex county hospital in Brighton. It is a dedicated unit with a very professional staff doing a fantastic job under considerable pressure. The work is very demanding of staff, who have to look after babies born as early as 24 weeks after conception. If MRSA strikes there as viciously as it has in other hospitals, we really will face a serious problem that will affect some of the most vulnerable people in our hospitals.
We understand that, in order to deal with the problem, the Government have commissioned a study—yet another study—that will cost £140,000. How
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long will it take to report, and what are the Government doing now about improving screening for new babies? What are they doing about people and equipment coming into contact with new babies in these very high-tech and sensitive wards? We read that thousands of babies are also being struck down by the respiratory syncytial virus, RSV, which can be picked up on dirty wards in the same way as MRSA.
We can also see this week that patients are abandoning NHS hospitals and seeking treatment abroad, because they fear catching MRSA. Hans Finck, managing director of a German medical net company that organises treatment for foreign patients, said that thousands of Britons are travelling to Germany for operations. Before, he said,
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