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Tim Loughton: I shall make some progress.
Ministers have failed to take their own advice, which we endorsed. In their response to the 2000 NAO report that warned about bed occupancy rates, Ministers promised that, by 2003–04, bed occupancy rates could be reduced to 82 per cent. In fact, three quarters of trusts have been operating at higher rates than that—averaging 89 per cent. and 91 per cent. for orthopaedic and vascular surgery respectively. More than 90 per cent. of trusts with the worst rates of MRSA operate above the 82 per cent. target set by the Department and deemed safe by the Health Protection Agency. The Opposition have warned for the past five years and beyond about the consequences of not taking that seriously.
Professor Barry Cookson of the Health Protection Agency, when speaking to health professionals, talked openly about the need to reduce the pressure on the NHS and cut bed occupancy rates to 85 per cent., but before he could give one-to-one interviews with the media, he was mysteriously spirited away for a quiet chat with officials, only to re-emerge having toned down his claims—more dumbing down by the Government, who are not allowing the professionals to speak out. Is the Minister serious about tackling bed occupancy rates? Does she acknowledge that the issue is part of the problem—or is it all talk again?
The NAO report also found that the isolation facilities in some NHS trusts had been significantly reduced and that many infection control teams believed that facilities for isolating patients were unsatisfactory. In 2001, the Department of Health assured the Public Accounts Committee that the need for more isolation facilities was being addressed. So what has been achieved since then? What has actually changed four years on?
Mr. Henry Bellingham (North-West Norfolk) (Con): Is my hon. Friend aware that the NAO report also flagged up the fact that antibiotics are becoming increasingly powerless at dealing with the superbug? Surely that fact makes the Government's complacency even more unforgivable.
Tim Loughton: I agree with my hon. Friend. Even more worrying than that was a report in today's press that in the next few years, even the most powerful drugs available to combat the most potent strains will no longer be effective. We would thus face a gap in our weapons armoury to deal with the most powerful strains, which rings the alarm bells. We cannot afford to be complacent.
Let me ask the Minister several questions. What improvements to screening have taken place? How many hospitals currently screen vulnerable patients, such as elderly people and those in neo-natal units. Is there a link between the extent of screening and the significant differences in MRSA rates among hospitals?
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Do most hospitals now screen staff when there is an outbreak on a ward? What procedures are in place to make visitors more aware of precautions that they must take? Are there proposals to limit visiting times more extensively?
Jim Dowd (Lewisham, West) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Tim Loughton: Not at the moment.
What action are the Government taking to promote the better training of staff? Does the Minister agree with the Royal College of Nursing that further action is needed to make infection control a mandatory part of training for all NHS workers? Is she worried about the situation described by Professor Richard Wise from the Birmingham City Trust, who said that the number of infection control nurses was "worryingly low", at one nurse to every 347 beds, and that there should be one nurse to every 200 beds? What progress have the Government made in meeting their target of one infection control nurse to every 250 beds?
Why will the Government still not publish infection rates for MRSA and other infections per clinical department as we have undertaken to do, given that hospital trusts have had a mandatory duty to report such infections since April 2001? Why should patients not have the right to know the truth? After all, the Secretary of State's opening pledge of his campaign for action in "Towards cleaner hospitals and lower rates of infection" was
The Government's policy thus far has often been to deflect criticism on to anyone but them. The problem is apparently all down to the contracting out of cleaning staff that was started by the wicked Tories. Alas, the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) has left the Chamber. Ministers surreptitiously trot out the assertion that the blame should be put on contracted-out cleaners, or allow Unison to do the dirty work for them as a pay back for the £7 million of donations that it has given the Labour party since the last election. However, the chief medical officer is on record as saying that there is no link between contracted-out cleaning and MRSA rates. On the "Today" programme on 10 January, the Secretary of State said:
Indeed, 11 of the top 20 acute NHS trusts for cleanliness are cleaned by private contractors, while 11 of the bottom 20 are cleaned by in-house teams. Yet again, the picture is confused because the Government's patient environment action team—PEAT—scoring system gives a different impression of the situation, as I said earlier. In any case, surely it would be easier for a hospital to sack a duff cleaning firm that is failing to do its job properly than to sack in-house staff. We intend to give matrons and infection control teams a far greater say about such matters in the future and more powers to deal with the problem.
We agree that more needs to be done on cleaning. We agree that cleaning needs to be a more fundamental and central part of health spending on hospitals. However,
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it is entirely disingenuous to try to pin responsibility for the problem on a political decision going back to the 1980s. It is an attempt to deflect the blame from where it should lie.
The Government use the deflection tactic of saying that the problem is all down to the Conservatives' actions in the 1980s and 1990s, but if hospital-acquired infections were such a burning issue then, why did the then Labour Opposition not raise the matter a single time? There was not one Opposition day debate on hospital-acquired infections between 1992 and 1997. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) tabled one written parliamentary question on the matter during his time as shadow Secretary of State for Health—on 29 October 1993. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) for asking many more questions and securing a debate on the matter on 19 March 1997. He was surpassed only by the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), who secured two debates in May 1997 and December 1995. Thus two Back Benchers raised the subject in five years, so let us lay the blame where appropriate. For the past eight years, this has been a burning issue under a Government whose own policies have exacerbated the problem. Their attempts to deflect the blame on to the previous Government do not hold water.
Mr. Bailey : Will the hon. Gentleman outline what steps the Conservative Government took between 1992 and 1997 to introduce surveillance measures for hospital-acquired infections? One reason why questions were not asked in the House is that the hon. Gentleman's Government were not providing the evidence.
Tim Loughton: It would be strange if a measure of an Opposition's effectiveness were how forward the Government were in making information available. If that were the case, we would not be raising this issue time and again. The Government have frequently sought to deflect attention away from the problem, have engaged in subterfuge and have not released the information that we have requested, so the hon. Gentleman makes a weak point. Is he saying that a Conservative Minister had to raise the issue before he would dare to ask questions? What utter nonsense. It is a national scandal that one in 11 hospital patients has a hospital-acquired infection at any time. The Labour Government have let our patients and our NHS down badly. They have confused quantity with quality by introducing a plethora of initiatives and gimmicks. They have deflected the blame so that it lies with anyone but themselves, but it has all been too late.
We will replace that catalogue of prevarication with an urgent timetable for action. Conservatives will put clinicians back in charge of determining whether or not hospital wards are safe. They will not be subject to the arbitrary targets imposed by a Government obsessed with numbers and throughput rather than quality and the safety of patients. Matron will be put back in charge of our hospital wards. There will be proper nursing matrons—not the Government's management matrons—who know whether or not a bed is clean and recognise the virtues of a good whiff of bleach in the air. There will be no doubt about who is in charge of wards
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under the next Conservative Government. Matrons will not soft-soap us on cleanliness. I recently spoke to a hospital infections director, who tried to convince me that dusting under a bed was not a good idea, because it encouraged any infections to become airborne and therefore more dangerous to the patient. Unbelievable—and she was on a six-figure salary.
Conservatives will not accept the Government's limp target for halving MRSA bloodstream infections by 2008, as the situation is too grave. Indeed, it is grave enough for the Secretary of State to make an appearance in the Chamber. We will institute the sort of ruthless search-and-destroy strategy that brought about drastic improvements in Holland. We will not compromise patient safety with unrealistic targets on bed occupancy levels, as that is a false economy. Hospital-acquired infections cost the NHS £1 billion, result in prolonged stays by patients who have caught infections and have a human cost for the people affected by them. The Conservatives will speed up the diagnosis of MRSA through the faster application of new methods, and will expand screening where appropriate. We will publish infection rates for all hospitals, because we believe that patients have the right to know. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence will be tasked to prepare evidence-based infection control standards, and we will fund hospitals to recruit more infection-control nurses and to install new technology to fight the superbug.
There is nothing in the motion that Members on all sides of the case cannot support if they genuinely believe in improving the safety of our patients and genuinely believe that hospital-acquired infections are a serious problem. There is nothing inevitable about the superbug crisis. It is time that the Government applied some of their own pledges from their latest rather vacuous pledge card to assess how they have dealt with this problem. "Your family better off"—not when it comes to the risk of MRSA. "Your child achieving more"—not with more children contracting MRSA in our hospitals.
at the risk of catching MRSA; I do not think so.
and "Your community safer"—I do not think so. It is surely is a case of backward, not forward under this Government.
Last month, the chief medical officer, talking about MRSA, admitted:
"We've been perhaps a little bit too gentle on health infection in the past and it's now really no more Mr. Nice Guy."
It is time for Mr. Nasty on the Treasury Bench and his Government to move aside and make way for a party committed to taking this problem seriously, committed to the safety of our patients and our staff, and committed to the safety of our NHS. I commend the motion to the House.
5.36 pm
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