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My hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt) made an outstanding speech. She spoke with real authority, unlike the bar-room brawlers on the Opposition Benches. She cut through the fug of the debate with real precision and made some superb points about the effect of mandatory surveillance in changing how we view these things. She also made another important point. She worked in the national health service [ Interruption. ] Opposition Members do not like to hear this. She worked in the national health service between 1992 and 1997 and she made it clear that, at that time, there was no drive whatsoever to address this issue, which was developing and taking root in the NHS underneath the noses of Conservative Ministers. She made that point powerfully.
I understand the reasons why the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) cannot be here for the closing speeches and we wish her well. She described some unacceptable conditionsif they are truein her trust. Nobody would condone them. If people in the trust need to read those comments, I hope that they will. However, she did something that characterised the approach to the debate by Opposition Members all afternoon. It veered dangerously close to a direct attack on NHS staff. A small number of cases and anecdotal evidence were used to damn the practice of many of our fantastic and hard-working [ Interruption. ]
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The Minister is responding to points. If Members wish to comment, they can seek to intervene in the usual way.
Andy Burnham: It is important to say that the trajectory for cases of MRSA at that trust is 49. The actual figure is 47. The rate of improvement is better than the target. Yes, there are issues about C. difficile at the trust, but we have asked the Healthcare Commission to look at them, as has the strategic health authority. I am sure that the commission will come back with its findings shortly.
Many hon. Members raised the issue of staff uniforms. It is important to say that there is no real evidence that uniforms or work-wear are a major source of cross-infection. However, I accept the point made by Opposition Members that it might be an issue of public confidence and a question whether people believe that there is an adequate hygiene policy in place. In the light of that concern, a review of current uniform policy has been taking place. Its conclusions will be available shortly.
Concerns were raised about the £50 million fund. The hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) raised that issue in relation to his trust. Announcements will be made in due course.
Andy Burnham:
I have not got much time left, so, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will pick up the points that he raised. He raised a point about contract cleaning, as did other Members. It is vital that the cleaning team in any trust is fully integrated into that trust, and that its views are listened to and it is consulted
when action is taking place. We do not want a situation in which contract cleaners do not feel that they are a full and involved part of the trust in question.
I asked the hon. Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) [ Interruption. ] I am sorry if I mispronounced his constituency. I asked him to say what the percentage increase in MRSA was between 1990 and 1997. He did not have an answer. Let me give it to him: between 1990 and 1997, MRSA increased by 3,332.4 per cent. in our national health service. I did not hear any recognition of that, nor did I hear what action was taken. If this debate succeeds in nothing else, it should inform the House of a stark fact: the Conservative party is committed to scrapping the one thing that has turned the tide in the fight against MRSA on our wards. MRSA levels rose inexorably in every single year between 1990 and 2004. That was the year that the MRSA target was introduced. Since then, infection levels have fallen every year. I am not complacent, but let us get those facts on the record. If the Conservative party is committed to cutting that target, Conservative Members have some explaining to do. Do they think that the reduction in recent years was in any way connected to the introduction of that target? Do they think that it is just possible that its existence has brought some ownership and focus from the top of NHS organisations? Can they produce evidence that the target can be safely scrapped and that that would not lead to infection levels creeping up again? If they cannot, they should have a rapid policy review and change their minds quickly.
Todays motion calls for a search and destroy policy and that was mentioned earlier. I know that the Conservatives have embarked on a systematic campaign to disown and forget every policy that they once had, but there was a search and destroy policy in the national health service in the 1980s. It got dropped when cases began to emerge and the NHS was overwhelmed. It could not cope, because the Conservatives cut capital spending year on year between 1992 and 1997 and they cut revenue spending. The Conservative partys claims of a crisis have an increasingly hollow ring. There has been a real and sustained improvement in relation to all the fundamental issues that show that our NHS is improving, but we are not complacent. We will continue to challenge the NHS to do more.
The Conservative party poses as the friend of NHS staff, but we Labour Members remember the posters saying
I mean, how hard is it to keep a hospital clean?
It was a sneering Tory two fingers to every single hospital cleaner in the country, and it was sanctioned by [Interruption.]
Andy Burnham: The Tories say that they have changed, and that they support our national health service, yet they pick away at the issue and undermine our NHS staff because that has the potential to damage confidence in our NHS. We do not claim to get everything right, but we are no fickle friends of the NHS. We will stand by our national health service and give it the resources to do the job.
Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:
Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.
Madam Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
That this House welcomes the top priority given to reducing healthcare-acquired infections by this Government; recognises that the Government is the first ever to collect data on these infections including establishing the worlds most comprehensive MRSA surveillance system; further welcomes the new code of
practice for health and social care providers introduced under the Health Act 2006 to reduce infections like MRSA and the new duty on the Healthcare Commission to ensure service providers comply with the code; welcomes the Government setting a target to halve rates of MRSA by 2008; notes the progress towards achieving this target; acknowledges that more must be done to achieve this goal; and therefore welcomes the priority given to reducing healthcare-acquired infections in the operating framework of the NHS in 2007 and the additional £50 million given to NHS trusts in December 2006 to tackle healthcare associated infections.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): We now come to the second Opposition debate on the life chances of disabled children. [ Interruption. ] Members not wishing to participate should leave the Chamber as quickly and quietly as possible. I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
Mr. Jeremy Hunt (South-West Surrey) (Con): I beg to move,
That this House notes the plight of the UKs 570,000 disabled children and the 55 per cent. of their families who are living in, or on the margins of, poverty; further notes with concern the Childrens Commissioner for Englands view that services for disabled children are a national scandal; acknowledges the link between disability and child poverty; believes that the Governments target of halving child poverty by 2010 and eradicating it by 2020 will not be achieved without a strategy that seeks to improve the life chances of disabled children; welcomes the interest in short breaks for families with disabled children shown by the hon. Members for Normanton and Devon South West in their previous and proposed private members bills and looks forward to the Governments response; believes that the current system of assessment and support provided for families with disabled children is complicated, bureaucratic, costly and stressful for both disabled children and their parents; further believes that the complexity of the benefit system acts as a barrier to employment for parents of disabled children in a way that prevents social mobility and entrenches poverty; and therefore calls on the Government to build on legislative progress on disability issues made under this and previous governments by simplifying the assessment processes and reducing the complexity of the benefit system for families with disabled children in order to prevent disabled children and their families being trapped in poverty.
services for disabled children and their families are a national scandal.
Those are not my words, but the words of the Childrens Commissioner for England. That is shocking, as there has not been a lack of good intentions on the Governments part, or a lack of legislation, or a lack of willingness to invest in services, as evidenced by the Carers and Disabled Children Act 2000, the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001, the 2003 Green Paper entitled, Every Child Matters, the Children Act 2004, the life chances report of 2005, the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and, last year, the Treasury policy review of children and young people, which reported its interim findings this month. I could go on, and it is hard to disagree with anything that the Government say in those reports. However, there has been a failure to deliver meaningful change to the lives of hundreds of thousands of families with disabled children.
A recent parliamentary inquiry chaired by the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) and the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) found that 81 per cent. of parents with disabled children rate social service delivery as poor, and that 52 per cent. rate the delivery of educational services as poor. When it comes to disabled children, it is clear that not every child matters.
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