Health Bill

The Secretary of State referred to the statutory code and the consultation held on it. Last year’s National Audit Office report on hospital-acquired infections found that half of all NHS managers are struggling to reconcile meeting Government waiting time targets with managing hospital infections. That issue came through again in the response to the consultation on the code. The NHS wants to know what priority the Government will attach to the code, compared with other health priorities—so can the Secretary of State make that clear today?