Health Bill

I am beginning to feel sorry for the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), who has to reply to the debate. It has been fascinating, and I certainly enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Bill Etherington), but I must say to the House that we have another Health Bill—another piece of legislation, more regulation—and we must ask ourselves: are these measures sensible and practical and will they be enforceable? I shall start by commenting on smoking, because everyone else has. I do not smoke—I do not think it is very clever to do so—but I defend to the end people’s right to smoke. The question for the House is whether other people’s smoking affects our health adversely. During the course of the debate, well over half of the Health Committee has been present. As the House knows, we are currently carrying out an inquiry into passive smoking, and it would be wrong for me to pre-judge that report, in spite of what the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) has said. We shall see in due course whether there will have to be a minority report. I hope that the House will have another chance to read the interesting evidence that we considered during the inquiry. The question on passive smoking that the House must consider is very difficult indeed. I just wonder whether we are being sensible about this. I have been influenced by a variety of points that have been made in today’s debate, but I shall also bear in mind the evidence that the Health Committee heard. The Minister gave evidence to the Committee, and I hope she enjoyed it, but she followed the chief medical officer, and during his evidence, as everyone now knows, he said that he came within a hair’s breadth of resigning. I would simply say to the Minister that, given that this is a Government Bill, it does not look terribly good if the chief medical officer has made those remarks and is clearly in total disagreement with the Government. I am disappointed that we have not spent much more time today talking about MRSA. These things seem to go in and out of fashion, and months ago, before the general election, MRSA was a big issue, so it would have been nice if one or two hon. Members had shared with the House their explanations as to why we have so many infections in our hospitals today. Is it because we no longer have Hattie Jacques as matron? My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries), who I believe was a nurse, will no doubt hope to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, to tell us all about it. Is it because we no longer wash our hands? It is worrying that there has been only a small drop in the number of cases since 2001, when there were 7,684. The present situation is just not good enough. I represent an area with a huge number of elderly people, and as one hon. Member said earlier, they now worry that when they go into hospital, they will come out with a life-threatening illness. The Bill provides for the publication and enforcement of a code of practice, but as my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) said, the code is not included in the Bill, and until its content is revealed I am anxious about the effectiveness of the measures. It is a great shame that my party did not manage to convince the British people with our proposals in the general election, because I think they would have been a little bit more effective than those proposed by the Government. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) about ophthalmic services—I certainly share her doubts on the issue. All Members have received correspondence from their local organisations, and I am no exception. The joint Essex local optical committee has worked with our 13 primary care trusts to devise shared care schemes, providing enhanced services to diabetic patients, post-cataract cases and the visually impaired. It has worked with both ophthalmologists and primary care trusts to streamline the entry of acute cases into the hospital eye service, so that the widest choice of treatment can be offered to cataract patients. It does not oppose the proposed reforms in theory; indeed, it has proposed a clinical governance accreditation scheme for optometrists, paving the way for the new contracts. However, I believe that it is essential that the Government continue to consult optical professionals on the details of the Bill, as the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), told the conference that she addressed in October.