NHS Reorganisation

I did not really take seriously what the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) said. I remember when he was Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and his Department was a shambles. I was surprised that he said that there had been no improvement. Anyone who has been a Member of the House for any period of time—new Members can be forgiven—will remember the letters that we got about waits for hip replacements of two, three or four years. That does not happen anymore. Although we have a problem with dentists, there have been massive improvements. When people ask where the money has gone and why productivity has not increased, the answer is simple: a lot of money had to be used to pay the staff a decent salary because they were underpaid under the Conservative Government—I sometimes wish that the staff would remember that, too. The reality is that we now have a lot more nurses and consultants. I welcome the opportunity for the debate that the Conservatives have given us, although they cannot be taken seriously because when we debated extra money for the NHS—the penny on national insurance—they voted against it. Conservative Members may say that their PCTs are in trouble, but they really would have been in trouble if the Conservatives had won that vote.