NHS Reorganisation

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that interesting intervention. The revenues from North sea oil would have funded a new hospital roughly every week during that time, yet there were no new hospitals built until we came into Government. Constituencies such as mine saw no infrastructure changes of any note in the period that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) made the point that there has been a 95 per cent. increase in NHS funding in the past few years, thanks to the new investment that is going in. It is disingenuous of the Conservatives to suggest that everything was perfect before 1997 but not since; the opposite is in fact the case. There are two primary care trusts in Stoke-on-Trent—North Stoke and South Stoke. They were, de facto, merging; they were working together more closely all the time. To suggest having a single PCT for the whole city therefore makes a lot of sense. It is simply making a reality of what was happening anyway. I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Charlotte Atkins) on these issues, but there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure that the appropriate options are put in place for the rest of Staffordshire and that they are able to be introduced. We need to recognise, however, that the existing system is not the most effective. The Donna Louise Trust, the children’s hospice in my constituency about which I have lobbied the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Byrne), is a perfect example of primary care trusts not working together collectively. In that instance, a smaller number of PCTs might have the clout to do more. That brings me to the subject of strategic health authorities. The system of consultation has not been open or accessible to the people of Staffordshire; it has not been working. The SHA in charge of putting that consultation system together has done a splendid job, if I can put it like that, of obfuscating and making a mess of the whole thing. If that is its role, heaven help us, but I hope that it will have a much more positive one in future. One such role might be in the managing and integration of services, involving not only the PCTs but social services in coterminous areas. The SHA could have a role to play there.