Steve Webb (Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Health; Northavon, Liberal Democrat)

It is wishful thinking. The hon. Gentleman is right. There are four sittings left, so what I said was only a 50 per cent. exaggeration.

Anyway, back to health care-acquired infections. There are two definitions, one used by the HPA and one used in the Bill. Will the Minister explain why the   definition is as it is in the Bill? The RCN says that we need first to understand what infections would be transmitted or spread anyway and what infections relate to health care actions. It is fair to say that members of the Committee do not want to exaggerate. We do not want to sensationalise. We do not want people saying, as they say to me sometimes, “I don’t want to go into hospital because I’ll catch something.” We do not want people to be so afraid of, or so concerned about, the national health service that they think it is bug-infested and do not want to go near it. There must be a sense of perspective and proportion.

The amendment would make the distinction between, for example, an infection brought into hospital by a patient, which becomes observed only in hospital, and an infection that is associated with a health care action. That is a relatively simple distinction, but has the Department assessed the extent to which infections that are identified on NHS premises are the cause of health care actions and the extent to which they are methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or something else that has been brought in and identified during a person’s course of treatment, but is not a health care-associated infection because the person already had it? I am not talking about health care action such as a dirty ward but about an infection that was brought into the hospital. The statistics for such infections are aggregate. No distinction is made in respect of the original source.

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