To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will reconsider making a Government contribution to the costs of the Cornwall air ambulance in view of its contribution to meeting the target for emergency ambulance call-out times.

No, Sir. It is for the local management of the service to determine the most effective deployment of resources to meet performance targets.

The Minister will know that those targets can be met only by the air ambulance in my area. Without that ambulance the target set out in the patients charter would not be achievable. Will the patients charter be guaranteed by public funds or is it to depend in future on private charity?

The patients charter sets out standards which ambulance services are expected to match. It is for the chief ambulance officer of each area ambulance service to decide how best to match those standards. The hon. Gentleman should note that although the Cornish air ambulance makes a valaable contribution in the county, it has not produced a measured improvement in response times for ambulances in Cornwall.

May I ask my hon. Friend nevertheless to keep in touch with the health authority in Cornwall? The county is 100 miles long and my Constituency is the most sparsely populated area of Cornwall. Many of my constituents live 50 miles from the nearest district general hospital. I urge my hon. Friend to keep in close touch to make sure that response times are up to the charter.

We shall certainly keep in close touch with the Cornish ambulance service and, of course, with every other ambulance service to ensure that they match response times and put to good use our investment in the ambulance service. That investment has provided defibrillators for more than 2,300 front-line ambulances across the country and carries through the commitment to provide a trained paramedic on each front-line ambulance by 1996. Those improvements in the ambulance service will apply in Cornwall as they apply in the rest of the country.