Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Health – in the House of Commons at 11:30 am on 22 February 2005.
On the hon. Gentleman's first point, the reason that we cannot publish comprehensive lists of waiting times for diagnostics is that, for 60 years and under successive Governments, that information was never collected. It is unfair that we do not include that information when we calculate the waiting time for operations, and I therefore pledge that it will be published. By 2008, it will be not only published but included in the calculation of the waiting time, which will be counted not just from the last little bit of the journey but from the beginning right to the end. And we pledge that it will be 18 weeks.
The hon. Gentleman also asked whether we would allow local providers of health care to have the power to choose how they would provide it. No, I will allow the patients to decide how, where and when they will gain access, and I will allow them to do that in days, in some cases, rather than weeks or months. I will certainly not do what some people in the Liberal party want to do, which is to break up the NHS by making it rely effectively on local authority control. That would allow inequalities to grow in the most impoverished areas, while the most affluent areas could provide better access. That, to me, is as bad as the charging regime that the Tories want to introduce.