22 FEBRUARY 2007

The half term parliamentary recess allowed me some time for bird watching and I shall never forget the sight of hundreds of large wading birds (black-tailed godwits) wheeling and circling in a packed mass in the morning sunlight above a Devon estuary, just like so many starlings, amazingly but naturally without any collisions.

The method of voting on House of Lords reform has changed due to pressure from many MPs. We are now to vote traditionally, yes or no, to each alternative proportion of elected and appointed members of the reformed second chamber. The original proposal of voting by putting the alternatives in order of preference would have produced a certain winner but we are now back to just the system which led to no decision at the previous attempt at reform as no proposal received winning support. However my question remains the same, which of the alternative formations listed in my column last week should I support and which should I vote against?

The NHS continues to be in the news this week with the publication of the government's response to the Health Committee's inquiry into NHS deficits and, in addition, a huge government paper explaining the reasons for the deficits. 

There are measures in place to obscure any real deficits this year. 

Even though our own county health economy is funded well below the level indicated by the complex funding formula used to determine distribution of resources, our primary care trusts (PCT) is subject to a levy to contribute to a buffer fund to help acute trusts across the country that cannot balance their books.

The Office of Fair Trading has published a report on the pricing of drugs and the Department of Health has produced a paper on rational prescribing of statins (the drugs to lower cholesterol levels) which gives immediated practical ways to save NHS money. 

Regarding statins our own three PCTs, before their merger, were all in the top 25% for rational prescribing of statins. So we do not have the huge and painless economies (up to £1.5 million per year) that some other trusts have available to them from this one aspect of health service expenditure. Nevertheless our PCTs are to be warmly congratulated for being ahead of the field.

An example of the difficulties any MP faces has occurred this week. 

There are two health debates that I could have been involved with but competing priorities make participation impossible. 
One is about hospital reconfigurations but I have made my views abundantly clear in other debates and in separate one-to-one meetings with the Secretary of State for Health, one of the Ministers of State and the Chief Executive of the NHS so I feel I can miss this debate. 
Tomorrow I have a vital Health Committee meeting and meetings on legal aid and sewers that I think will win the day.

R.T.

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