BBC NEWS | Health | Tories attack Labour's NHS statistics

The Conservatives have accused the government of failing to know what is going on in the NHS.

In a dossier published on Monday, the Tories said ministers have been unable to provide information on key areas of the health service.

These include statistics on the longest waits in A&E departments and how many NHS staff come from overseas.

The government should lecture people less about the health service and put its own house in order in data collection

Dr Liam Fox
Shadow health secretary
Shadow health secretary Dr Liam Fox said ministers continually tell MPs that such information 'is not collected centrally'.

The Conservatives have drawn up a list of 10 things ministers have been unable to provide information on.

These include:

How many doctors from abroad have started working in the NHS last year

What the single longest wait recorded in an accident and emergency department this year was

What proportion of nurses starting work in the NHS in the last year were trained overseas

How many cancer nurse specialists there were in each year since 1997, broken down by type of cancer

What funding was given to each children's hospice in the last year

What the average waiting time for routine endoscopies was in the last 12 months.

How much missed hospital outpatient appointments cost the NHS

How many social workers retire each year

How many deaths have been attributed to the MRSA bug prevalent in hospitals

The number of health authorities and trusts which provide recombinant clotting factors to haemophiliac patients aged over 16

Dr Fox said: "The Department of Health's continual retort in their parliamentary answers that 'this is information is not collected centrally' shows just how little the government knows about what's going on in the health service.

"The government should lecture people less about the health service and put its own house in order in data collection to determine the real picture on the frontline."

The dossier is based on parliamentary questions asked last year.

A Labour Party spokesman criticised the Tory dossier.

"These are figures which have never been collected in the NHS. They were not collected between 1979 and 1997 when the Tories were in power and they have not been collected subsequently."


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