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Secretary of State for Health

I will not. We saw the shambles of the collapse of the home oxygen service in February 2006 under this Secretary of State’s watch. There has been the mess of the GP out-of-hours service—at least the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) acknowledged that it had been a mess—which has cost £242 million more than the Government intended and led to a reduction in productivity. The targets to halve the number of MRSA infections have failed dismally, and now C. difficile, which kills twice as many people as MRSA, is endemic throughout the health service and growing at a faster rate than ever. Conservative Members’ warnings of 20,000 job losses were derided by the Secretary of State, yet according to her work force planning department there will now be 37,000 job losses, which is 2.7 per cent. of the work force. There have been failures in public health on obesity, mental health, binge drinking and sexually transmitted diseases.