Health is one of the most important areas of government. Every single one of us at one time or another will come in to contact with the health service and the party is committed to delivering the first class health system that the people of the Province need and deserve.
The DUP believes in the value and ethos of the Health Service. Our actions in government show that it is this party which is delivering for the entire community in the vital field of health. The DUP has introduced in the Budget and Programme for Government unprecedented levels of funding and we have ensured that the health service is better resourced than at any time in the history of Northern Ireland. The party places such importance on health that the budgetary allocation of £4billion amounts to around half of the entire budget for Northern Ireland.
With such a budget comes a massive responsibility to ensure that the taxpayer receives value for money. The Northern Ireland public rightly demands a first class health system. In government that is what the DUP is determined to deliver. As we are aware the Health Department is under the control of Mr. McGimpsey. Mr. McGimpsey because of his sunny disposition is known to his friends as the Undertaker. Because this is a family audience I wont you what his enemies call him.
Mr McGimpsey is very adept at claiming the credit for things he had a limited role in bringing to pass. Over the last eighteen months the department has brought forward some positive undertakings. The DUP welcomes the abolition of charging for prescription medication, although we want to see the scheme extended to include drugs which are used by cancer patients. We are supportive of the extra funding for In-Vitro Fertilisation. The DUP also welcomes increasing the minimum age at which one can purchase tobacco products from 16 years to 18 years.
These are all very welcome developments which we as a party have long sought but what the Minister conveniently forgets to tell everyone as he claims the credit for these new services is that it is because of the DUP that his department was in a position to get an extra half billion pounds. It is because of DUP investment in our health service that we have these new and exciting initiatives.
The DUP believes in best value services that is why we have also ensured that the Department agreed to 3% efficiency savings that will be allowed to go straight back into the Health budget to invest in more front line services. While we talk about efficiency savings that are important and necessary, they must not be at the expense of front lines services. That is why the proposal from the Minister for Health to axe 700 nursing jobs is so destructive. It takes a strange logic to look at a health service with a vastly bloated bureaucracy and decide that nursing jobs have to go for efficiency reasons, yet that is what the Minister has done. Despite earlier assurance that there would be no cut in front line services that is exactly what he now stands for. It is clear that we cannot trust this minister with the needs of patients.
The Health Minister has failed to look at areas were savings can be made without cutting services such as dealing with Medical Negligence claims that are costing us 75 million over the last five years alone: the evolution of an extra layer of bureaucracy by the creation of a new health promotion agency, whose responsibilities should be kept within the new Regional Board, creation of uniform levels of staff pay across all health board areas and sickness levels.
We desperately need to reduce waste and bureaucracy in Northern Ireland. Those who work with in the Health Service know that we need these changes and can identify for Minister McGimpsey where effective changes can be made if he is prepared to listen to them. The Minister has prevaricated and postponed action to have lengthy and unnecessary reviews that tell him what the people who work in the hospitals and health centres already know. We need one streamlined, cost efficient authority that can focus on enhancing its responsiveness to local needs.
Mr. McGimpsey owes it to the people of this province to act decisively and to speed up the process of reform to provide a Health and Social Services system of which we can all be proud - a system to which we can all look with confidence in our hour of need. Every day that goes by without these reforms being institutionalized, could mean that somewhere in the system someone dies because the present system is inefficient.
Archaic, crumbling bureaucratic structures have no place in the new Health Service and the new Northern Ireland we wish to build. It is unfortunate that we have a twentieth century minister trying to lead a twenty-first century health service, but I can assure you that from a DUP point of view there will be no let up in our campaign to deliver the very best health service for everyone in Northern Ireland.
