- guardian.co.uk,
- Tuesday September 25 2007 12:04 BST
Alan Johnson: 'We must all shoulder our share of the blame.' Photograph: PA
The health secretary used his keynote speech at the Labour party conference in Bournemouth to unveil a raft of measures aimed at eliminating MRSA and tackling other superbugs.
The new health regulator - which will incorporate the Healthcare Commission - will have greater powers to crack down on hospitals failing to cut rates of MRSA or clostridium difficile, Mr Johnson said.
"Today I am setting out how we will equip the new regulator with tougher powers, backed by fines, to inspect, investigate and intervene where hospitals are failing to meet hygiene standards.
"And this tough regime will not just apply across the NHS but in the private sector as well.
"To ensure patients' safety, I want a regulator with the power to close, clean and then re-open wards if necessary."
Mr Johnson received loud applause from delegates as he announced plans to offer greater protection for NHS staff.
"We know there is no more important resource for the NHS than the staff who work for it," he said. "But too many NHS staff suffer harassment, intimidation and violence."
Mr Johnson announced that NHS staff would be issued with personal safety alarms as part of a £97m boost to the NHS security budget.
There will also be more prosecutions brought against those who assault staff.
The health secretary said the next stage review of the NHS would focus on how to deliver improvements across the service.
"There is an unprecedented opportunity to shape an NHS which is clinically-led and locally-driven, constantly focused on a personalised service for the patient," he said.
"To achieve this, government needs to get behind health staff, not stand in their way."
Mr Johnson said the expertise and experience of midwives could be utilised far more effectively.
"Let's be clear," he said. "Our shared vision for maternity services will require more midwives."
Mr Johnson said nothing better encapsulated the values of the Labour party than the National Health Service.
"It emerged from a sense of national solidarity," he said. "It developed as a testament to what can be achieved when radical thinking is combined with political courage."
The secretary of state quoted Nye Bevan, the former Labour minister who was the health service's chief architect, as saying when the NHS was created: "The service must always be changing, growing and improving. It must always appear inadequate."
Mr Johnson also used his speech to attack the Tories, saying they opposed clinical change.
"This illustrates clearly how unfit to govern the Conservative party has become," he said.
Ara Darzi, the surgeon appointed as a health minister in Gordon Brown's government of all the talents, told the conference he was privileged to be part of the team improving the NHS and praised the huge rise in government spending on the NHS.
"The journey now is to look at the quality of care," he said. "IT [information technology] should be clinically-led, evidence-based.
"We all know that technology is not static. Within the last five years there have been tremendous advances.
"In Ireland and Scotland a 10% reduction in heart attacks. We need an NHS to bring these technologies into being. Care also needs to meet the expectations of patients."
Prof Darzi said the inequalities of care had to be addressed, in particular the availability of GPs.
"These are the areas we immediately need to tackle," he said.
