I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is a fair man, and that, being so, he will point out to his constituents, when they call him with their issues, that ambulance response times for category 2 emergency incidents in his local area have in fact been over 30 minutes faster than last year. However, we accept of course that this is a two-year plan and will take time to meet our full ambitions. Interestingly, the latest figures show that we have provided £6.9 million from the community diagnostic centres fund for the development of a community diagnostic centre at Wakefield.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is a fair man, and that, being so, he will point out to his constituents, when they call him with their issues, that ambulance response times for category 2 emergency incidents in his local area have in fact been over 30 minutes faster than last year. However, we accept of course that this is a two-year plan and will take time to meet our full ambitions. Interestingly, the latest figures show that we have provided £6.9 million from the community diagnostic centres fund for the development of a community diagnostic centre at Wakefield.

My hon. Friend is right to point out that we are in the final few hours of the consultants' ballot on the pay reform programme that we have offered the British Medical Association. I very much hope that consultants will feel able to support that programme, because it is about bringing together the frankly quite bureaucratic system that they have to deal with at the moment, so that they are assessed in a shorter time with less bother and paperwork, while respecting their need to train and keep up their education and supporting professional activities commitments. I hope that they will agree with us on that. As I have said to the junior doctors committee from this Dispatch Box, should they return with reasonable expectations, we will, of course, reopen negotiations.

Again, the plan that we laid out last year is having a real impact at local level on the services being deployed through our accident and emergency services. We have seen discharge rates improving, for example. We appreciate that there can be local differences, but the importance that we put on maintaining that flow through hospitals is critical to ensuring that the waiting lists and waiting times that the hon. Lady describes are reduced.

I genuinely want to work with the Scottish Government, because I am troubled, to put it bluntly, that Scotland has some of the worst health outcomes in western Europe. It has the worst level of drug death rates in Europe, the highest alcohol death rates in 14 years, and there was a fall in life expectancy for three years in a row. We offered to allow Scottish patients to receive lifesaving operations in England, but sadly, that offer has been declined.