Digital Hearing Aids

The RNID has encouraged many people to contact me about the crisis in audiology. This is both a national and a local problem in Salisbury and South Wiltshire.

I hope that it reassures you to learn that the Conservative Party is aware of the problems facing those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Waiting times for hearing tests and hearing aids have actually lengthened over the past two years. Some patients wait up to twenty-four months to receive hearing aids. Many elderly patients in particular are condemned to the loss of independence which hearing impairment brings. The tragedy is not simply that many of these elderly patients will be mis-diagnosed as confused, but that their real health problem could be treated but is not. Hearing aids used by the NHS are largely manufactured in China, the cheapest available, and use 1970's analogue technology. Currently digital hearing aids have a very low availability which means that an unacceptably large number of people are condemned to hearing loss which might otherwise be rectified.

Before the last election we announced our proposals for the treatment of hearing loss. We promised that a Conservative Government would, as part of our planned increase in health spending, ensure that funds were made available to provide digital hearing aids available to everyone who needs one. The cost of doing this, and to clear the current backlog, would be around £60 million per year for the next three years, and decreasing thereafter. To put this figure into perspective, it is less than this Government's advertising bill for the first three months of this year. It is time we got our priorities right.

Sound is extremely important to me personally. Listening is part of my job - and a huge part of the qualify of my life when it comes to music. The RNID is right to focus on the issue. I have written to the Minister responsible to represent our concerns - and I will post her reply here on my website.

With best wishes.

Rob Key