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7.47 pm
Ms Janet Anderson (Rossendale and Darwen): The speech we have just heard from the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney) accused my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) of peddling misinformation about the NHS. I was present for both the opening speeches in the debate and was impressed by my hon. Friend's detailed knowledge of the problems facing the national health service, unlike the Secretary of State for Health, who devoted a great deal of his speech to matters that had nothing to do with the NHS. In fact, he seem to be much more concerned to find out what we were going to do in government rather than to tell us what he had done in his post.
The hon. Member for Wycombe talked about the number of patients being treated in the health service and I think that he said something like, "It is hardly surprising that there is a mistake a day when millions of patient are being treated." That is not much consolation to my constituent, Mr. Craig Yates of Darwen, who is fighting for his life in hospital because he was denied a brain scan at Blackburn royal infirmary.
I put it to the hon. Member for Wycombe that, if one out of 10 planes that land at Heathrow airport were to crash, we would not say that that was all right because nine out of 10 had landed safely; we would find out why
one had crashed and do something about it. It is a great pity that Conservative Members do not apply the same test to the national health service.
I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this debate. I shall concentrate on the future of the hospital in my constituency. I say "the" hospital because we have only one hospital, the Rossendale general. It is situated high on a hill, partly still housed in what was once a workhouse, with beautiful views over the Rossendale valley. It is dear to all our hearts, and is part and parcel of our valley community.
At times, Rossendale general has seemed to be under threat of closure and some of the services that we wanted retained have now gone. We have no accident and emergency facilities and no maternity unit. If people need accident and emergency facilities or want to have a baby, they must go to Bury, Burnley, Rochdale or Blackburn. We fought hard against those changes at the time, but when we lost the fight we consoled ourselves with the thought that at least we still had our hospital. We were further encouraged when antenatal facilities were restored and the Burnley Health Care NHS trust decided to invest £5 million in the hospital over the past four years.
Our satisfaction at having retained the hospital, however, may be short-lived. The bombshell was dropped last week by Mr. David Chew, chief executive of Burnley Health Care NHS trust. A week ago today, he met staff at the hospital and told them that 31 beds would be axed, a ward would be mothballed and 60 to 70 staff, mainly nurses, would go. He said:
The local Unison representative, Susan Holmes, said:
It may be the way forward for the trust, but it is not the way forward for the people of Rossendale, whom I am proud to represent in the House. Nor is it the way forward for the 60 to 70 staff who stand to lose their jobs, or for those patients who, according to nursing staff, have been sent packing because of insufficient beds.
The proposals also mean that elderly women will be forced to endure the indignity of mixed wards, to which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight) eloquently referred. She is right. Many patients, especially the elderly, do not want to be forced into mixed wards and I am deeply saddened that that will happen to my constituents to save money.
Anne Parkinson of the Royal College of Nursing said of those proposals:
Patients are being turned away through lack of beds, yet the trust is axing 31 beds. Hospital staff whom I met last weekend told me that someone turned up at the hospital last week claiming that he had bought 18 beds from the hospital and was there to collect them.
If the proposals are not the way forward for my constituents, hospital staff and patients, why should it be the way forward for the trust? Mr. Chew made it plain last week that the decision was to do with cash, not patient care, and claimed that it would save the trust £200,000 a year. I wonder why the trust seeks to save that sum of money. Just over a year ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike), who was present earlier in this debate, secured an Adjournment debate on the state of chaos in the Burnley Health Care NHS trust. He read out a headline from the Lancashire Evening Telegraph:
We learned from the Minister's winding-up speech in that debate that, because the chief executive had fallen out with the chairman and wanted rid of her, the pay-off was no less than £245,000, which is the sum that the trust seeks to save today.
A moving article appeared in my excellent local newspaper, the Rossendale Free Press, which many of my constituents read. It sums up the position by saying:
and their Member of Parliament--
Mr. Jerry Hayes (Harlow):
I begin by declaring an interest. I am an adviser to the Western Provident Association, which, as the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) should know, is a non-profit-making organisation.
Mr. Hayes:
I am glad to have the hon. Gentleman's nod of approval.
When I first saw the Leader of the Opposition sitting next to the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman), I thought, "There is decency in the man after all. He is there to protect the hon. Member for Peckham. God bless him, what a brave man he is." Then I realised that I had got it wrong because she was there to protect him, and to act as his human shield. They are the Siamese twins of British politics, but I suspect that, even now, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson) is working on a surgical separation. The hon. Member for Peckham should be very careful.
I was having a drink the other day with a member of the shadow Cabinet, who said, "We have a saying in the Labour party--beware of left-wing toffs." Looking at the Opposition motion today, one sees that he was right. It could have been cobbled together by guests at a Pinter soiree discussing their view of the health service while being served Nicaraguan coffee by Filipino maids.
The hon. Member for Fife, Central must, I am afraid, pick up the wreckage from the speech of the hon. Member for Peckham later tonight, and we expect some answers from him. The hon. Lady's speech was not so much a policy statement as a cry for help. The speech from the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell), however, was remarkably honest--although he did go off the rails towards the end. The hon. Gentleman admitted that we now have the lowest number of people waiting for treatment in the history of the health service. He also admitted that he had no evidence that there is a two-tier system, although he is investigating the matter. If the hon. Gentleman finds some evidence, I hope that he will report it to the House. I suspect, however, that he will find no such evidence.
I spent a little of this morning reading through all of the speeches that the hon. Member for Peckham has made on health. The hon. Member for Fife, Central saw me do it. It was not a happy task. One interesting thing that the hon. Lady did say was that in vitro fertilisation was a lottery and that, "It depends on where you live." Oh dear--that has a familiar ring.
One of the points that cropped up over and over again in the hon. Lady's speeches since 1987--I have listened to many of them in the House--was that the health service reforms that had been put into operation would have to be abolished. She has also said that GP fundholding was a wickedness that led to a two-tier system, and that, too, would have to go. NHS trust hospitals and the internal market would also have to go. It is all very different now, however.
"I hope that we can find jobs for everyone and that no staff will go".
"We are concerned about job losses. In spite of management assurances, there are a number of people on temporary contracts who are very worried about their position. Mr. Chew tried to assure us that this was the way forward".
"The beds we have been operating with have been full and we have been turning patients away recently. Goodness knows where they have gone. This seems a drastic step at a time when there is a national shortage of beds.
I am sure the trust will handle redeployment sensitively but they cannot promise there will not be any job losses. Staff are worried about losing their jobs. Some who have not got any transport are also worried about where they will be redeployed. Fewer beds will also force more and more people to travel further afield for treatment. There has been a gradual decline in in-patient facilities here during the past 10 years and there is a real feeling among staff that the hospital is being run down."
24 Jan 1996 : Column 418
"Scapegoat: 'Health chairman asked me to resign to save his own neck'.
The chairman and chief executive of the troubled Burnley Health Care Trust each called for the other's resignation today in an astonishing bust-up."
"Desperately sick and dying people are shunted all over the country in search of hospital beds and Burnley Health Care NHS Trust's reaction is to close 31 beds at Rossendale General Hospital. How can it possibly make sense?
They are not the right sort of beds, says Burnley Health Care Trust. There's no emergency intensive and coronary care back-up at Rossendale, which is to be turned into 'an important out-reach post for minor surgery', catering for short-stay and day cases.
You'll get your ingrowing toenails, your hernia or your piles fixed at Rossendale and be home again in a jiffy. But who wants to be home again in a jiffy, walking wounded and thrown on the mercy of that well-known euphemism, Care in the Community? Try telling Rossendale's old people, stripped of their home-helps by financial cuts, what a marvellous service that is.
A mixed-sex ward will replace the existing male and female general medical wards despite public inhibitions and sensibilities. When a woman is stripped of her dignity, in pain, and sitting behind a curtain on a bedpan, the last thing she wants is a bloke in the next bed. And vice versa.
Letters heaping praise on Rossendale General and its superb nurses and doctors appear regularly on the Free Press Viewpoint page.
The maternity unit was closed in the face of massive opposition. Ante-natal clinics were clawed back after public outcry. Trust chiefs are at pains to stress, yet again, the hospital is not in any danger of closing; . . . Yet they can hardly be surprised that Rossendale folk"--
"are unable to resist the doubts and now will be even more perplexed, agitated, defensive, protective.
Must we now stand by while more excellent services are amputated like limbs, until the trunk is no longer a hospital, but becomes an 'out-reach post'?"
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