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6.32 pm
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham): I am delighted to support the Bill. It is a technical but none the less important measure. It is essential that contractors and suppliers to NHS trusts are secure in their credit arrangements for the work that they do for the national health service. It is absolutely important for the suppliers and for the private finance initiative.
The PFI represents building for the future of our NHS, and it is particularly relevant to the hospitals in north-west Kent. At present, hospital provision in north-west Kent is spread across three sites--the Joyce Green hospital, north of Dartford, an old fever hospital; the West Hill hospital in Dartford, an old poor law house; and the Gravesend and North Kent hospital in my constituency, a subscription hospital from the previous century.
Our in-patient hospital services are spread across those three sites and they are administered by the Dartford and Gravesham NHS trust. They are far from ideal. In fact, those hospitals have possibly the worst fabric of any in the former south-east Thames region. Nevertheless, they work for us very well because of the dedication of our doctors and nurses and everyone else who works there. But we desperately need our new district general hospital.
For years now, as in other cases mentioned in the debate, we have seen plans come and go and be put off. The reason for that is simple. If one goes to the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day and asks for a cheque for £100 million, either one gets a dusty answer and it is back to the drawing board, or one is asked, "Couldn't it be done in phases on one of the existing three sites?" A first phase would be allowed immediately; then, after some scratching of heads and playing with the capital programme, there might be a second phase a few years down the road; later still, there might be a third phase.
The new district general hospital for north-west Kent has been designed, redesigned and redesigned again. Round and round we have gone. That is not to say that the Government have not been building new hospitals.I wanted to make this point when I tried to intervene on the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman), but her courage failed her and she did not feel able to give way as she had promised to do on a number of occasions. The Government have had a massive hospital capital programme. Since they came to office in 1979, there have been 800 major new hospital projects, each costing more than £1 million. I could have pointed out to the hon. Lady that that rate of investment is more than four times greater than that under the previous Labour Government. Nevertheless, our hospital in north-west Kent has not yet been built and nor have the others to which she referred. That is the crux of the issue.
We could wait in a long queue for the capital programme to come forward from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Of course, it is a better programme than Labour ever had, but it is not moving fast enough for us in north-west Kent or in those other places that have been mentioned. That is why the PFI is so valuable and why I and my constituents resent the ridiculous political posturing of the hon. Member for Peckham. It is not good enough. We want our hospital. The hon. Lady opposes the PFI yet makes no commitment on behalf of the Labour Government that she hopes might be elected. That leaves my constituents in the limbo with which they are all too familiar, but with the difference that they would be without hope.
The PFI has given my constituents hope. They have hope because the Government, through the NHS trust, have invited bids under the PFI to build that new general hospital in north-west Kent. Four major consortia have come forward keen to succeed in their bid to build and finance the hospital and, in the long term, to run its housekeeping--the servicing, the cleaning, the provision of groundsmen, the parking arrangements, the catering and a number of ancillary services. Under the PFI, they would provide the hospital, by means of a long lease for which they would be paid a substantial fee, and all the services. When I bear in mind the fact that the budget of our NHS trust is £56 million a year, there is obviously a certain amount of scope to do precisely that.
That is not privatisation. It is private provision under a contract, but the important point which is of concern to my constituents is that the NHS will put in the doctors, consultants, nurses, medical support, administration and booking arrangements so that we obtain the best possible health care from the facilities provided.
Thanks to the PFI, four consortia are bidding to build the brand new general hospital in north-west Kent. There are big names among them. Each consortium includes a major construction company--obviously so, as they are keen to secure the contract to build a major project--a catering and hotel servicing company, a financial company and a project administration company. They are likely to create an on-going, functioning hospital, with all the efficiency that the private sector can provide when its money is on the line.
As I told the House, we were always told to have a phase here and a phase there built on current locations, which would mean Joyce Green hospital near Dartford, a site immensely unpopular in Gravesend and not much more popular in Dartford. The old NHS financing system--still supported by the Labour party--would have led to a new hospital at Joyce Green. When we asked the four private sector bidders, through the bidding process, where they would build the new hospital for north-west Kent--surprise, surprise--the message from came back loud and clear: Joyce Green is unsuitable for a new hospital. That is most fascinating for my constituents.
The bidders would prefer the Darenth Park site between Dartford and Gravesend because that is the site preferred by my constituents and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Dartford (Mr. Dunn) and for Sevenoaks(Mr. Wolfson). That is what happens when the private sector is used, rather than the old-fashioned, bureaucratic system that we had in the past and in which Labour has a great belief.
Where are we now? The four bids are being considered carefully and in detail. It is all very well for the hon. Member for Peckham to make great fun about assessment, but my constituents want arrangements for the hospital to be thorough so that it will deliver our hospital services over many decades. We are not playing games when it comes to the health care of people in north-west Kent.I hope that that assessment is thorough and quick. All the signs are that that is precisely what is happening. We shall soon have a shortlist of two. There will then be public consultation of my constituents, who will be the patients in those hospitals. The contractual negotiations will then take place with a view to contracts being signed this autumn. Under the new PFI system, my constituents have the best chance of progress that they have had under any Government.
When the contracts are completed and the project has been constructed and is operating, Joyce Green and West Hill hospitals in Dartford will pass into history and the Gravesend and North Kent hospital facility will become free and available. For many years, my constituents have had a dream: to have their own community hospital providing basic health care in Gravesend. Gravesend and North Kent hospital will have the opportunity to pass to the Thameslink Healthcare Services NHS trust. It will serve a conurbation of 100,000 souls in Gravesham and Southfleet, and in Longfield and New Barn in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford. It will provide valuable services in our town: minor injuries, out-patients, acute active rehabilitation, elderly care, general practitioner beds, primary health, physiotherapy, dental and diagnostic services, all in a community hospital that my constituents dearly wish to have. Again, that will be financed through a private finance initiative currently costed to the tune of£8.5 million.
If the NHS were structured and financed under the old Labour system, to which the hon. Member for Peckham seems to wish to return, my constituents would have remained in a queue for many years. It is now clear that the Conservative Government, with their new and imaginative PFI system, are taking our hospital project forward. We are already seeing the benefits of the NHS reforms. Fundholding general practices in my constituency have been successful beyond our wildest dreams.
Madam Deputy Speaker:
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman. I am always happy to have passing references to local matters, but he seems to be moving a long way from the subject of the Bill. The Bill concerns winding things up rather than starting them off, which appears to be the main subject of his speech.
Mr. Arnold:
The concern is that, if either of the two trusts to which I have referred--which will develop our general hospital or our community hospital--faced the risk of being wound up and of leaving creditors with no one to pursue, the contracts for the PFI and for supply of hospitals could be in doubt. That is why the Bill is so relevant. I am outlining my constituents' hopes, which could not be fulfilled under the old structure of financing the NHS, to which the Labour party remains wedded. The fulfilment of those hopes must be guaranteed by the passage of the Bill, which would ensure that proper financial security exists for PFI contractors and for suppliers. That is vital.
That is the reason why I was distressed to hear the Opposition spokeswoman time and again attacking the PFI. Perhaps somewhat naively, my constituents and I took to heart the Leader of the Opposition's comment:
I thought that this matter might have gone out of the party political arena, but the performance of the Labour spokeswoman for health threw all those hopes out of the window by seeming to bring sterile party political battles into it. We heard quoted her comment to the Birmingham Health conference on 13 January this year:
"The PFI is right in principle."--[Official Report, 28 November 1995; Vol. 267, c. 1077.]
"I don't call it a Private Finance Initiative, I call it a privatisation initiative."
12 Mar 1996 : Column 838
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