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2.20 pm
Mr. Sproat: I agree with the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Pendry) that it is extremely important to have sports debates. I should like to have them on a day other than Friday so that we can command a wider audience. However, the quality of the debate has been high, and it has helped to continue the momentum of raising the profile of sport.
When opening the debate this morning, I said that I would try to pick up on the points made in it during my winding-up speech. I shall try to do so in the short time available, but I can assure the House that I will read Hansard and reply by letter to hon. Members who raised matters that I do not have time to deal with verbally.
We have had a varied debate. One of the varieties was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester(Mr. Luff)--the issue of television sports rights. Other hon. Members referred to the matter in the context of the premier league deal that has just been announced. The whole question of television sports rights, the listed events and people's ability to watch sport on television is extremely difficult.
On the one hand, many sports rely more and more on the money that comes from television sports rights. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester mentioned cricket; I believe that more than 40 per cent. of the income of English cricket now comes from television rights. On the other hand, we must remember the grass-roots of sport and those who cannot get to sports grounds and depend on television if they want to watch sport. If events are not broadcast on free-to-air television, but on a subscription or pay-to-view channel, many people will be prevented from watching their favourite sport. This is a genuine dilemma with which we are dealing in the Broadcasting Bill, and I expect that we will come back to the matter on Report.
In the meantime, I should like to pay particular tribute to the work of the Central Council of Physical Recreation and its major sports division for working out what would appear to be a working compromise. We will discuss it, but the House may not accept it--it is a voluntary agreement in any case. The idea that an event should be shown live on free-to-air television and the highlights broadcast on a subscription or pay-to-view channel, or the other way around, shows that the sports bodies understand the importance of ensuring that the bulk of our sport ought to be available on television. At the same time, we must not withdraw from sport the huge amount of money that television rights have generated.
As for the premier league, I was extremely pleased that Mr. Rick Parry said that he hopes that a substantial amount of the money will be ploughed back into youth sport. That is extremely important. It is also extremely important, however, to remember that the rights are the assets of the sports governing bodies, and Parliament should be wary about taking away from them those things that belong to them. We must try to find a way through so that the sports bodies can keep the money to plough into their sport, but at the same time ensure that the bulk of the population can continue to watch that sport on television.
The European championships, which start tomorrow, were naturally mentioned frequently. They are a wonderful opportunity for this country to show its sporting prowess, hospitality and tourist attractions. That
is why the Government decided in negotiations with the Association of Metropolitan Authorities and others to put many hundreds of thousands of pounds into the championships. Some £400,000 has been put into them, of which £100,000 came from Government grant, £150,000 from sportsmatch, which should be matched by others, and £150,000 from the Association of Business Sponsorship of the Arts. Money was also put in by the Football Trust and the Football Association. The Government have reached a reasonable compromise on something that is, after all, football's own occasion. The provision of additional money is a matter for those towns and cities that will benefit in many ways. They got the Government help for which they asked, although we know that they would like more.
The championships should be an occasion on which--let us hope--British football shows itself to better effect than it has done recently. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) made an extremely important point when he said that the press too often pick on just the bad news, whether about football or something else. I hope that some self-restraint, balance and a sense of perspective will be shown by the press about Euro 96 and many another matter. Our marvellous stadiums and the friendly welcome that I hope foreign tourists will receive should be shown to their best advantage.
One of the things that struck me during the debate was the number of hon. Members on both sides of the House who pointed out how well the Sports Council had done in distributing lottery funds. We all know that a number of the distributing bodies have come in for fairly ferocious criticism, but the Sports Council has managed to tread an extremely difficult and delicate line extremely well. I should like to pay particular tribute to Mr. Rodney Walker, its chairman, and Mr. Derek Casey, who have done a marvellous job.
Mr. Pendry:
And David Carpenter.
Mr. Sproat:
Yes, indeed. It is a difficult task, and the Sports Council is doing it extremely well with the experience gained in just one year.
It is also worth noting that the Sports Council has shown flexibility. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) asked about the matching funds for lottery money. I do not pretend that we have solved that problem, but the Sports Council has shown that it is prepared to learn from experience. It has accepted that schools are probably less able than many other bodies to raise matching funds. In inner-city areas, it has upped the lottery's funding contribution to 90 per cent., and for all projects involving schools the lottery will provide 80 per cent. of the funding.
When our policy document, "Raising the Game", said that we wanted to improve links between schools and local clubs, the Sports Council immediately responded and said that it would find an extra £2 million--a challenge fund--so that schools and local clubs that got together to develop a project could go to the council to bid for the money. I pay a great tribute to the work of the Sports Council in that respect.
I began the debate by saying that I wanted to concentrate, first, on what the Government could do particularly about sport. I believe that sport in schools has declined far too much. I believe that sport is an absolutely
central part of education because of all the things that it can teach young people, girls and boys, which they cannot learn either at all or so well from other aspects of school life.
I seek to secure the agreement of the House that the one most important thing that the Government can do about sport is to ensure that every child in the country has access to good sports facilities. As I have said, we hope that the lottery will make that possible. Our children should have a proper chance in schools. There should be a pathway from schools to local sports clubs, to local centres of excellence and on to a British academy of sport, so that would-be champions or international players have their chance and no boy or girl is denied the great benefits that sport can bring, however good or otherwise they are, for their health, enjoyment--
It being half-past Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
Ordered,
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Wells.]
Mr. David Chidgey (Eastleigh):
I am grateful to have had the opportunity to initiate the debate. For many months there has been growing evidence that in Hampshire, my home county, the concept of the national health service being free at the point of use is fast becoming a myth.
More and more people in Hampshire are finding that when they need health care they are faced with a stark choice: they can turn to the NHS and become hostages to fortune with extended waiting times, or they can resort to private health care. An added twist to the wheel of fortune, or misfortune, is introduced when account is taken of where someone happens to live in the county and whether he or she is registered with a fundholding general practitioner. As a result, the NHS has become a two-tier health system in Hampshire, with patients treated not on the basis of need but on whether funding happens to be available to meet their needs.
I intend to demonstrate that as a result of the failure of the Government's health policies and a failure to deliver those flawed policies, people in Hampshire are being denied access to basic health care, whether it is heart surgery or dentistry, care for those with mental disorder or care for those who need the services of a chiropodist. Care is being either postponed or withdrawn.
When the Minister replies, I hope that he will not merely resort to boasting about the increase in NHS funding, welcome though that increase may be. He knows well that health care needs are increasing and that in the United Kingdom we provide less for health care as a percentage of our gross domestic product than many other developed nations.
I hope that the Minister will take on board the particular issues that are having an effect on health care in Hampshire, which I had the opportunity to discuss briefly with him some days ago.
My constituency is served currently by the North and Mid-Hampshire and the Southampton and South West Hampshire health authorities. In 1997, boundaries will change and Eastleigh will be entirely within the Southampton area. At present, however, Eastleigh is suffering from funding crises within both authorities. I shall explain. In Southampton, there has been a shortfall of £11 million in funding for hospital services. That is the difference between the cost of maintaining services at 1995-96 levels and what the health authorities and GPs can afford to purchase for the coming year.
Through savage savings, including sacking about 400 members of staff, much of the shortfall has been met, but the impact on patients is severe. Instead of waiting nine months for treatment, cardiac patients will have to wait a year. Those involved in non-urgent cases will have to wait 14 months. That is the stark reality behind the Minister's statement in reply to an earlier debate on Southampton hospital services, when he said that
The director of the unit told me that his major worry was whether it could attract enough purchasers to maintain the high level of expertise that it had created. Cuts in the hospital trust's funding can only add to that concern. AsMr. David Moss, the chief executive, has said:
I have not always supported the authority, especially over its long-term care policy, but I support its claim that its problems stem from the fact that it has had to fill the gap left by the closure of Cambridge military hospital in Aldershot, with little, if any, extra funding. As a result, it is facing underfunding of £7 million a year, every year. The immediate effect has been savage cuts across a wide range of health care services, not just in Eastleigh, but throughout Hampshire.
Hundreds of people and practitioners have written to me, to other Members of Parliament in the region, to the community health council, to the health authorities and to Ministers. The community is alarmed, disgusted and, in many cases, desperate as the NHS crumbles before its eyes. The most vulnerable people, for whom health care can make the difference between a tolerable and a miserable quality of life, are bearing the brunt of the cuts.
Time does not permit me to spell out the litany of service cuts, but let me give the Minister some graphic examples. Community dental health services have been reduced by 25 per cent., which means that, in Andover, dental sessions will be reduced from 16 to 10 a week. Dental surgeons running Andover's dental health centre have written to me. They say:
Staff at the orthodontic department of Winchester's hospital have also written to express their great concerns to me. Without going into great detail, the letter states that 99 per cent. of their patients are children aged eight to 17, that, because of their limited budget, they can treat only those with the most serious malocclusions, and that, if patients are not treated, later in life they will face prolonged surgical procedures and, in some cases, severe emotional problems, which would require far more costly treatments.
Such appliances are made and used only in specialist units under the supervision of a consultant orthodontist and his highly trained and dedicated team. The general dental practitioner would not be able to undertake that type of treatment due to lack of qualification, experience and time. The £160,000 to run that department is a small price to pay to enable around 1,000 patients each year to receive orthodontic treatment. Those are just two examples from the many letters that I have received from practitioners and patients.
Given that Eastleigh is faced with the loss of one quarter of its specialist dental services, the local health care trust can afford to recruit only a salaried dentist as a safety net for patients who are unable to find an NHS general dental practitioner. That is no substitute for specialist orthodontics and it forces trusts to ignore the plight of many thousands of my constituents without access to an NHS dentist. Some extra dentists have been provided, but the number is still woefully inadequate to meet the needs of people who cannot readily find an NHS dentist.
Another example is the 20 per cent. reduction in the family planning service, which means that the well woman and psychosexual clinics in Eastleigh will be discontinued. Dozens of women of all ages and clinical practitioners have written to me expressing their shock and distress. Dr. Angela Stewart, senior clinical medical officer, states:
A common theme runs through the stream of letters and telephone calls that I have received from constituents, patients and medical practitioners. There is deep dismay and anger because the enforced cuts in health care are decimating services that prevent health problems from escalating. Savage cuts to solve current financial problems will lead to serious ill health for many more people over time--storing up a legacy of a growing need for extensive and costly health care in the future. Even given the Government's discredited health care policy, there is no excuse for ignoring the lack of equity.
The Department's response to pleas for help has been at best crass and at worst insulting. The response to Southampton's £11 million shortfall was an announcement by the Secretary of State for Health that five more intensive care beds were to be provided for Hampshire children, which was a disgraceful distortion of the truth. Those five so-called new beds already exist. Southampton general hospital had, on its own initiative, decided to reorganise the beds into a dedicated children's unit. While Ministers scramble to take the credit, no extra money or facilities will be provided. Last year, Southampton had to refuse almost one in every three patients needing intensive care, cancelling major surgery for some patients at the last minute.
In response to the savage cuts in services in the Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare trust, the junior Health Minister--the hon. Member for Winchester(Mr. Malone)--is quoted as welcoming the fact that the programme included no elimination of patient services. However, well woman clinics and some chiropody services have been eliminated. As I said earlier, a whole range of patient services have been savagely cut.
I need make no apology for mentioning the junior Minister in his absence. I have lived in his constituency for more than 25 years and I am one of his constituents. I declare an interest in the Winchester hospital--two of my children were born there. One was critically ill, but was nursed with great skill and care through those early weeks and is now enjoying remarkably robust health and appetite for life.
Only last year, late on the night of Good Friday, my wife was admitted to Winchester hospital, critically ill. Again, as on a number of occasions over the years, the care and the skill of the staff at Winchester saw us through a health crisis to full recovery. I, like so many others in the area, have the highest regard for the dedication of the staff at Winchester hospital. I take strong exception to the cavalier and dismissive response to the cuts in its patient services.
When I opened the debate, I referred to what I believe to be the crux of the funding crisis--the impact of the closure of the Cambridge military hospital on the North and Mid-Hampshire health authority. Having brought the matter to the Minister's attention before the debate, I hope that he can respond positively. The Cambridge, in common with other military hospitals, provided a wide range of services to otherwise national health service patients. The area it served fell within both the South Thames health region and the South and South West health region, so it shared a burden with two regional health authorities--which, at the time, acted with a great deal more autonomy from the Department of Health than regional health authorities do today.
The unexpected speed of the closure of the Cambridge allowed the regional authorities little time to assess their new health care responsibilities. As a result, the South Thames region made provision for its additional responsibilities, but the South and South West region did not. With hindsight, that was clearly the wrong decision and it has left the North and Mid-Hampshire health authority with a continuing funding crisis. The powers exercised by the regional health authorities have now been taken over by the Department of Health. Therefore, it falls to the Minister and his Department to correct past mistakes.
The North and Mid-Hampshire health authority will have to find an additional £7 million a year to provide NHS treatment for patients previously cared for by the Cambridge. The authority has hardly any reserves to help cover this year's costs. It has brokered a £5 million loan from the Department to see it through this year. Much has been made in the press of the Minister's statement about a one-off £5 million grant recently allocated to the authority from the NHS emergency fund. In reality, it is merely the conversion of a loan into a one-off grant. The additional £5 million referred to by the Minister in his letter to the community health council in March is not new money at all; the only new money is the interest payments that will be saved which otherwise would be paid on the loan. To resolve that long-term funding crisis, it is essential that the one-off grant is translated into a£5 million uplift in the annual budget, year on year.
That one-off grant is no more than a sticking plaster over a gaping wound. As the community health council said in a response to the Minister only last week:
That the Speaker shall--
7 Jun 1996 : Column 898
(1) at the sitting on Thursday 13th June, notwithstanding Standing Order No. 14B (Proceedings under an Act or on European Community documents), put the Question on the Motion in the name of Secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew relating to the draft Appropriation (No. 2) (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 not later than three hours after the commencement of proceedings thereon or at Ten o'clock, whichever is the earlier; and
(2) at the sitting on Wednesday 19th June--
(i) put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of the Prime Minister relating to sentencing policy not later than Seven o'clock or three hours after their commencement, whichever is the later; and
(ii) notwithstanding Standing Order No. 14B (Proceedings under an Act or on European Community documents), put the Question on the Motion in the name of Secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew relating to the draft Northern Ireland Act 1974 (Interim Period Extension) Order 1996 not later than Ten o'clock.--[Mr. Wells.]
2.30 pm
"there may be some slippage in waiting times as the financial problems are resolved."--[Official Report, 7 May 1996; Vol. 277, c. 147.]
7 Jun 1996 : Column 899
There has certainly been some slippage. It is an appalling situation for a hospital trust that had more than matched the Government's patients charter by increasing efficiency and reducing waiting times. As Jane Ransome, the obstetrics and gynaecology clinical services manager, said:
Recently, I took the opportunity to visit Southampton general hospital's cardiac unit and I was shown its ground-breaking work in heart surgery. The innovative techniques developed by the director and his team are breathtaking. They use microtechnology to replace open-heart surgery. Patients who would have stayed for more than a month are now released from hospital in only a few days. It is a remarkable achievement, but it seems that that team and all that it has done is to be a victim of its success.
"Everyone from the consultants to the cleaners have worked so hard to get waiting times down to six months. Now to have to let them go out again because of shortage of money is just soul destroying."
"We are going to have to take out beds and theatre lists and it is a painful process for everyone".
Under the Government's policies, patients' suffering will be selective. As The Southern Daily Echo, the paper in my constituency, reported only last month:
"local fundholding GPs who get a budget to buy hospital treatment for their patients are not affected by the latest cash squeeze on services.
As I have mentioned, Eastleigh is split between two health authorities. My constituents in the south are suffering increased waiting times in Southampton, while for those in the north, health care services are being cut across the board as the North and Mid-Hampshire health authority battles to meet its budget.
They will continue to have fast-track access to services in what has become a two-tier health care system for patients in Southampton."
"We are a practice with eight dentists providing NHS dental care for almost 20,000 people in Andover and the surrounding area. It is becoming increasingly difficult to cope with the huge influx of patients who wish to continue to be treated under the National Health Service. Patients of the practice are now having to wait four months for an appointment for routine treatment.
That dental health centre is facing 25 per cent. cuts. In Eastleigh, we are to lose four of our 18 weekly dental sessions. In Winchester, sessions will be cut from 22 to 16 per week.
The Community Dental Service provide a necessary and very valuable service in the area, particularly for children, the elderly and the handicapped who are most in need of treatment.
Any cut in the CDS budget will result in fewer patients being treated and increased pressure on what are already inadequate levels of service."
"These cuts are directly against the Government's guidelines in 'The Health of the Nation' and in particular the quest for a reduction in teenage pregnancies. They also deny their right to choose where they go for such services."
Mrs. Marlene Wood, a family planning nurse for more than 30 years, lives in Hedge End and works at a clinic in Winchester county hospital. She wrote:
"Of particular concern is that one of 'The Health of the Nation' targets is specifically aimed at reducing teenage pregnancies. Youth advisory clinics are targeting this group of people. Where will they go when the clinics close?"
Those cuts are only part of the dismal picture for Hampshire residents. Eastleigh's GP consortium has for years carried the burden of a relatively low general
medical services allocation. The amount that it receives per patient from the North and Mid-Hampshire health authority is £375, compared with an average of £425 for the whole area. When patients transfer to the Southampton and South West Hampshire health authority, they are underfunded compared with the Southampton average of £413. The Eastleigh GP consortium is a dedicated team that spares no effort in serving my constituents, but it is caught in a vice of underfunding from the two health authorities that will tighten each year that cuts continue. Dr. Tim Frank, the consortium's co-ordinator, told me:
"Eastleigh is underfunded because of the legacy of the burden of underfunding from North and Mid Hants being left with Southampton and South-West health commission."
Tensions are increasing as decisions to cut particular services are made at the expense of others.
"The severity of the situation means there are no local solutions available. We are asking most urgently that you now address this unacceptable situation. We cannot emphasise enough how some of the most vulnerable members of the community are going to be adversely affected."
Can the Minister, in all conscience, ignore the depth of feeling--almost desperation--in that letter? Can he ignore the dismay expressed by medical practitioners throughout Hampshire's health care service? Can he ignore the distress felt by so many people in Eastleigh and across Hampshire, who have contacted me and other local Members of Parliament? In the interests of fairness and justice, surely he cannot.
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