House of Commons Hansard Debates for 6 Dec 1996 (pt 18)

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2.28 pm

Mr. Hugh Dykes (Harrow, East): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. To follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North (Sir J. Gorst) is an honour and it gives me great pleasure to be able to do so--pleasure in the sense of being able to pay tribute to him for having taken the lead in this campaign and for having responded to the finest duties that a local Member of Parliament can carry out for his constituents. That is the extent of the pleasure--the rest of it and the Government's response throughout have been nothing but pain.

I shall probably be regarded as thick-skinned--one has to be in order to be a politician in these febrile and turbulent times--in respect both of national policies and of many local and constituency issues, but I agree with every word that my hon. Friend said in this important Adjournment debate. We have had a good number of such debates in this painful period. I pay tribute to his leadership; I have taken a lesser role. We have doggedly stuck to our objectives in this matter, with full justification.

I feel profound disillusionment, and bitterness and resentment, at the crass and incompetent reactions of my right hon. and hon. Friends the Health Ministers, whatever the reason for them--it remains a mystery. My bitterness, disillusionment and resentment at such prolonged incompetence, despite the force of our arguments, of the local campaign and of justified objective medical opinion in respect of the insistence that there should be a casualty department--

It being half-past Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Wells.]

Mr. Dykes: The resentment that I feel is reinforced by the latest letter that we have received--yesterday evening, I believe--from the Secretary of State. I shall not weary the House by going through it in detail. There is no need to do so, because, although it has two pages, it says nothing; I shall place it in the Library as a record of a wonderful "Yes, Minister" response. I remember the validity of some of those underlying arguments about the behaviour of civil servants and Ministers, despite the humour of the programme.

Sir John Gorst: May I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the fact that, in the last sentence of the letter, there is a little bit of hope? The Secretary of State writes:

"I trust that following your adjournment debate tomorrow we shall be able to make some progress on these issues."

Mr. Dykes: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That would be so, but for the preceding paragraphs, because they are the most wonderful officialese attempt to resist any of our reasonable requests. I quote from the third paragraph on the second page:

"Against that background"--

the long-running argument on the subject--

"I have sought to respond to the concerns expressed to me on behalf of local people by all the MPs of the area".

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We had several of our colleagues with us at the start of the campaign, but the pressures made them melt away, for one reason or another. I hope that they will rejoin us. The letter continues:

"as well as by other representative voices from the community. The demonstrator project which I have detailed represents a significant commitment of central resources to the Edgware area, and a serious attempt by the NHS to respond to the concerns which have been expressed."

That and other parts of the letter are outrageous, unacceptable and untrue and they do not meet the wishes of the local population and of their two parliamentary representatives, and, I believe, of all the local councillors and almost all the members of the community health council in my hon. Friend's constituency--but it is not my constituency, so I must be careful not to misquote.

I fully share my hon. Friend's indignation. In his letter to me of 20 November, he kindly asked to take the lead in this campaign, as he has done ably in the past. I respect that and I respect his need to be in the vanguard of the campaign, in response to legitimate local public opinion. The idea that we should be deaf to local opinion and contemptuously dismiss it on the national and local scene is an absurd notion of our collective and individual role in politics.

As my hon. Friend did in his letter to the Secretary of State of 25 November, I draw attention to the crucial reference in the notes that he took, thoroughly and with great skill. I testify to the absolute exactitude of those notes and thank my hon. Friend for taking them and for allowing me to have the original copies. He wrote in section 4 of the additional notes:

"Throughout our discussion,"

the hon. Member for Harrow, East

"and I"--

my hon. Friend--

"made it clear we were asking for something more than a 'minor accident treatment service', even if it was less than a full-scale 'accident and emergency Department'."

The Secretary of State

"accepted this, and we talked about 'acute needs', 'motorway accidents', 'heart attacks', 'severe allergies', and so on.

The phrase 'enhanced emergency unit' was used repeatedly, so I think he got the message as to what we were after. Indeed, he was emphatic that he would be able to agree to this. The only reservation he expressed was that a serious motorway accident would be most likely"--

logically, of course--

"to go straight to the nearest A & E unit in an ambulance, and we accepted that."

I earnestly repeat, although I will not spell out, what my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North has just said in his detailed speech. Indeed, his speech was a detailed submission in the high court of Parliament, because all that he said was evidential and it is on the record as what was agreed.

We have shown some good will, despite the resentment and disappointment since the summer and the feeling that the Government were going back, cynically or perhaps for some other reason which has still not been explained, into old territory and promising only a very limited facility, not that in the original undertaking. Those prolonged discussions between me, my hon. Friend, the Secretary of State and other Ministers in the Department ended in deadlock on Tuesday night. That was the end of the road

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as far as we were concerned, unless the Government were prepared to make a proper, thorough, comprehensive, written response to our reasonable requests.

There are pressures on the local community from other elements in politics--legitimately or not, as other people may judge. This is an opportunity for the Government and the Department of Health, because the Opposition have merely said that they will review the closure of the existing accident and emergency unit. They do not go significantly beyond that. The issue shows the value of the Government thinking again about the cynical departure from their pledge of 11 June.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North and I tabled almost identical parliamentary questions for priority written answer on 3 December. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State replied that the health authority had proposed that

"The casualty service at Edgware, originally planned as a nurse-led service open 13 hours a day, should instead open 24 hours a day and be staffed by doctors;"--[Official Report, 3 December 1994; Vol. 286, c. 29.]

That is not a casualty unit in the genuine sense of the word, only a minor accident treatment service unit. I believe that I am right in saying that a new MATS unit has recently been opened nearby at Wembley. The last thing we need is two MATS units and fully qualified doctors on duty 24 hours a day to treat people coming in for cuts and bruises--the walking wounded with mild wounds indeed. This makes me extremely angry and I expect a proper, honest and thorough response from my hon. Friend the Minister today.

I am sorry that the Secretary of State or perhaps even the Minister of State is not here to answer the debate; but I admit that this is a Friday Adjournment debate, so we accept the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam)--provided that he comes up with the goods and gives us a proper answer.

I have sent my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State a letter today. I hope that he will receive it today, but he may do so later because of the Friday delays in the internal delivery service between Departments and the House. The letter insists and asks with justification--those two verbs go together--that the Government respond to the request of my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North. It is not necessary to read it out, but I say two crucial things about it. The letter belongs to him, as it had a private and confidential notation. It is therefore his property. To allay any residual doubts about what was undertaken in the summer, why does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State not publish the letter to my hon. Friend and me of 11 June, which promised a casualty emergency services facility? I wait for my hon. Friend the Minister to respond on that specific point. I hope that he will do so today or as soon as possible.