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Hospital Care (Swindon)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
9.44 pm
Mr. Michael Wills (North Swindon): I am grateful to Madam Speaker for allowing me the opportunity to introduce this Adjournment debate. I am particularly grateful that I have been able to combine it with making my maiden speech. I understand that most Members of Parliament do not adopt this method of introducing themselves to the House, but the subject is one of deep and immediate concern to my constituents, and I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to raise it without delay.
My constituents, like so many others, have suffered from the operation of a two-tier system in the health service. They will have been delighted to hear my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's plans to replace that system with a fairer and better one. There is a particular crisis with hospital care in the Swindon area and an urgent need for Government action to solve it. It is because of the importance of the issue to the people of Swindon that, with permission, I should like to give up half the time allocated to me in this debate to my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown), whose constituents share my constituents' concern and who has worked so tirelessly on their behalf.
Two weeks ago the voters of North Swindon granted me the privilege of representing them in the House. The new constituency takes in under one parliamentary roof many different communities. It takes in most of the northern area of the town of Swindon itself; it encompasses the historic market towns of Highworth and Cricklade; and it embraces the Wiltshire villages of Castle Eaton, Marston Meysey, Stanton Fitzwarren, Latton, Hannington and Blunsdon.
In the previous Parliament, the area covered by the constituency was represented by three Members of Parliament, two of whom are no longer in the House. I should like to take this opportunity to thank them for all their work over the years on behalf of the people of North Swindon. Those people know well the extent of the debt that they owe to Simon Coombs, Richard Needham and the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram).
The Swindon area is known nationally as one of the economic successes of the past two decades, but there has been nothing inevitable about that. It was built on its great railway works; when they declined and were eventually shut down in the 1980s, Swindon could have become a ghost town, but it did not. It reinvented itself. The talents, adaptability and hard work of its people, supported by an active partnership between business and the local Labour authority, have made Swindon one of the fastest growing economies in the country.
Today, Swindon business represents a cross-section of excellence in our economy. My constituents work in state-of-the-art manufacturing companies such as Rover, Honda and GEC-Plessey. They work in companies at the cutting edge of technology such as Motorola and Intel; they work in prominent financial services firms such as Allied Dunbar and the Nationwide building society; they work in distribution services for high street names such as Woolworths and W. H. Smith; and they work in many other firms that lead their fields.
Those firms need a continuing supply of highly skilled and motivated people to build on their successes. They are the firms that will recognise the importance of this Government's commitment to upgrading skills and enabling everyone to continue to upgrade their skills throughout their working lives. My constituents recognise the opportunities that will be offered to them.
Swindon sets a vibrant and inspiring standard for what working people can achieve for themselves, when given the right support by the community. For all its successes, the Swindon area has been dominated by a problem over the past few months. It is that problem which is the subject of this debate. In other circumstances, I should like to say much more to the House about the remarkable constituency that I am privileged to represent, but I hope that the House will understand if I focus on the subject of the debate: the crisis in hospital care in the Swindon area.
Economic growth and population growth are often close companions, and Swindon is no exception. Its population is growing three times faster than the national average, and the numbers of the very young and the old are growing at a particularly fast rate. It is those groups which have special recourse to hospital services. Yet as need has grown in the Swindon area, provision has shrunk.
Last year, the RAF hospital at Wroughton, the much loved Princess Alexandra hospital, where one in 10 of the Swindon population were born, was closed as part of the Conservative Government's defence review. That was a bad decision, taken in haste and repented ever since by the armed services and by Swindon alike. On its own, that would have caused problems enough. Overnight, a valve that relieved the pressure on the national health service at times of peak demand was removed. The closure of that hospital added 6 per cent. to the work load of the NHS Princess Margaret hospital.
That is not all. Princess Margaret hospital itself desperately needs renewal. There is a £28 million maintenance backlog, which increases with every month that goes by. A full business case for the renewal of the hospital was submitted to the Treasury two years ago, but the Conservative Government's insistence that it should be tested under the private finance initiative has meant that still no decision has been reached. We are told that plans are well advanced and that the trust is close to signing a new deal for a new hospital under the private finance initiative; but what we are not told is when exactly that deal will be closed. No matter how often we ask, we are not told and neither have we been told the details of that imminent deal. Those things are precisely what the people of North Swindon need to be told.
Delay in providing new hospital facilities has left the area relying on old and increasingly inadequate ones. Since 1994, wards at Princess Margaret hospital have been closed three times because of infections--a problem that could have been avoided had appropriate isolation facilities been available. On one occasion, an operating theatre had to be closed because air conditioning backfired, spraying a sterile theatre with droplets of dirty water. Old and inflexible structures have helped to push up waiting lists for in-patients by up to 40 per cent. in the past two years. Patients have had to be bussed to hospitals as far away as Birmingham and Southampton. Delay increases anxiety among patients and their relatives and in the community at large. Delay demoralises staff; delay is one big problem.
Lack of adequate information about the proposed deal under the private finance initiative is another big problem, and we definitely need information in order to feel reassured about the deal in North Swindon. The feeling is spreading that the plans for the new hospital have been driven, not primarily by clinical need, but by the need to meet the commercial objectives of the private sector partners in the private finance initiative. It is feared that, to meet commercially driven targets, patient throughput will be speeded up by up to 10 per cent., even if that is not always clinically appropriate and leaves other health care providers to pick up the pieces.
There is now growing local concern among professionals and lay people alike that, even if they can be implemented quickly, current plans will not solve the present crisis, but will merely institutionalise it. It is feared that an integrated approach to health provision in the area has been precluded by the priority that has been given under the private finance initiative to commercial, rather than clinical, objectives. To avoid fragmentation of provision, any replacement of Princess Margaret hospital must clearly involve appropriate co-operation between the trust, the health authority, the GPs, the community health council representing the users of the health service and the local authority.
In January, Princess Margaret hospital had to cancel all non-life-threatening operations. Forty beds have been closed for much of this spring because of the difficulty in recruiting and keeping staff to work in the deteriorating physical environment at Princess Margaret hospital, which the hospital itself acknowledges. All the staff at the hospital have been working to the highest standard of their profession and beyond to cope with the mounting pressures on them. Everyone is grateful to them, but they cannot continue in that fashion indefinitely. They and everyone else in North Swindon need to see some glimmer of hope for the future.
Of course, the closure of Princess Alexandra RAF hospital, the delays in renewing Princess Margaret hospital and the continuing question mark over the plans for the new hospital are not the only reasons for Swindon's hospital problems. No one in Swindon expects a guarantee that there will never again be any problems with their hospital care, but the people of Swindon do expect some recognition of the seriousness of the problems that they face. They do expect some real and effective action to be taken to tackle the problems. That is precisely what they never got from the previous Government.
Swindon deserves better, so I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to reassure the people of North Swindon on three points: first, that if Princess Margaret hospital is renewed under a private-public partnership, the clinical needs of patients will be paramount; secondly, that the decision on any new hospital facilities will be taken in the context of co-operation between primary, secondary and community care providers in the area to ensure the best possible care for patients; and thirdly, that any obstacles to an immediate decision on the renewal of Princess Margaret hospital will be removed.
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