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Hospitals (Mid-Essex)
1.29 pm
Mr. Simon Burns (West Chelmsford): I rise both in sorrow and in anger to raise on behalf of my constituents the important issue of hospital waiting lists and ward closures at Broomfield hospital in the Mid Essex hospital trust area.
The Labour candidate in the general election campaign in West Chelmsford was a national health service consultant who spent a great deal of time criticising the previous Government's record on health care in West Chelmsford and elsewhere. I vividly recall a leaflet that was distributed, saying that he was proud to support new Labour's early pledges, one of which was to cut NHS waiting lists in West Chelmsford and the rest of the country.
I am devoting this debate specifically to my constituency and its problems. Some of my constituents were convinced by the rhetoric that new Labour would bring a new Jerusalem in health care and that if they turned up at Broomfield hospital for an operation, there would be consultants and doctors waiting at the doors, fighting to be first to operate on them. Sadly, that has not happened.
Over the past two years, the number of my constituents on in-patient waiting lists for 12 months or more has risen from 104 to 1,093. Too many of my constituents write to me to complain bitterly about operations being cancelled--in far too many cases not once but twice--because Broomfield hospital cannot provide the treatment as originally arranged.
There is a problem nationally that will come back to haunt Mid Essex with a vengeance in the current financial year, concerning what has happened to the 13-weeks-plus out-patient waiting list of people who need to see a consultant before even getting on to a hospital waiting list. In March 1997, there were 555 such people in mid-Essex; now the figure is 2,422, and I suspect that it is still rising.
The total waiting list figure has risen from 8,391 in March 1997 to 9,961 this April: a rise of almost 1,600 people. I asked the Minister then responsible, who is now Chief Secretary to the Treasury, what was the agreed waiting list target reduction for Mid Essex for 31 March 1999. His junior colleague the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton) replied:
I accept that the total waiting list figure, having ballooned from 8,391 two years ago to more than 11,500, has come down to 9,961; but that is still unacceptably high. I even questioned the Prime Minister on the problem. I accept that the right hon. Gentleman is not expected to know the intimate details of every health trust in the country, but my constituents would have found it more helpful if he had said that he would look into the problem and get back to me.
Instead, the Prime Minister, as has become familiar under new Labour, came back with the soundbite on the wider scale, telling us what was happening nationally. Interestingly, he also said:
I tabled a question to the Secretary of State for Health about those
More perplexing was the question about more doctors and nurses. The Minister gave me a figure for 1997, but he told me that the data for following years were not available because they had not been published and that data for 1999 had not yet even been collected. Again, I am puzzled about how the Prime Minister could tell me that there were more doctors and nurses; again, I look forward to his reply.
Part of the problem--I do not blame the Government--is the way in which Mid Essex and North Essex were funded under the old resource allocation working party system, with a disproportionate amount going to the east end of London at the expense of mid-Essex. That was unravelled in the early 1990s when my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley) changed the funding system, and both the previous Government and the current Government in their first year recognised the problem by giving North Essex and, in particular, Mid Essex larger increases in funding.
The trouble is that the area never caught up with what it would have received if we had never had RAWP. Unfortunately, the previous Minister of State fine-tuned the funding formula for this and the previous financial year in a way that cost Mid Essex money. I know that the Minister wants to alleviate my constituents' problems. North Essex and Mid Essex urgently need more money to deal with what is clearly a problem of significant proportions that is causing undue suffering and distorting the service. I urge her to reconsider the changes in the funding formula and find ways of providing extra resources to an area that has historically had problems with financing because of its proximity to London.
Those problems are bad enough, but, just over a week ago, it emerged that the health trust is £2.4 million, and the authority just over £10 million, in deficit. One way in which they are trying to overcome that problem is by closing three wards at Broomfield hospital, saving £1.75 million; the rest is to be saved by improving management and bureaucracy. They are seeking to make those savings partly by removing about 80 bed blockers from Broomfield hospital. I fully endorse such action, as
it is ludicrous for people to remain in hospital when there is no clinical or medical reason for them to do so. Not only is keeping people in hospital expensive but their quality of life deteriorates.
I had assumed, however, that those people would either be going home, with a care package, or into residential care. I was therefore surprised to hear that those options have not been chosen, but that most of those people will be going to St. Peter's hospital and to St. Michael's hospital--thereby incurring costs to the health authority and the health trust, so that the savings may not be as great as anticipated. Moreover, as social services do not have enough money to deal with the problem, I fear that closing the wards will prove to be a one-off and short-term solution, and that, perhaps in 12 months' time, we shall be confronted with another problem of bed blocking, when we shall not again have the option of closing wards to overcome a short-term financial deficit.
Similarly, when there are so many problems with people waiting for treatment, it is crazy that three wards--84 beds--should be taken out of the hospital system and left empty and redundant so that they cannot be used to help overcome the problems facing my constituents and those of other hon. Members in the area.
I therefore urge the Minister--who is a perfectly reasonable person--to recognise that there is a specific problem in mid-Essex. I ask her to recognise, too, that my constituents do not deserve the delays, heartache and problems that they are suffering as a result of having to wait ever longer for hospital and out-patient treatment, or the misery and shock of operations cancelled at the last minute--sometimes after they have already gone to hospital psychologically prepared for their operation.
Mr. John Whittingdale (Maldon and East Chelmsford):
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) for allowing me to contribute very briefly to the debate. My constituency of Maldon and East Chelmsford is covered by the Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS trust, and, therefore, my constituents are experiencing the same problems and difficulties as those suffered by my hon. Friend's constituents.
I also congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, and pay tribute to him for the assiduous way in which he has pursued the matter in recent months. He and I both know, from our postbags and surgeries, the distress being caused to an increasing number of our constituents because of the lengthening time they have to wait for operations. His efforts, however, have forced the Government and the hospital trust to publish the real figures, showing the huge increase in the number of people in mid-Essex who have to wait for an operation.
As my hon. Friend said, to be fair, there has long been a problem of underfunding and long waiting times in the North Essex health authority area. Nevertheless,
the problem was being dealt with by the previous Government, who, in successive years, awarded North Essex an above average real-terms increase. Consequently, waiting lists fell to historically low levels. However, the progress has been reversed, and the figures quoted by my hon. Friend graphically demonstrated the huge deterioration in the situation in the past two years.
Both my hon. Friend and I have many cases of individual constituents who had been given operation dates, which were months in the future, but who--at the last minute, when the date had finally arrived, and sometimes after they had gone to the hospital--discovered that the operation had been cancelled. Subsequently, they were told that they would have to wait still more months before the operation could be rescheduled.
The Government were elected on a pledge that waiting lists would fall, but the fact is that, in mid-Essex, they have got steadily worse.
In December 1998, one of my constituents, who lives in Great Baddow, wrote to me, saying that her husband was house-bound and facing a 12-month wait for a quadruple bypass operation. She wrote:
"The agreed waiting list target reduction for the Mid Essex Hospitals National Health Service Trust is to a list size of 9,738 at the end of March 1999."--[Official Report, 2 November 1998; Vol. 318, c. 416.]
Unfortunately, the task force was not even able to ensure that that target was met. In March 1999, just over 200 people above the target were on the waiting list.
"we are putting in . . . more nurses, more doctors and more capital spending--everywhere, including mid-Essex".--[Official Report, 9 June 1999; Vol. 332, c. 648.]
That sounded optimistic. I thought that perhaps the Prime Minister knew something that I did not know that was going to help my constituents.
"more nurses, more doctors and more capital spending"
in Mid Essex. His junior colleague the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), replied. I hope that I am not harming his career prospects. He said that capital spending in Mid Essex was £12 million in 1997 and £7.3 million in the current year. To me, that is a £4.7 million cut; but the Prime Minister considers it an increase. I look forward to his explanation when he replies to the letter that I have sent him.
"I know we don't count for much in the system of things but we are as important to our families as you are to yours . . . Please keep the promises that are made. I don't want my husband to die waiting."
For that one constituent, I could name another 100 who have written to me to describe similar cases.
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