House of Commons
Thursday 20 April 2000
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Contingencies Fund Accounts 1998-99
- Accounts of the Contingencies Fund 1998-99, showing:--
(1) The receipts and payments in connection with the Fund in the year ended the 31st day of March 1999.
(2) The distribution of the capital of the Fund at the commencement and close of the year; with the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General thereon.--[Mr. Touhig.]
Adjournment (Easter)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Touhig.]
9.34 am
Ms Jenny Jones (Wolverhampton, South-West): European framework directive 89/391/EEC may not be the stuff of headlines, but, since it was incorporated in our health and safety regulations, it has become apparent that its implementation could threaten the livelihoods of external health and safety consultants. It appears that firms are now being encouraged to use only in-house employees in that role, rather than employ external consultants.
I was alerted to the problem last June by constituents of mine who have run a very successful health and safety consultancy in my area for more than 35 years. They employ 23 people, are very good at what they do and are highly regarded.
For the past 10 months, we have corresponded with Ministers and with the Health and Safety Executive. My constituents have also attended consultation meetings and have met the chief executive of the HSE. However, although many issues have been resolved, it is obvious that the question of to whom firms should turn for advice still has not been satisfactorily resolved.
I understand that the present view in the corridors of power is that what, for want of a better term, I shall call the consultancy culture that developed in the 1980s and 1990s is to be overturned.
Mr. David Drew (Stroud): Good.
Ms Jones: My hon. Friend says that that is good, but I suggest that he listens to what I have to say.
There is a long tradition of self-employment and of small firms in my part of the country, which stretches back to the 19th century. There are very good consultants in my area, who clearly predate what happened in the 1980s and 1990s and who are good at what they do. If we are not careful, they will be swept away, and that will not benefit anyone.
We must stop swinging from one extreme to another. Some consultants who set up in the 1980s may not have been as experienced as they should have been. They charged large fees and did not do a particularly good job, but most people who employ consultants now know what to look for and can tell the cowboys from the true experts.
Another problem is that small firms needing health and safety advice often find that it is not viable to employ their own staff. They prefer to go to another business and buy in the expertise that they need. In some circumstances, therefore, the EEC directive is not entirely realistic.
The Ministers whom we have approached have been very understanding, and, in discussions, the HSE has been very helpful to my constituents. It will now produce leaflets and literature informing firms about the health and safety advice that they must get and where to find it. However, the trade press still seems keen to push the line that firms should no longer use external consultants. The February edition of the magazine Safety Management clearly stated in its first paragraph:
- Long-awaited changes to the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations came into force . . . making it clear that employers should use competent employees for advice on health and safety matters instead of calling in external specialists.
The many small firms similar to the one run by my constituents employ a lot of people, and many redundancies could follow if they are driven out of business and go to the wall. I know that that is not the intention of the Government, who have made it perfectly clear that they are business friendly and want to help small businesses. I am sure that they would say that I am reporting an unfortunate interpretation of the guidelines.
However, I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office, who will reply to the debate, will request that his ministerial colleagues keep a very close eye on the implementation of the directive. It will not do my constituents any good if their firm folds, and the future would be very bleak for other constituents of mine who might lose their jobs as a result.
The guidelines are being implemented. I hope that the Government will monitor very carefully to whom firms go for health and safety advice. It would benefit no one if excellent consultancies were driven to the wall.
9.39 am
Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport): My constituents would not forgive me if I allowed the House to rise for the Easter recess without raising yet again the issue of the Royal hospital, Haslar. It is overwhelmingly the most important issue in my constituency and in south Hampshire and one of the most important issues facing the Ministry of Defence, the Army, the Navy and the Air Force.
The background to the case is well known. In 1994, the then Government decided in "Defence Costs Study 15" that there should be one service hospital--one centre of defence medical excellence--at the Royal hospital, Haslar in Gosport. That decision was implemented over the next five years or so and the job of co-ordinating the work of the Army, Navy and Air Force was proceeding well. Then, on 10 December 1998, the Government announced to everyone's disbelief the closure of the only tri-service hospital as, would you believe it, a measure to promote
better services within the defence medical services. It was proposed to close the only hospital that was thought to be a way ahead and to open a new centre of medical excellence somewhere else, as yet unknown.A year or so later, it has been announced that that centre of medical excellence will be in Birmingham. I have not yet come across a single person serving in the Army, Navy or Air Force who is enthused about that idea. Birmingham has no particular service connection, unlike many of the other places that might have been chosen.
The reaction to the announcement was dramatic. I announced that we would hold a rally and march, and we thought that we might have 1,000 or 2,000 people, possibly 5,000. I was surprised when I heard that the police were planning for 10,000, and in fact 22,000 joined in the rally and march--quite a gathering. It was led by Members of Parliament. I am grateful to the hon. Members for Eastleigh (Mr. Chidgey) and for Portsmouth, North (Mr. Rapson) for joining us on that occasion and to the Lord Bishop of Portsmouth who, on this as on many other things, is giving a local lead. We marched across to Haslar hospital.
All the people in the Gosport peninsula, and virtually all those to whom I speak in the Ministry of Defence, want to see Haslar retained. They recognise that it has outstanding facilities. It has a world-leading MRI scanner, a hyperbaric unit and a burns unit, and £35 million has been spent on it in the past 10 years. To close it would be the most awful mistake. The fact remains, as declared in a number of speeches and in the outstanding publication that has been produced by the Save Haslar group, of which I am the chairman, that there is a case for retention of the hospital. All those arguments remain.
People in the armed forces are deeply worried that the loss of doctors and nurses will continue in the armed forces until Haslar is confirmed as a centre of defence medical excellence. The move to Birmingham would involve moving not only doctors and nurses but the school of defence medicine, which is at Fort Blockhouse adjacent to Haslar. That would cause intense local difficulty.
I have talked so far only about the defence aspects of Haslar hospital. As it is also a civilian hospital that is effectively the district general hospital for my constituency, cases arise daily that demonstrate how much it is needed. Only on Tuesday, I received a letter from an 82-year-old constituent who told me the story of a friend and neighbour who was admitted to hospital for a heart operation. He was prepared for the operation, taken to the operating theatre and then taken back and told that he could go home because no intensive care unit bed was available. His operation was postponed for two weeks. He returned home and the following day his wife died, perhaps as a result of the stress of having her husband home from hospital. That is just one story.
On Monday this week, I received an updating letter from another constituent who lives in Stubbington, but prefers not to be named. In January 1999, she was told that she needed a triple heart bypass and that if it were delayed by up to two years she would have a 40 per cent. chance of surviving. She was told that the waiting time would be nine months. In November 1999, she was told that the waiting time would be between 12 and 15 months. She is now told that it is perhaps 17 months or longer.
The hospital hopes to give her a waiting time of 18 months. So in a year, the waiting time for a cardiac operation in my constituency has increased from nine to 17 months. There is no immediate prospect of that lady being given a date for her operation. Civilian cases are being severely postponed and beds are needed that are not available elsewhere. My constituents believe that it would be lunacy to close a hospital that is superbly equipped from both a civilian and defence medicine point of view.The main reason given for the closure of Haslar hospital is that it is impossible for doctors and nurses to receive accreditation from the royal colleges. I submit that that problem can be overcome. Accreditation is entirely a matter of training and it must be possible to co-ordinate the work at Haslar with that in Portsmouth, Winchester and Southampton, and to provide training in conjunction with other local hospitals. It would be madness for Haslar to close.
My constituents are becoming concerned and several are rather frustrated that the campaign to save Haslar has not resulted in an announcement by the Government that they will change their minds. I should like to send them a message of hope and determination. We believe that we will win. If at this point I demand that the Government state, yes or no, whether they will save Haslar hospital, of course they will say no, that they will not save the hospital; that they made the announcement 16 months ago that they would close it. Faced with such a demand, of course the Government will stick to their guns.
What I say to my constituents is that the facts are changing around us. The intention is to move to Birmingham, but there is no enthusiasm in the defence medical services for such a move. I therefore predict that the move may not take place, or at least will take place in rather different circumstances. It is also intended to build up a Ministry of Defence hospital unit within Haslar and then to transfer that to Queen Alexandra hospital, Cosham. I maintain that that, too, is unlikely to happen. It was intended that the move should happen in about 2002. Now it will happen in about 2005 or 2007--do I hear 2009? I suspect that the move will not take place.
I have received a number of reports from senior personnel who have visited Haslar and have been surprised to see what the facilities are--the MRI scanner and the hyperbaric unit--and to see the administration unit. Haslar administers hospital units deployed in times of emergency. There is a large number of ancillary units within Haslar that it would be extremely inconvenient to move to Birmingham or somewhere else. I suspect that that, too, will be an argument in favour of retaining Haslar.
Two hospital ships are to be constructed. It is logical that they should be based at Portsmouth. Where better than Haslar to link with the hospital ships? I cannot imagine that it would be easy for hospital ships to link with Birmingham. In that and in so many other ways, I suspect that the need for Haslar will gradually become more clear.
Casevacs--emergency casualties removed from the field of operations--can readily be moved to Haslar. There is no space for them in Birmingham and no arrangements have been made for them so far. I suspect that the Government will realise that the failure to fast-track medical treatment for people in the armed forces is becoming a serious problem. Another constituent
of mine is a young Marine reservist. While on a Marine operation, he incurred an injury to his back. He will have to wait 18 months to have that injury rectified because he is joining the queue with all the civilians. I suspect that the Ministry of Defence will realise that it will be advantageous to be able to fast-track medical treatment for military personnel. The only way to do that is to have a dedicated hospital.The health authority has consulted locally on retention of Haslar as an out-patient unit seeing 60,000 patients a year compared with the 55,000 who are currently seen at Haslar. All that consultation procedure is predicated on the cross-link unit being made available by the Ministry of Defence to the civilian authorities. If the cross-link--the centre of Haslar--is not made available, the consultation procedure will have been invalid, and we shall have to start again.
For all the reasons that I have given, I say to my constituents, "Do not fear that the campaign to which you have committed yourselves so wholeheartedly is faltering or that the taskforce will lack determination." We are determined to retain Haslar not only as a civilian out-patient unit but as a hospital serving the defence medical services. I say to my constituents, "Have faith and join us in the determination to do that."
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