| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
101 Bus Service
9.54 pm
Mr. William Cash (Stone) (Con): I am sorry to disabuse the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Pollard), but this is the last petition of this Parliament. The petition is urged by more than 700 of my constituents and it represents their protest about the removal of the 101 bus service from Walton corner along the A34 to Aston island.
To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.
The Humble Petition of the residents and bus passengers of Walton, Stone, in the Staffordshire sheweth
That the Petitioners are against the removal of the 101 Bus from Walton Corner along the A34 to Aston Island.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House will urge the Government to use their influence to persuade First PMT to reconsider, and to restore the 101 bus service to local residents.
To lie upon the Table.
6 Apr 2005 : Column 1545
Acute Hospitals (Funding)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Watson.]
9.56 pm
Andrew George (St. Ives) (LD): I am delighted to have secured what may well be the last Adjournment debate of this Parliament, particularly on such an important issue as acute hospital funding. It is a serious issue for many MPs, but I want to speak about particular concerns in my own constituency in the far west of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
At the outset, I declare an interest in that my wife is a nurse working in the NHS—unfortunately, only in a nursing bank at the moment. She has worked all her working life in the NHS. A second declaration of interest is that I was a patient last week at one of the hospitals that I shall mention in the debate. I was there for day surgery just over a week ago, and I must say that an excellent service was provided.
I also want to say at the outset—the Minister will be pleased to hear me say it—that I appreciate the dedication and professionalism of NHS staff. I say that not because my wife works in the NHS, but because I genuinely appreciate those characteristics of the NHS. The Liberal Democrats campaigned at the last general election for increased taxation and investment in the NHS, so I am also pleased to welcome the additional resources that the Government have invested in the NHS in recent years. The funding is much needed and much appreciated.
The title of the debate is "Acute Hospitals (Funding)", but I recognise that such funding does not come in a separate silo from other funding going via primary care trusts into primary and general health care. The Minister will no doubt refer in his response to the extra funding going into Cornwall's three PCTs and health trusts. Certainly, substantial additional amounts of money are going into Cornwall PCTs, but my first main point is about how that money compares with funding in other parts of the country.
The Minister will know that the three Cornwall PCTs are in significant deficit and have been over the past three or four years. They are working hard to achieve a recurring balance, but the Minister will also be aware that the National Audit Office produced a report on 28 April last year that identified the fact that only three PCTs in the UK had overspends of more than £5 million in 2002–03. All three were, of course, the Cornish PCTs.
That raises the question not of management failure in Cornwall, but of whether the funding formula properly reflects the challenges presented to those who have to manage the budgets and meet national targets for NHS spending and care in an area such as Cornwall.
The task of providing health care in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly is especially challenging, and the formula does not take full account of what I call the geographical challenges that the area faces. Some people ascribe those difficulties to peripherality, rurality or peninsularity but, unlike other parts of the country, Cornwall cannot call on emergency services to the north, west or south. The ambulance funding formula takes account of geography to a small extent, but PCT funding does not do so at all.
6 Apr 2005 : Column 1546
Another challenge to the provision of health care in the area is posed by demography. Cornwall's population tends to be much older than is the case with other areas, and the county also has more tourists than elsewhere. I understand that the Department cannot write off the debts incurred by the local PCTs, which are trying incredibly hard to achieve recurring balances in their budgets, but perhaps we should look at the appropriateness of the levels of funding made available to them.
For example, the West Cornwall PCT anticipates a deficit of only £5.9 million this year, a significant reduction from last year. Ultimately, that debt must be recovered and paid off, but the market forces factor is already critical and will become even more important in the future. That factor involves an assessment of external labour market costs, but wage levels in Cornwall have been the lowest in the country since records began. This year, the market forces factor will kick in much harder than has been the case since its introduction in 1976, and it will come as no surprise that the impact will be very significant. In fact, funding for West Cornwall PCT will be the lowest in the country as a result.
Is the Minister satisfied that it is right that the market forces factor should have such a substantial impact on available funding, given that it will leave Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly seriously short of money, in comparison with the rest of the country? That will happen even though the area faces obvious additional costs—as a result of the geographic, demographic and other challenges that I have set out—that are not reflected in the formula. Moreover, as I said, the PCTs must also tackle the requirement to balance the crippling deficits that they face. In addition, will the Minister say which Departments funding locally delivered services—such as social services, police and education, whose staff are primarily paid according to national pay scales—use the same market forces factor in their funding formula?
I come now to the impact of funding on acute services. Cornwall's main district general hospital is the Royal Cornwall at Treliske. It serves some 400,000 of the county's population of a little over half a million people, and it has just over 1,000 acute beds and 174 consultants. The two other acute hospitals in the county are St. Michael's in Hayle, and the West Cornwall hospital in Penzance, which deal primarily with elective and day care work. In the past, the Penzance facility has taken a lot of blue light and emergency admissions, although that happens less nowadays.
The lowering of the protocols mean that more blue light incidents and emergencies pass West Cornwall hospital's front door on their way to Treliske, and that the emergency services are under increasing pressure. I shall return to that matter, but before this debate I sent the Minister some information about the services available in the county. As I said earlier, it is not possible for us to seek additional services in areas to the north, west or south, and the situation in the area covered by the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust contrasts with what happens in Northumbria and Calderdale. Those areas have three and two DGHs, respectively, and their populations are roughly the same as Cornwall's. There should be a serious review of whether putting all the
6 Apr 2005 : Column 1547
eggs—emergency and acute services—into one basket is appropriate. That can be dangerous. On 9 March, less than a month ago, there were 30 patients on trolleys and on the days before and afterwards ambulances were queuing outside unable to offload patients into the hospital. The bed managers were trying desperately to discharge 95 patients to community hospitals only a year after 100 beds in those community hospitals were closed.
The desperate situation has been caused by a funding crisis and because most acute emergencies are brought into one hospital. It is unacceptable that beds in the primary sector have been removed when there are layers of chief executives and boards. Thirteen chief executives run services in Cornwall and it is impossible to have a strategic view when there are three primary care trusts, two delivery trusts, two social services departments—one in Cornwall and one on the Isles of Scilly—an ambulance trust, the strategic health authority and replication on the south-east and north-east borders of Cornwall. Instead of all that bureaucracy, we need a clear strategic view and a focus on the care provided in the acute sector.
The proposal for West Cornwall hospital—I have been working for it with the strategic health authority and others—is for a rebuild with perhaps a doubling of the number of beds. The strategic health authority, the acute trust and the PCT agree that that is a desirable objective and we will work together to try to achieve that new build so that the hospital can take more patients and emergencies. But how can the money be found for new build when capital building programmes require the money to be repaid from revenue and the revenue is insufficient?
I am encouraged that after my hard work and that of many others in the local community, the Labour prospective parliamentary candidate—none of us has heard of him—has issued a leaflet saying that we need a 24-hour accident and emergency unit based in Penzance. That is encouraging—I presume that he was given permission to say that by the Minister—because we have campaigned for that for a long time. I hope that the Minister will confirm that the Government support that.
I had a helpful meeting with the Minister's colleague in June last year when those proposals received broad support and recognition that they need to be taken forward. I have an easy question for the Minister. Can he assure me that if the strategic health authority, the PCT and the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust want that his Department will provide all the assistance it can?
My third and final point concerns the impact of Government proposals for independent sector procurement. I understand that the intention for wave 2 funding under the NHS improvement plan published in June 2004 is to set a target of about 15 per cent. elective activity from private sector providers. I also understand that a number of targets will be set to lead to that overall target during the forthcoming years, but as well as elective procurement, additional announcements have been made for targets for budgets for diagnostic and pathology procurement from the private sector.
The problem is that in a place like Cornwall it is not appropriate to seek elective work from the private sector because of the challenges of our geography.
6 Apr 2005 : Column 1548
Furthermore, if we have to plan for obtaining diagnostic services from the private sector, it will undermine our attempts to build up the critical resources and capacity of the small hospital in west Cornwall; for example, by installing a CT scanner. It would be helpful if the Minister will reassure me that the Government will step back from those targets, especially in places such as Cornwall. The Department seems to be indicating that previous intentions and targets may not be pursued with the vigour that was suggested last year. Will private sector procurement plans be pursued according to the targets set in the NHS improvement plan?
These issues are important to many of my constituents, who are concerned about the difficulties relating to the funding formula in Cornwall and the impact on NHS services, especially the acute sector. I am sure the Minister accepts that the area presents some significant challenges. The geography is challenging and a high number of tourists visit the area. We must ensure that we have the capacity to cope.
10.11 pm
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |