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The Secretary of State for Health (Ms Patricia Hewitt): In the White Paper Our health, our care, our say: a new direction for community services, published in January, we outlined our proposals to create a new generation of community hospitals and services. Today I am announcing that we will make available up to £750 million of public capital investment to realise that vision, and I am publishing guidance on how primary care trusts can access the money. A copy of the guidance has been placed in the Library, and copies are available from the Vote Office.
Developments in medical technology and clinical practice are making it possible to provide far more care in local communities, closer to where people live, and even in peoples own homes. During the unprecedented public consultation for Our health, our care, our say, people made it clear that, whenever it is safe and effective, they want more convenient, local and personal services, with more consultations, diagnostic tests and treatments in local facilities. Moving more services out of acute hospitals and into communities will help to improve care for patients, and will deliver better value for money for taxpayers.
We are already making a major investment in GPs premises and health and care centres, as well as in community hospitals. A billion pounds of capital has been invested through the NHS local improvement finance trusts alone. We will now take the next step by making up to £150 million of capital available in each of the next five years, starting this yeara total of up to £750 millionfor the development of a new generation of community hospitals and services.
The investment capital will be available to PCTs for a wide range of community schemes, including the redevelopment of some existing cottage hospitals. Services could include in-patient and out-patient facilities, diagnostic tests, specialist clinics, minor surgery, health and social care services for people with long-term conditions, dentistry, rehabilitation and palliative care and other services. For people who are seriously ill or injured, or people needing complex treatments, care will of course remain in acute hospitals, where patients can be treated by specialist teams using the most advanced technology.
PCTs that want to use the new investment capital will need to engage fully with local people to ensure that services are truly designed for the needs of patients and users. They will also be expected to work closely with other local partners, including general practices and other NHS services, local councils, voluntary organisations and others in the independent sector, to develop effective plans.
I made it clear in the White Paper that decisions on the long-term future of existing community hospitals should not be made solely in response to short-term budgetary pressures that are not related to the viability of the community facility itself. I have asked strategic health authorities to assure themselves that all PCT proposals for changes to community hospitals are consistent with the long-term strategy of the White Paper: to move care closer to patients homes, and to ensure that local people have been properly consulted.
Ultimately, however, changes in the configuration of local health care services in a particular area require local decision making. Primary care trusts, with their broad perspective across hospital, community and primary care, are best placed to make those decisions in consultation with local people and their SHAs. The new investment fund will make it easier for PCTs to establish the right services in the right places for the people whom they serve.
PCTs will be able to choose how they use the newly available capital, investing it simply as public capital, extending the scope of their local investment finance trust schemes or adopting a new approach: the community venture, a more flexible joint venture approach that will give a wider range of public, voluntary and private parties an opportunity to pool their skills, or indeed their investment, for the benefit of the local community. It will, however, be for PCTs to decide which model is adopted. Whichever one is chosen, PCTs will of course need to demonstrate that investment proposals are sustainable and can be funded over the longer term. As we said in the White Paper, we expect to see a strategic shift in how the NHS provides care, with a redirection of funding to support the provision of more convenient services in local communities.
PCTs that already have advanced plans for community services, as many have, should submit them to their strategic health authorities by the end of September. For schemes that are ready to start in the next financial year, proposals should reach the health authorities by the end of December. After that, there will be a regular rolling programme managed through the SHAs.
This new programme builds on the unprecedented investment that we have already made in the NHS. It will help to ensure that there are even better services for patients, with better value for money, and I commend it to the House.
Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire) (Con): I am, of course, grateful for advance sight of the Secretary of States statement, although it has all been trailed in the press beforehand, as usual. The Secretary of State once again claims that she is the saviour of community hospitals. [ Laughter. ] Well, Labour Ministers have been saying that for four years. The right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) said exactly the same thing in 2002. However, within recent months 80 community hospitals have been under threat of closure or partial closure.
In January, the Secretary of State said that community hospitals would be safeguarded by the White Paper. Why has that had so little positive effect? We discovered last week with the abortive notice in the Official Journal of the European Union that the Secretary of States policy is not even understood in her own Department. As a result of the White Paper, we also know that her policy is not understood or not listened to across the NHS. Why are they simply ignoring her?
The threat to community hospitals is little diminished since January. For example, in Wiltshire, services have already been lost at Westbury and Bradford-upon-Avon hospitals, and there are threats to Warminster, Melksham and Trowbridge. The Secretary of State talked about the review process, but the
strategic health authority in Suffolk did the review process on proposals in the area and said that it would close Walnuttree hospital, St Leonards hospital, the Sage day hospital in Newmarket, Hartismere hospital, the Hayward day hospital in Ipswich and Bartlet hospital, and reduce services at Aldeburgh hospital. That is the result of the review process that that Secretary of State says will happen as a consequence of her White Paper.
The Secretary of State now offers a capital fund. In some circumstances, capital for rebuilding or refurbishment will be useful and I welcome that. However, can the Secretary of State explain what proportion of this fund will go into providing health centresher so-called polyclinicsfor GPs and out-patients, rather than existing community hospitals that continue to provide in-patient services? Last year the NHS had capital that it did not spend. The underspend on capital budgets by the NHS last year was £1,165 million. The NHS has capital: it is overspending on revenue. PCTs are cutting revenue and contracts. Community hospitals are closing because their primary care trusts will not commission services from them, because of the revenue shortfall. Can the Secretary of State explain how a capital fund can be a solution to a revenue problem?
If the Secretary of State wanted to support community hospitals in the way they need it, she would ensure that the plan in the White Paper for unbundling the tariff happened nownot in 2007-08. Will she do that? Will she also ensure that the tariff is split so that part of the payment for patients who are stepped down from the acute sector goes to the community hospitals where they are sent? Will she also confirm that decisions about community hospitals will be reviewed in the way that she describes and will be made specifically in consultation with, and with the agreement ofif they offer itlocal GPs? In theory, from the end of this year, practice-based commissioning should mean that GPs decide where they want to commission services, but the PCTs are pre-empting that and closing services so that they will not be available for GPs to send patients to.
The Secretary of State said that the fund would be available to the third sector, including charities. I hope that the whole range of charities and voluntary organisations will be able to bid. She mentioned community organisations and I hope that she will make it clear that local private sector and voluntary partnerships can work with GPs to take over community hospitals. Many such hospitals used to be locally owned, because they were established through public subscription. Will the Secretary of State ensure that the assets can be transferred to the third sector and out of the NHS, at a high discount, so that they can be owned and supported locally? That will be as important as the ability to bid on the fund.
No one can say that health care provision will not change. Care closer to home is a legitimate objective and has been for many years; that is what community hospitals offer. I know from my special interest in strokes that that is precisely what community hospitals can do; that kind of intermediate care bed is exactly what people need to step down at an early stage from an acute hospital. Under this Government, the number of such beds increased between 2002 and 2004-05, but they are now being shut down. There is a complete reversal of approach by the Government.
Why? Because community hospitals are being caught in a financial squeeze between rising costs in the acute sector and the cost of meeting GP contracts. We told the Secretary of State last yearshe admitted it in Januarythat short-term financial pressures are forcing decisions that are contrary to the long-term interests of the NHS. Unfortunately, that is still happening and she needs to take more measures to stop it. She must give community hospitals the chance to prove their worth and GPs the chance to decide where patients are treated, and she must tell the House why the promises made in January have yet to be fulfilled.
The Secretary of State did not have the boldness to tell the House today what she told the Sunday Express last Sunday when she said:
We want to make it as easy to access NHS treatment as it is to get a pint of milk. You can pick it up on your doorstep or go to a supermarket...All thats needed is a bit of cash and encouragement.
Well, back on Planet Earth we know what is really going on. I know what is happening in my own constituency, where services and wards are being shut at Brookfields community hospital in Cambridge; the young peoples mental health service is being shut down and the PCT is refusing to fund the hospice at home service. That is what is happening on Planet Earth. The Secretary of State should come back to Planet Earth and resolve those problems for community hospitals.
Ms Hewitt: I thank the hon. Gentleman for a reply that was somewhat longer than my initial statement[Hon. Members: No, it wasnt.] Indeed, it was[ Interruption.] The Leader of the House was counting and I shall rely on him in the matter.
The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) talked as though no new community hospitals and facilities had been opened under our Government, but thanks to the investment that we have been making, which Opposition Members voted against, new community hospitals have been opening in recent years; for instance, Withington hospital in south Manchester, Prospect Park in Berkshire, which I visited last week and which offers superb intermediate care, the new community hospitals in Edgware and Willesden and many others.
It is absurd of the hon. Gentleman to imply, as I think he is trying to do, that every one of the existing community hospitals is fit for a modern health service. The reality is that many are not. We have many existing cottage and community hospitals where, despite the absolute dedication of the staff, they are struggling with Victorian workhouse facilities that are wholly unsuitable in a modern health service. In some cases
Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury) (Con): Name them!
Ms Hewitt:
Let me give the hon. Gentleman the example of Norwich, which I visited a couple of weeks ago, where the local director of community services and his staff explained that they had had too many community hospitals and too many community hospital beds. They have reorganised services and closed two community hospitals, taken beds from a third and put the services into a new facility in an
existing hospital. They have put more staff into the community, so they are looking after more patients in their own homes, as well as in the community hospital. They are giving patients better care, the staff have greater job satisfaction and they are saving money that can be invested in other services. That is precisely what the NHS in Suffolk, Norfolk, Gloucestershire, Surrey, and many other parts of the country that have been overspending, needs to do to provide better services for patients, with more modern, but quite possibly fewer, community hospital facilities and more services delivered to people in their own communities, all of it fit for patients in the modern world.
The hon. Gentleman asked how a capital fund would help deal with revenue shortfalls or overspending in some parts of the country. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet NHS colleagues, my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) and people from the wider Yorkshire area. Their primary care trust has financial problems, but they are clear that, by reorganising services that are currently spread across three or four NHS and local council sites and putting them into one new community hospital, enabled by our new capital fund for which they will bid, they will be able to give patients better services closer to home and save the money that they need to save to live within their very substantially increased means.
The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire mentioned unbundling the tariff. Let me restate our commitment to unbundling the tariff: we are working on that, and we will introduce a pilot next year. But it is already perfectly possible for PCTs to contract outside the tariff, thereby perhaps getting better value for money for the community services that they need. In any good consultation on new community services and hospitals, GPs will already be involved; they have to be involved, of course, particularly in anticipation of practice-based commissioning.
The full range of partners certainly includes the private sector. For instance, it delivers MRI scans in Withington community hospital in south Manchester, which has brought down the waiting time for such scans from months in some cases to just two weeks for most patients, with the report delivered to the GP 48 hours later. That is a superb service. The future of community hospitals can also certainly include the transfer of assets, where that is appropriate and agreed by the local NHS, to a local community charitable trust. That is precisely what is happening with the Wells-on-Sea community facility, which was proposed for closure, but which will now house community facilities. Through such organisations, the voluntary sector and the local community has an enormously important role to play in modern community hospitals.
The hon. Gentleman ended his speech by scorning the idea of more convenient medical services. The reality is that, with modern medical technology, it is now possible to offer, for instance, some chemotherapy services for cancer patients not only in a community hospital or health and care centre, but in their own home, which is far more convenient and much better for such patients. Renal dialysis provides another good example of that. Thanks to the investment that we are making in the NHS, this capital fund will enable that new generation of services to be provided to our patients.
Mr. Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab): I welcome my right hon. Friends statement, but is she aware of the breathing space project, which is being built in Rotherham? It will bring services for COPDchronic obstructive pulmonary diseasepatients in both the acute and primary sectors under one roof, so that we can treat such lung disease a lot better than it has been treated before. Although that means that the local district general hospital will lose beds and some services, as consultants will work in other places, it will lead to a massive improvement in patient care. Will my right hon. Friend make sure that patientsand the work force, as wellare consulted in all areas where we will have such changes to replace the great, big, all-singing, all-dancing district general hospitals of the past, which many patients do not need?
Ms Hewitt: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We can move many services, particularly for patients with long-term conditions such as COPD, into the community and into patients own homes. As a result, we will give people better care. My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), who is the Minister responsible for health services, has confirmed that she has visited the site for the new services mentioned.
In many places, decisions are taken to reduce the number of beds in acute hospitals because those services can be better provided for patients within the community. That also represents better value for money, which means more savings, as Norwichto give just one exampleindicated, so that money can be reinvested in better care for other patients, and also in the costs of some of the extraordinary new drugs that are coming on-stream, but many of which are also pretty expensive.
Steve Webb (Northavon) (LD): I thank the Secretary of State for her statement. It is always fascinating to step with her into the parallel world that she inhabits, where shiny new hospitals are delivered to a glad and happy local population.
Something puzzles me about the Secretary of States statement. When swathes of community hospitals are closed, the Secretary of State does not come before the House, but when they are about to be opened, she does. Can she explain why the closure of community hospitals is somebody elses fault, but the opening of them is her responsibility?
Does the Secretary of State envisage that at the end of this processat the end of her visionthere will be more community hospitals than the Government inherited? Can she also clarify whether she will be counting in her total figure former district general hospitals, such as Frenchay hospital, which will be reduced to a community hospital? Will we find that the Secretary of State comes back to the House to tell us that she has opened Frenchay community hospital, while overlooking the fact that she has closed a district general hospital?
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