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“At Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the increased throughput of patients needed to meet performance targets resulted in patients being moved, difficulties in isolating patients with infection and high occupancy of beds.”
“The lack of suitable isolation facilities at Stoke Mandeville Hospital was exacerbated by changes to wards such as ‘ring-fencing’ surgical beds in order to deliver Government’s targets... Higher occupancy of beds meant that there was less time for thorough cleaning.”
I have visited the hospital, both as the Member of Parliament and in a private capacity as a visitor, on many occasions over the past 14 years. I have full confidence in the professionalism and dedication of its staff, from cleaners, nurses and doctors to the management. I believe that its staff can learn the lessons of the report and reassure my constituents that they can expect high-quality care when they are treated there, but I also believe that what those staff want from the Government is less insistence on inflexible targets imposed from the centre and much greater trust in the professionalism and skill of the staff at the front line to deliver the care that they have devoted their working lives to providing.
6.8 pm
Anne Milton (Guildford) (Con): I realise that time is short, but I should like to refer to three issues in my constituency, one of which has been mentioned already by the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Michael Jabez Foster), who is no longer in his seat, and it is “Creating an NHS fit for the future”—a consultation document released by the strategic health authority in my constituency. I am slightly staggered that anyone could possibly believe that that document is entirely the responsibility and in the ownership of the SHA.
In my view, that document has been produced in response to pressure from the Government to make substantial savings. Without doubt, the document will put the Royal Surrey county hospital in Guildford at serious risk. There is no doubt that services will be reduced. There are rumours about maternity services and paediatrics, and reductions in the provision of accident and emergency services are also on the cards. What is distressing to my constituents is that there is no doubt that their health will be put at risk. At a recent public meeting that I and my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) organised, it was clear from the concerns of the clinicians, the GPs and other doctors that lives will be on the line if there is any downgrading of accident and emergency care.
Another point about accident and emergency departments that is sadly often overlooked is that when they are downgraded, it is often downgrading by stealth. When accident and emergency departments shut, the services that sit behind them fall as well, like a line of dominoes: research opportunities fall, as is much of the acute work taken on by the hospital, and that hospital’s ability to attract staff is greatly diminished.
Another
issue that I want to raise is the funding formula. Many references have
been made to the loss of hospital services in various constituencies,
but I wish to draw attention to the funding formula that we are all
subjected to in order to get our NHS budgets. It is commonly believed
by the Government that a lot of the financial problems are due to poor
management. However, I draw the Government’s attention to work
done in
Suffolk, and in Plymouth by Professor Asthana, which suggests precisely
the opposite, which is that constituencies such as mine, which are
essentially rural and slightly more affluent than most, are being
chronically underfunded—so my constituents’ health is not
worth as much as the health of those in constituencies such as the
Prime
Minister’s.
Let me briefly mention another issue which is of huge concern to many of my constituents in places such as Hurtemore, Eashing and Shackleford, as well as to a wider population: the inclusion of Eashing farm in a draft minerals plan. Let me explain what is sad about such issues: because this site has been included in a draft minerals plan, the residents there will be facing blight for the best part of two or three years, while waiting for a decision finally to be made. The area I have mentioned is close to a site of special scientific interest, and there will be increasing amounts of traffic and a significant impact on the local hydrology and the flow of spring water. There will also of course be noise and vibration from the extraction and associated activity; and then at the end, what will be put in the huge whole that remains? That draws attention to a problem that many of my constituents face: they feel completely powerless to have any impact on the decision making. They are faced with this tremendous blight on their homes, and they can do nothing about it.
In my constituency, people’s faith in consultation is running very thin. We have recently had decisions to close community hospitals. Decisions have been made to close the day hospital at Cranleigh, beds at Cranleigh, and the rehabilitation centre at Milford; 94 per cent. of people said that they did not want that option to go ahead, but—lo and behold—that is the option that goes ahead.
As ever, planning issues generate a huge number of concerns, which I am sure that many of my hon. Friends share. Such issues include mobile phone masts, town cramming and overdevelopment of back gardens. Another issue that has not been stressed as often as some others is the cumulative effect of planning applications. There are areas to the north of Guildford where the roads are actually quite narrow and each year, bit by bit, there is planning creep; more and more applications come in, and ever more of them are accepted. There is an exponential growth in that area, without the infrastructure to cope. We now have a situation in which motorists are mounting the pavements and are putting children walking to school at risk. That draws attention to the fact that local people want to have their say on planning applications. They make good decisions when given the opportunity to do so. The problem is that current planning legislation does not allow local residents to have their say.
6.15 pm
Mr.
Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con): It is a great
pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne
Milton), who commented on something that the hon. Member for Hastings
and Rye (Michael Jabez Foster) said earlier. I must say that I
sympathise with him in having to face these difficult headlines at a
time when so much money is being put into the health service, yet none
of it appears to be producing the desired effect. Of course, his
accident and emergency unit is under threat because the cost of
providing such a unit has risen as a result of, among
other things, implementing the European working time directive and not
putting enough money into the health service locally to cover doing
so.
I do have a word of congratulation for the national health service and for the Government, however. They have taken account of the special circumstances of the Isle of Wight in providing a united primary care trust and national health acute trust, which will be launched very shortly. I am grateful to them for taking account of my constituents’ feelings on that issue, and I wish that they would take equal account of their feelings on the shortage of dentists on the island. Some 24,000 people are still awaiting allocation to an NHS dentist, but even when they have been allocated, in two years’ time half my constituents will still be without an NHS dentist. So there are some congratulations, and some pleas for the Minister to pass on to his colleagues in the Department of Health.
I want to mention two other local issues, the first of which is pet cemeteries. Members may recall that during the first Prime Minister’s questions after the last general election, I raised with the Prime Minister the closure of a pet cemetery on the Isle of Wight as a result of licensing fees set by the Environment Agency, which was licensing it under the European landfill directive. I am pleased to say that the Prime Minister and other Ministers intervened. They all whizzed round, the Environment Agency got involved and it sent someone to visit the pet cemetery. Many months ago, I was assured that a decision had been reached and that everything in the garden was going to be rosy. In the past week, however, I received a written answer from the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw), saying that the situation had not quite been sorted out yet, but that he hoped something would be done shortly. Well, he now has until early September not to be pestered by me by means of written questions. I hope that the next time I ask him a question, he will be able to assure me that the situation has been sorted out.
The final local issue that I want to raise is concessionary fares for public transport users. I know that the Government recently introduced significant concessions for elderly people using public transport. In the run-up to the election, they introduced free local bus travel after 9.30 am, and since the election they have introduced free national local bus travel—as it were—after that time. I am pleased to say that my local authority, of which we took control in 2005 after 20 years of Liberal Democrat control, has extended that free concessionary fare so that it applies 24 hours a day, and extended it to the trains. Furthermore, it has implemented a 50p flat-rate fare for people aged under 19 who are in full-time education, so that they can travel anywhere on the island, by train or bus, for that fare.
Those are
great achievements, but my real concern is that the Government seem to
think that there is only one mode of public transport: the bus. I
visited the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms
Buck) when she was a transport Minister, and I invited her to think
about whether there should be concessions on water-borne transport, as
well as on buses. She said that it was not up to her, and that the
Chancellor had thought about that issue. It is clear that the
Chancellor
does not know that there are such things as ferries, despite living in
Scotland, so no money was available in the first tranche of
concessionary fares for users of ferries.
Sad to say, the Chancellor did not get the message from the Department for Transport in time for the introduction of the wider range of concessionary fares, so there are still no such fares for elderly people travelling by ferry, apart from those provided through the benevolence of the ferry operators. Will the Government consider whether it is fair that one can have free or concessionary travel on a bus, but not on equally important journeys to hospital, the shops, school, university or work if one happens to need to travel by ferry? I hope that the Minister will pass that on.
Several other hon. Members have raised my final issue, so I shall abbreviate what I intended to say. I feel most profoundly that the Minister for the Middle East sounds as if he cares about what is happening in both Israel and Lebanon. He spoke like a Minister who cared, not a Minister who was speaking in code or who sounded like the speaking clock. We have spoken of the troubles and how they were caused, and I do not wish to go into that because we have said enough about it today.
I regret profoundly, however, that the United Kingdom has lost its role as honest broker in the middle east—a role that it had redeveloped since the Suez crisis 50 years ago—largely as a result of the Prime Minister behaving like Mr. Bush’s poodle and as a result of his frankly ridiculous stories about why we should invade Iraq, stories that, I am pleased to say, some Opposition Members did not believe. We are now in the terrible position of apparently simply parroting the words of Mr. Bush. Last week the Minister for the Middle East said that we should not simply call for a ceasefire. On Sunday, Condoleezza Rice said that we should be calling for a ceasefire, so yesterday the Prime Minister said that we should call for a ceasefire. That is behaving more like a parrot than a Prime Minister and leader of a serious nation.
My greatest concern is the hostility to this country that has arisen across the Arab world and, in particular, among the 1.6 million Muslims in this country. It is profoundly distressing to see people on the streets of this country defending either of the participants in a foreign war. We should not have foreign wars fought out, even figuratively speaking, on the streets of this country by adherents on either side. If people come to this country, they should expect to support what is in the best interests of the United Kingdom and its people, not what is in the best interests of the countries from which they came or the religions to which they belong. I hope that the Minister will take back to the Prime Minister the need to show more balance in the treatment of both sides in the terrible events in the middle east.
6.22 pm
Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con): Under previous Governments no one in clinical need would be refused treatment by the NHS. But the new NHS denies treatments to sufferers from Alzheimer’s disease, and it denies anti-TNF treatments to those suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis. This rationed NHS is becoming less humane.
Depriving brain tumour patients of drugs that can prolong their lives condemns people to a premature death. I declare an interest as my son is a neurosurgeon. That we have come so far from an NHS based on clinical judgment is evidenced by the 36 neuro-oncologists who wrote to the Secretary of State for Health to ask that two treatments—temozolomide and carmustine implants—be made available to all brain tumour patients who need them.
It may be time to ensure that the methodologies of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence are based on scientific evidence and that NICE takes into account the wider economic, societal and human costs or benefits when making its decisions. Why do other countries achieve palpably better outcomes on health and associated matters? For instance, buphenorphine stops morphine being taken up by the cell receptors and helps addicts come off drugs. It is used in France, where they achieve a retention rate of 88 per cent., with only a 7 per cent. delinquent rate on follow-up. But in the UK, only 28 per cent. of drug treatment and testing orders are completed satisfactorily and reconviction rates are 80 per cent., opposite figures to those achieved in France. Why are survival rates in the UK for brain cancers so low, compared with other parts of Europe? How has Australia managed to identify 80 per cent. of its chronic hepatitis C cases, compared with only 23 per cent. in the UK? I am sure that many excellent colleagues from all sides of the House will join me in pushing the Government to review their policies on NICE.
In addition, I ask the Government to remove the uncertainty over Remploy, which is causing great concern. Although I understand that the Southend branch that employs so many of my constituents is not at risk, I hope that Ministers will make a statement—over the recess, if necessary—so that the minds of vulnerable people can be put at rest.
We must welcome the trilateral talks on Gibraltar and its constitutional reform, to which Gibraltar’s First Minister Peter Caruana has adopted a very positive approach. In addition, we must praise and thank Cyprus for its contribution to the international effort on the evacuation of people from Lebanon. The UK must support both communities in Cyprus in the work to get a just settlement through the UN process agreed by Tassos Papadopoulos and Mehmet Ali Talat. That process should begin immediately and involve bi-communal discussions of all the issues. The UK must support and help Turkey in every way in its bid to join the EU, as it is probable that that will be one of the catalysts to the achievement of a solution to the Cyprus problem.
Finally, I always hoped that the UK would be able to retain its sovereignty in the EU and bring about root-and-branch reform from within, but I now accept that Sir Teddy Taylor was right all along and that I was wrong. Our rebate and national sovereignty are under threat, as waste and corruption increase in the EU as a result of the increasing failure of accounts and controls.
Nowadays,
two thirds of our laws are made in Europe and not in this Parliament,
but there is no proper scrutiny or democratic accountability.
Therefore, I now accept that the best—the only—way
forward for the UK is to withdraw from the EU. That
would enable us to protect our borders better, and to generate more jobs
and wealth. We would then be able to take better care of our citizens,
especially those vulnerable people who, like the Remploy employees, are
deeply worried about their
jobs.
6.27 pm
John Barrett (Edinburgh, West) (LD): I, too, shall be brief. I want to raise several matters that affect my constituents, whose concern for people elsewhere in the world I find very heartening.
The city of Edinburgh is my home city, and that of the Deputy Leader of the House. It is hard to believe that a year has passed since the Make Poverty History marches took place there. Hopes were high and promises were made, but since then the World Trade Organisation talks have collapsed, with trade-distorting subsidies by the EU and US remaining as a barrier to helping poor countries trade their way out of poverty.
A number of constituents have contacted me about the situation in Lebanon after watching the daily television images of the conflict there. The images have been gruesome enough, but they are merely a sanitised version of what is really happening on the ground. Other hon. Members have spoken about their concerns in this debate, but my greatest fear is that Israel’s policy in respect of Lebanon is the single biggest threat to its own future as a state. It cannot carry on as it has, and the Governments of the UK and the US should change their approach and put pressure on Israel. The Prime Minister says that he has a special relationship with the US President: if so, he must use it to that end.
The hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) made an excellent speech, and I disagree with very little of what she said. If time permits, however, I too intend to mention the question of nuclear power.
Various hon. Members this afternoon have spoken about access to water, which is an important matter for many countries in the developing world. I am fortunate enough to be a member of the Select Committee on International Development, and we will look at the matter later in the year. We are in the middle of a long, hot summer and think that we are suffering, but I am pleased to say that many people are aware of the serious problems that arise further afield.
I am pleased that the Government have taken action on the Child Support Agency. I was elected five years ago, and hardly a week has gone by without constituents turning up to my advice surgery with serious complaints about the CSA. The shake-up will be of little comfort to their families if it is only a fanfare of Government spin and the new system does not adequately pursue the errant fathers or ex-partners who do not pay the money due to mothers and to their children.
Throughout the past year, with the support of a number of local community groups in my constituency, I have raised their problems in organising local events. They are being hampered by their battle against the red tape that stifles too many of their good efforts. I should like to go into more detail, but unfortunately time is against me.
We are 20 years
from the Chernobyl disaster, and I want to record my opposition to a
new generation of nuclear power stations and to reinforce the
importance
of investing in energy efficiency, microgeneration and renewable energy.
There are many more things I could say, but time is against the House
and I want to give other Members the opportunity to
contribute.
6.30 pm
Andrew Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con): I shall be brief. First, I want to mention endowment shortfalls, which a number of my constituents have raised with me. The House and the Government are not taking the issue seriously. Statistics tell us that many endowment policies will come to fruition in the next five to 10 years, and a large number of our constituents will find themselves in serious financial difficulty. The Treasury Committee should look into the matter and might encourage the industry to consider how to deal with the shortfalls. The Committee could also consider whether unclaimed assets might be used, as they should be for people whose pensions have collapsed.
My second point is that parents should choose whether their child attends a special or a mainstream school. It is outrageous that parents are forced either to keep their child in a mainstream school when they think the child would do better in a specialist school, and vice versa. Parents know their children better than anyone else—certainly better than any local education authority official. We must reach a position where parents decide on their child’s school.
My third point is the need for an index of social and domestic cohesion. That sounds like a bit of a mouthful, but the House will have an opportunity to do something about it when the Bill on the Office for National Statistics is introduced in the autumn. It is a curious fact that the social exclusion unit lists eight indicators of social deprivation, one of which is family breakdown. All the other seven indicators are reflected in the indices of deprivation published in the ONS neighbourhood statistics, but family breakdown is not. There is no reason for that omission and we could rectify it in the House in the autumn. I urge my Front-Bench colleagues and the Government to consider the matter when the Bill comes before the House.
Lastly, I want to raise my concern that the Prison Service has closed the inner change programme in Dartmoor prison. We know that such programmes reduced recidivism rates from 55 to 8 per cent. in several American states. The inner change programme could have been treated like the alpha course, which runs in many prisons, but the Prison Service chose not to do so, which is a tragedy. I am unhappy about what I have learned about that case and shall raise it on other occasions, because it needs to be examined.
6.33 pm
Mr. Andrew Pelling (Croydon, Central) (Con): I want to draw attention to my local authority’s campaign, which I endorse, for a fair deal for Croydon. The campaign has a cross-party basis, with the involvement of the three Croydon MPs and the parties represented in the London borough of Croydon. It may have been modelled on a cross-party campaign in the London borough of Sutton, which successfully argued for proper area cost adjustment treatment for the local authority. Indeed, so successful was that campaign that Sutton residents receive £29 a head more than Croydon residents.
Many of our troubles financially in Croydon are down to our own errors and mistakes in holding a referendum on council tax. After the referendum, we had a 27 per cent. increase in the council tax four years ago. However, the director of finance at Croydon council now predicts that a 71 per cent. increase in council tax will be required over the next four years. The situation is unreasonable when compared with that in a borough such as Ealing, which has a similar rate of unemployment, the same rate of owner occupation, the same number of council tenants and a fairly similar proportion of black and minority ethnic communities. The rate of payment is £422 per head in Ealing, but only £306 per head in Croydon. I have asked many questions over the past year about Government funding streams for Croydon and they have shown that we get a rate much below that which is available in other parts of London. We are going through dynamic change in terms of our population make-up and I hope that the fair deal for Croydon will get a fair hearing in the next Session.
6.35 pm
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD): Until a month ago, plans were at a very advanced stage for a massive £160 million expansion of Colchester general hospital. Planning permission had been given and the general public—not to mention all those involved with the national health service locally—were looking forward to the much-needed development and facilities being provided. There were hopes last year that work would start in January this year. It did not. Then, without any notice, last month the plug was pulled. The scheme had been aborted.
It is not my intention today to engage in the blame game. What I and my constituents want is not answers relating to what went wrong, but answers relating to what the Department of Health is going to do to provide the people and town of Colchester, and the wider area of north Essex, with the hospital facilities and services that, up to last month, they had been promised, and that those responsible for the NHS at a local, regional and national level had concluded were of great necessity. Why else had so much time, effort and money been spent on taking forward an officially sanctioned £160 million expansion?
As a result of parliamentary questions that I tabled, last week it was revealed that the Department of Health has not even bothered to talk to Essex Rivers Healthcare NHS Trust, which is responsible for Colchester general hospital, about the collapse of the expansion scheme. The information that I gleaned prompted the Colchester Evening Gazette last Friday to publish a comment article headed “Sort this mess out now”.
A senior member of staff at Colchester general hospital has used much more colourful language to express his seething disapproval of what has happened. He told me last night:
“Senior consultants are appalled by the way in which our PFI was axed without any meaningful consultation with those who will now find themselves in a Health Service ‘poverty trap’.”
I am no
fan of the private finance initiative to fund public services and
buildings. They tend to end up costing the public purse
more—mortgaging future generations with huge debts—and
operate on the basis of generating profit for the private sector
companies at
the expense of public services, to the disadvantage of both those
working in the public services and the public who use those
services.
Colchester is growing rapidly. There are extensive residential developments not only in the town but throughout north Essex. We have a bigger population and an increasingly ageing one. The present hospital facilities are simply inadequate. There has to be expansion. The cost of the abandoned expansion has been put at £10 million wasted. Of that, about £3 million has been lost by the NHS—by the local Essex Rivers Healthcare NHS Trust and the NHS centrally—and an estimated £7 million by the private sector partner. However, it has been reported that the private sector partner will seek to recover the £7 million it has spent, which, if the Department of Health caves in and agrees, will see the total loss to the NHS being anything up to £10 million, without anything to show for it.
The situation is so serious that last week Colchester borough council registered its deep concerns, with all three political parties tabling motions on the subject. The council resolved to invite the Secretary of State for Health
“to share urgently with the people of north-east Essex her alternative strategy for delivery of the expansion of their hospital and the development of local cancer services within the timetable originally envisaged.”
There are real fears locally that unless cancer services are centralised at Colchester general hospital, as had been agreed, many of those services will be transferred to other towns. An urgent assurance is therefore sought that the promise of improved cancer treatment services centred on Colchester general hospital will be delivered. There is, however, a sliver of a silver lining to the dark cloud, because scrapping the privately funded £160 million expansion will save taxpayers from a financial millstone. They would have had to foot the bill over the next 30 years.
The big issue now is what happens next. We have to make up for four years of time and effort that has been wasted on the costly PFI adventure, and to seek funds directly from the Government to pay for the developments that have been identified as being required. For decades, under successive Conservative and Labour Governments, residents of Colchester and north Essex have received less than their fair share of NHS funding. In 2001, after two years of local debate, the then Secretary of State for Health approved a £2.4 million grant for the local trust to embark on the Government’s recommended and approved PFI process to obtain the finances to underpin a truly centralised and modernised service.
Time is against me, but let me just conclude with the comments of my source:
“If the Government had the wit of a potato it would see the obvious and step back from destroying the fabric and function of the NHS. Our patients deserve better than what is on offer. Patient choice under this administration seems to come down to ‘take it or lump it’.”
It is to be hoped that the Department of Health will do the decent thing and fund the £160 million expansion that, as has been proved, is clearly needed at Colchester general hospital.
6.39 pm
Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con): We must have had a record number of speakers and a record number of issues raised in a summer recess Adjournment debate. I start by referring to the comments made by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) about our former colleague, the late Kevin Hughes. He was indeed a decent and hard-working Member of the House, and our thoughts are with his family and friends.
It is not surprising that a large number of speeches were about the health service. The debate was kicked off by the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who bemoaned the cut in funding for hospital redevelopment in his constituency, and he particularly mentioned Leicester general hospital, which will not get the money that it was expecting. That theme was continued by a number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink), who referred to the lack of provision and the rationing of treatment, particularly for Alzheimer’s and rheumatoid arthritis. As a patron of the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, I share his concerns on that point.
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