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The hon. Member for North-East Milton Keynes asked about the multi-donor trust fund. As I said earlier, £47 million has been given, and we remain committed to meeting the target that we set ourselves. We all want to see the quick delivery mechanism; although we support efforts to make the MDTF more flexible, there is a trade off between fiduciary standards and speed of delivery. Looking forward to the next Sudan consortium meeting early in 2008, we hope to address some of the issues correctly raised by the hon. Gentleman. He also spoke about the common humanitarian fund and channelling funds to meet the most urgent of needs is an absolute priority.

A breakdown of projects cannot be given today, but disbursal by non-governmental organisations is rising. NGOs received 26 per cent. of the fund in 2007, compared with just 12 per cent. in 2006. As for results, in 2007 the common humanitarian fund supported the return and reintegration of some 180,000 people displaced by the civil war.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West mentioned the Government of Scotland. I am not aware of any approaches having been made by them, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development is a former Secretary of State for Scotland. I am sure that he would want to maximise the impact of the work that we do in Sudan by working with all nations of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Tom Clarke: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He is making an absolutely excellent speech, and has a firm grasp of all the issues raised today. Will he join with me in saying that we should continue working with our colleagues in the European Union, particularly with France? We believe that they have much to offer. I thank the Minister again for his excellent contribution.

Mr. Malik: It is right that we work with all nations and parties, including the EU, which has an important role to play. Again, I commend my right hon. Friend for his efforts on these and wider issues. I now need to get on the home straight, as only 90 seconds remain.

As the Prime Minister made clear, if the situation improves we are prepared to act in support. As part of the joint initiative for Darfur and as an incentive for the peace process, the UK will ensure that when political progress is made it will be matched by economic support. However, if the Government of Sudan and the rebels do not meet their commitments, I make it clear that we will pursue further, targeted sanctions.

On Sunday night, I attended the Muslim “Live 8” concert for peace in Darfur, which was organised by Islamic Relief. About 10,000 people gathered in Wembley arena, which demonstrated the strength and depth of support here for the people of Darfur, and I congratulate the organisers on that timely initiative.

None of us should forget the people of Darfur, and we accept that we have an obligation to end their suffering. The CPA must be implemented, because only then will we have a chance to bring lasting peace to Darfur and the whole of Sudan. With the help of our international partners, we will work with the people of Sudan, letting them know that they are not alone. Our challenge is to deliver their dream—a Sudan where there is peace, prosperity and justice for all. We will meet that challenge.


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Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust

12.30 pm

Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con): I am glad to have the opportunity to follow the oral statement made by the Secretary of State for Health last week. Indeed, he was forced to make it, following the urgent question by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), whom I am glad to see in his place.

Like other Members of Parliament representing the area covered by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, I have received a number of letters from constituents whose relatives and nearest and dearest have been afflicted by hospital infections. As appalling and grim as these letters were to read—obviously, I took appropriate action on them—they did not prepare me and, I suspect, many others for the magnitude and severity of the criticism that came from the Healthcare Commission.

This is a scandal in which some 90 people have died directly, or most probably, because of Clostridium difficile. It is also a scandal because the treatment of individual patients in some cases can only be described as absolutely abominable. I should like to take this opportunity to put on the record this quote from the Healthcare Commission’s report:

I cannot think of a more disgraceful account of a part of the NHS than what has come out in this report revealing grossly inadequate management. I shall give just one example:

And there are some pretty strong criticisms of doctors:

Now, of course, we have a Kent police investigation into possible criminal offences.

Against this outrageous, appalling background, there have been just two resignations: the immediate, totally warranted, resignation of the chief executive and the further resignation—somewhat belatedly and reluctantly, I felt—of the chairman of the board of the trust. I must put it to the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ann Keen), and to the Secretary of State: is it right that, following such an appalling scandal, there should have been only two resignations from this trust?


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That brings me to the Government’s policy on severance payments for those who have fallen down on their job in the NHS. In my view, the former chief executive of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust should not be receiving one single penny in severance payments. Yet here we have the ludicrous position of the trust board having taken legal advice—I have a copy of the strictly private and confidential letter sent by the former chairman to the Secretary of State for Health confirming that—on the basis of which it is on one hand offering a very substantial sum to the outgoing chief executive while, on the other hand, the Secretary of State is desperately seeking to intervene to prevent the payment being made, which is wholly unacceptable.

I put it to the Minister that, surely, it is high time that the Government issued clear guidance to boards of NHS trusts about some of the basic terms of contract that they should be offering to the top management. A key element of those basic terms of contract should say, “If you succeed, you do well—you get recompensed financially, accordingly—but if you fall down on the job, do not expect to be bailed out with a significant sum at the taxpayer’s expense. Failure means no financial pay-out.” That should be the key watchword for the Government. I do not understand why such a policy has not been conveyed throughout the NHS.

So where do we go from here? We need to start right at the top of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. We have in place a new chief executive. Obviously, I wish him well in respect of an immense challenge facing him. I hope that he will hit it off distinctly better with the staff of the trust and, indeed, with patients than his predecessor did and I hope that he achieves infinitely greater success. However, I have to say that the chief executive’s first public utterances in his new role were not wholly comforting. They were as follows:

So here we have an acting part-time chief executive put into the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, which has suffered an appalling calamity for patients and now needs to be put on the road to recovery.

What is the position on the board? Two of my constituents who are consultants in the trust rang me yesterday. I asked them the same question: “Who is now the chairman of the board?” They gave me the same answer, saying: “We have no information as to who is now the chairman of the board.” One of those consultants added, “The trust is rudderless.” The Secretary of State must get in and grip this situation. We cannot have this trust left with a part-time chief executive and no chairman in its present plight. Will the Secretary of State look urgently, today, at the need for a full-time, razor-sharp chief executive and a truly effective chairman?

I now turn to the relationship between beds and infection control. I thought that what used to be called—and apparently still is called—hot-bedding went out with the Factory Acts in Victorian times. Well, I was wrong. Hot-bedding is still alive and well, although that is not a very appropriate term to use in reference to the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. It is still very much in use.

I noted the interesting comments in The Sunday Telegraph last Sunday about the relationship between hot-bedding and infection. The article said:


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It went on to refer to an important report that is being produced by Professor Barry McCormick, the Department of Health’s chief economist. That report apparently shows that

The article goes on:

Rather worryingly, the article went on to report that the Government do not seem to be keen that the report should see the light of day.

However, 90 per cent. is the danger threshold. What do we have in the Healthcare Commission’s report on the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust? It states:

with all the consequent dangers of infection. The particular scandal in our area—I have to put it that strongly—that I want to draw to the Minister’s attention is that on the one hand the acute trust, the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, is hot-bedding, while on the other hand, in the same area, the West Kent primary care trust had half the beds in its four community hospitals shut down in the whole of last year, which was one of the most absurd and short-sighted false economies in the NHS that could possibly be made.

Happily, West Kent PCT has finally woken up to the idiocy of shutting down the beds in its community hospitals. It is at least reopening the beds in three out of the four. The one where the beds are not being reopened at the moment is Tonbridge Cottage hospital in my constituency. Half the beds remain shut. I have received no respectable medical justification for keeping those beds in Tonbridge Cottage hospital shut. I wish through the Minister to urge the Secretary of State to issue a direction to the chairman and chief executive of the West Kent PCT to reopen the beds in Tonbridge Cottage hospital forthwith. That trust, at the moment, in my view, is failing in its duty of care to patients. There is no good reason for keeping those beds closed. They should be opened immediately.

I now want to turn to debt and its relationship to infection. I looked closely at and listened to what the Secretary of State for Health said last week, and he gave an extraordinary answer to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Anne Main). He said that there was “no correlation” between debt and C. difficile. Eradicating C. difficile costs money—it has to be funded. The Secretary of State himself, at the end of his statement, drew attention to the fact that he was spending an extra £50 million on dealing with C. difficile.

I bring to the Minister’s attention the extraordinary situation that we have with debt in the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. The trust is a victim of what the Government choose to call the resource accounting
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and budgeting, or RAB, system. The idiocy and unfairness of the system for the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust is that having paid off a historical debt of £17 million, under RAB it is required to pay off that same amount a second time over. It is intolerable that the trust should be put in that position, which is directly detrimental to patients.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) and my hon. Friends the Members for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) and for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) and I wrote not once, not twice but three times to the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt), urging her to remove the debt burden from the trust. I urge the Minister and the Secretary of State to wipe out the totally unjustifiable debt that the trust is having to make economies to try to pay off a second time.

Reconfiguration was also raised in the exchange with the Secretary of State last week. I thought that he gave a very strange answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson). He said that as far as the Maidstone reconfiguration proposal was concerned:

I appreciate that the Secretary of State has not been long in his job, but reconfiguration for Maidstone has already been referred to him and he, in turn, has referred it to the independent reconfiguration panel, which is due to report to him on 30 November. The matter is before the Secretary of State, who will have to take a decision on it in a few weeks’ time. I ask the Minister whether it makes sense, given the C. difficile scandal, for reconfiguration to be approved now to transfer services from Maidstone hospital to the antiquated buildings in the Kent and Sussex hospital and the Pembury hospital. Surely consideration should be given to delaying that reconfiguration until the new hospital is built.

Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con): My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, as ever. Will he confirm our understanding that the new hospital is absolutely imperative, if we are to have a long-term solution to these problems? Does he welcome the Secretary of State’s assurance that no expenditure on infection control will stand in the way of that? Does he share my concern that the Treasury holds the purse strings and will ultimately approve the new hospital? Will he join me in urging the Minister to urge her right hon. Friend the Chancellor to approve the hospital without delay whatever the final year balance of the new hospital?

Sir John Stanley: My hon. Friend has correctly anticipated my concluding remarks. I have been somewhat critical of the answers given by the Secretary of State for Health last week, but I should like to finish by saying that I wholly agreed with the Secretary of State’s reply to my hon. Friend, when he put that question to him last week. The Secretary of State gave a clear assurance that he was committed to the new hospital and that the case for the new hospital was made even stronger by the appalling experiences that we have suffered from the C. difficile outbreak.


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My constituents, and those of my hon. Friend, of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald and of my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks, have suffered grievously through the delay in the arrival of the new hospital. They have had to endure mixed-sex wards, antiquated buildings, antiquated layouts, and now that terrible infection. I urge the Secretary of State to approve our new Pembury hospital and to approve it forthwith.

12.48 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ann Keen): I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) on securing this important debate. I appreciate the comments that he and other hon. Members have made, and, in particular, the seriousness of the tone with which they have been expressed. Other Members from the area who are not in the Chamber today have also made their voices clear to me and to the Secretary of State.

I want to take the opportunity to offer my sincere condolences to all who have been affected by the tragic deaths that have occurred at the trust. Of course, that is not sufficient for grieving relatives and families. I have always acknowledged that since the announcement of the report, which is as serious as it gets. It showed a lack of management across the spectrum, from the wards to the board. There is no excuse for that at any level—from professional clinical staff, nurses, medical and biochemistry staff, to cleaners and managers. We have failed people across the health service spectrum. I have acknowledged that on previous occasions, and can do so again today, although it gives me no pleasure to say that to the right hon. Gentleman.

The report found that the trust board was unaware of the high infection rates, and did not spend enough time considering infection control. The report makes recommendations for action by the trust, including a review of the trust board’s leadership, prioritising of infection control at board level, risk management, clinical guidance, staffing levels and training. The right hon. Gentleman referred to a report by Professor McCormick, which will be updated and published, I believe, at the end of this year. We note that and look forward to his report back.

On other leadership matters in the trust, I accept totally the right hon. Gentleman’s comments about with whom the buck should stop. I personally think that that goes across the clinical field, and I know that a leadership review is taking place, which will report back shortly.

Greg Clark: It is now nearly two weeks since the report was published, but still people are employed by the trust who were directly criticised in it, including non-executives, with the exception of the chairman, who approved, we are told, the pay-off to the former chief executive. That seems to be an unconscionable delay. Under section 66 of the National Health Service Act 2006, the Secretary of State has the power to serve an intervention order to remove individuals. Will he make use of those powers?


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