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Susan Kramer:
I thank my hon. Friend for those comments. The fact that relevant information has not been put into the public arena so that ordinary residents
can be involved and can have their say when matters touch their lives so closely is a vital part of the reason why I am on my feet today. He mentioned his success in keeping open a maternity ward in a particular hospital. The hospital that those in the Richmond end of my constituency used to use was Queen Mary's in Roehampton. The accident and emergency department there closed, and shortly afterwards the rest of the hospital was gradually shut down. Without accident and emergency, it became unsustainable as a district general hospital. It has now been rebuilt and is a lovely facility, but it has only a handful of specialist services. It does not function as a general hospital any more, but deals just with minor injuries and orthopaedics and has a couple of mental health wards. It is very pleasant, but is not in any way a hospital. It is a shock to the system to know that my residents will no longer be able to go to Kingston, which they can at least get to-there is a decent, or possible, train service and one can get there reasonably well by car-and that they will instead have to go to Tooting. That is completely unacceptable.
We have seen all the reports today about the closures in north-east London-I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton will take us through the reports in more detail-but at least the NHS in north-east London has made the effort to put that information into the public domain. We now ask for the same in relation to south-west London. We ask for information, we ask to be told about these matters, and we ask to be included in the process. We are here to say that the key services at Kingston hospital-the accident and emergency, maternity, in-patient paediatric and elective surgery services-are done well and that we need a hospital in the area that is within decent reach for members of our community. We ask the Minister to step back and rethink this issue in great detail. If he wishes to join us in our campaign, we would more than welcome having him on board, because it is crucial that we save the services at Kingston hospital.
9.53 pm
Mr. Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD): May I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) for securing the debate and for the way in which she has presented the case for Kingston hospital? It is a fantastic hospital that has served the people of my constituency, Richmond Park and many others in south-west London for many years. In recent times, it has, if anything, improved significantly; indeed, with the campaigns that my colleagues and I have run in the past 10 to 12 years, there has been more investment. We now have a relatively new accident and emergency department, which was rebuilt between 1999 and 2001, and the maternity service has expanded and is extremely popular. The only complaint that I ever receive about it is that people are not able to get in to give birth to their children at Kingston hospital. That is why I campaigned for it to be expanded.
The House does not have to take my word for the excellent and improving services. Hon. Members can look at reports by various regulators. I refer them particularly to the independent report from outside the NHS by Dr. Foster. His 2009 hospital guide lists Kingston hospital as London's top district general hospital. Of 149 hospital trusts in England, it came 15th, topping band 4 and only fractionally missing out on being in the
top band, which was made up of mainly large teaching hospitals, not district general hospitals such as Kingston. On all the reports that Dr. Foster gives, Kingston scores extremely high. That is independent non-NHS recent verification of our confidence in the hospital.
That confidence is shared not only by us and by our constituents, but by the Prime Minister. A few days into his term in office, he chose with the then Secretary of State for Health, now the Home Secretary, to visit Kingston hospital. It was his first visit to an NHS facility as Prime Minister. Why did he do that? Because of the progress at Kingston hospital in reducing MRSA, and because of the innovation and success in the hospital in many other aspects of its service. So we had the Prime Minister giving a vote of confidence to Kingston hospital.
I can give Kingston hospital a vote of confidence from my own family. On two or three occasions I had to take my late grandmother to A and E, where she received fantastic care when she needed it when she was extremely ill. Just over two years ago, we had the happy experience of our first child being born in Kingston maternity unit. We were there for a while, and I was enormously impressed by the care of the midwives, consultants, and all the medical and other staff in the hospital, who looked after us fantastically. From my own personal experience, I can say what a wonderful hospital it is. As important is the experience of my constituents who, one after the other, over the years have come to me to praise Kingston hospital. That is not to say that there has not been the odd problem. Of course there has. I have dealt with complaints too, but the vast majority of my constituents support the hospital.
So when I was told by a local NHS chief executive that Kingston hospital's accident and emergency and maternity units were under threat, I thought it was a joke. I said, and I still say, that that was inconceivable, but I am afraid that, having been told by not just one NHS chief executive in the area but by four, and by a senior clinician at four meetings, and having met some staff who have to crunch the data and are distressed at the idea that the maternity department at Kingston could be closed, I had to take their word for it.
We expected the report on 18 December. We had prepared a website, ready to launch our campaign on 18 December because that is when we had been told the NHS would go public. We were then told that the document would not be published until 25 January, as my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park said. Interestingly, over the weekend, I received a document, the south-west London strategic plan, marked "Private and confidential" and "Final draft" and dated 18 December 2009. We had been told that it was not ready for that date, but now it clearly was ready. We have a few pages of it-the most relevant ones, which we will put on our campaign website tonight, so that everyone can see what the NHS, the Government and others have been trying to hide before the election.
Given that we are putting into the public domain the pages that we have been sent, I hope the Minister will put the whole report into the public domain. The thrust of the report is clear. Of the 18 options proposed in the report, one in three would see Kingston hospital's maternity, accident and emergency, and paediatric in-patient departments closed. That is the threat that we have been talking about. In 16 of the 18 options, Kingston would
lose a significant service from its hospital. That is a serious threat to local health care. The report mentions other potential closures at nearby hospitals, and let me make it absolutely clear that we support those hospitals and note the concerns about the threat to them, not least because the health system is a system: if one place is cut, the effects can be felt elsewhere.
10 pm
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. -(Mrs. Hodgson.)
Mr. Davey: If other units at nearby hospitals are closed, that will impact on Kingston hospital. Anyone who has gone to the hospital's A and E department or, indeed, its maternity department will know how busy they are. Those departments do not have lots of spare capacity, with staff sitting around doing nothing; the units and the staff are at full stretch and do a fantastic job. If units at St. Helier hospital were to close, for example, that would have a big impact on Kingston hospital, too.
These are serious proposals; they are under active consideration; and they would seriously undermine the health care of our constituents. We therefore make no apology for launching our campaign, and, given that we are publishing the evidence today, I hope that our political opponents in the Labour and Conservative parties who accuse us of scaremongering will withdraw that accusation and join our campaign. On our website we have almost 7,000 signatures; we have more in hard copy; and no doubt we will present those petitions to the House in due course. On our Facebook site almost 14,000 have joined us, and from their testimonies we hear story after story about the excellent care that they and their families have enjoyed. It is a tribute to Kingston hospital staff and the wider NHS that the hospital is held in such high esteem, and I find it outrageous that some people have tried to undermine the campaign and make people question whether the stories were true, when we have put forward the evidence to back up what we say.
Back in November, before we went public, the British Medical Association published a document entitled, "London's NHS: on the brink". It mentioned a review not just in south-west London, but throughout the capital, and it cited all the work that had taken place and all the contracts that had been let to consultants, such as McKinsey, to do the number-crunching in order to close down services throughout the capital. Interestingly, on page 31 of the document, which is on our website and the BMA's, the document concludes that
"few of their plans to scale back spending are going to attract much-if any-public support: and in many areas they have been discussing plans at PCT and sector level in secret. NHS London has refused to publish the full McKinsey report on which they have based their guidance to PCTs."
I shall quote a little more from the report, because it is directly relevant to our debate. It states:
"A key focus for those campaigning to defend London's services must therefore centre on full disclosure and public debate on all of these policies and on the assumptions and projections on which they are based. This is vital to give Londoners a real chance to
campaign not only against cuts they oppose at local level but to take a wider view of the framework which is dictating cutbacks across the NHS."
The BMA therefore said to politicians in November, "Let's get this in the public domain and expose what's going on so the public can be involved."
Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham) (LD): My hon. Friend is helpfully putting that information in the public domain, but the disquiet is even wider than he suggests. In that private and confidential document, which I obtained because it affects my constituency, too, the West Middlesex University hospital is also noted as being considered for hot or cold siting. That new hospital was opened by the current Prime Minister and the then Minister for Health only a few years ago, and it, too, now appears to be in the mix. If it is brought into question, the impact on west and south-west London will be utterly devastating and compound the effects that my hon. Friend has described.
Mr. Davey: My hon. Friend is absolutely right.
In case Members, who are listening and who may have spoken to NHS staff but clearly have not seen the report that we now have, are in any doubt that this is a concerted campaign to try to cut local NHS services, I have put on our campaign website a document from 29 June 2009, "South-west London sector presentation", which has also come our way. Slides 13 and 14 of that make very clear our assertion that A and E units, maternity units and in-patient paediatric services have been under fire and targeted by some people in the NHS for many months now. We have the evidence-it is absolutely unambiguous. I hope that the Minister is now going to do what Ministers, and the NHS, should have been doing before, and put all this evidence in the public domain.
In the north-east of London, as my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park told the House, we are seeing the cuts that will be entailed. In north-east London, which is the first of five NHS sectors in the capital to spell out the cost-cutting plans, a total of 800 hospital beds are to go and more than £500 million is to be slashed from hospital budgets by 2017. No wonder NHS bosses, and presumably Ministers, did not want all the other sector reports in the public domain before the election, although, bizarrely, they told us that that was what they were going to do-then they shut up shop. Astonishingly, the Conservatives-certainly some people in south-west London who want to represent the Conservative party-have been accusing us of scaremongering, so presumably if they had received this information, they would have colluded in the secrecy and not have put it into the public domain. That is the implication of their criticisms of us. We believe that this information should be in the public domain. We call on the Government and the NHS to give full disclosure-then the public can have a real debate and we will not continue to have all the slurs that we have had from some people about our campaign.
I have spoken to the leader of my party, to our health spokesman, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), from the Treasury team. We are clear that we will protect front-line NHS services. We will campaign for these services to be retained, because they are critical if we are to maintain and
improve the quality of health care. Now that this debate is in the public domain, all political parties, all candidates, and those outside political parties can make their position plain. The Conservatives have said-I am reading from a leaflet of theirs:
"We will impose an immediate moratorium on proposed closures of A and E and maternity units across the country."
Well, in my dictionary a moratorium says a delay or a suspension-it does not say, "We will not close these services." That is the concern that people will have when they look at what the Conservatives are saying. They may then realise that the Conservatives did not want this information in the public domain and wanted to undermine the campaign because they are not committed to maintaining these services as fully as we are. I hope that they will change their minds as a result of what we are doing tonight and what we are putting into the public domain. It is not good enough for them to sit on the fence and talk about moratoriums when the people of Kingston and Surbiton, Richmond Park and Twickenham want to ensure that these services are not lost.
Who is to blame? We know about the Government's spending plans. They are talking about a real-terms freeze on health spending for the next four or five years; no doubt the Minister will be able to give us more detail. That sounds okay-they are going to maintain spending in real terms-but then we look at the fine print, which says that in each year while there is a real-terms freeze there will have to be a 3.5 per cent. efficiency saving. Over five years-do the maths-that is getting on for a 20 per cent. reduction in resources across the capital. I hope that the Minister will give us his figures on this. If he denies our figures, he needs to tell his NHS managers, because the figures came from them. They have said that over the next five years we are looking at cuts of possibly up to £5 billion across London's NHS and £600 million in south-west London. That is a lot from a relatively small part of London.
We are told that half the savings will be made in cuts to mental health services, primary care and community health services and the other £300 million in cuts to the acute sector. It will be interesting to see whether the Minister confirms that or denies it, because those are the figures to which NHS staff are working and what they say the Government tell them to work to. Considering the financial difficulties faced by this country in the years ahead, no one will deny that we must find ways to make savings, but those are not the savings that the Government should be making. Cuts to front-line services are unacceptable.
Some people are saying that the savings are due to the introduction of polyclinics. If that is the case, let us have that debate, but it is interesting that although Surbiton hospital in my constituency is scheduled to be modernised by becoming one of the new polyclinics, the services that the Kingston NHS trust is discussing are not services that will be closed at Kingston hospital. No one is suggesting that accident and emergency, maternity or paediatric inpatient services should move to Surbiton; the trust is saying that out-patient services will move. That is not controversial in our area. I have spoken to NHS Kingston and the hospital, which say that the services could move from Kingston to Surbiton hospital with their blessing as long as they are involved. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it prompts the question why the Government are pursuing those plans.
Mike Penning: If the case that the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) are making is true, why did the Liberal Democrats have to use an activist to spin the story to the London Evening Standard, as reported by Guido Fawkes? The hon. Gentleman likes online information; well, here is some:
"Guido reported on Friday the tale of the Lib Dem activist boasting about his spin that got the Standard to report"
the proposed closure of Kingston hospital. Is that person still a member of the Liberal Democrats, or has he been thrown out?
Mr. Davey: It is interesting that that is the best that the hon. Gentleman can do, having visited Kingston hospital last week. We are talking about unpublished documents from the NHS that have come into our hands confirming our charge that the Government had secret plans that they would not allow to be published. We are debating not Guido Fawkes, but NHS documents that are now in the public domain. If the hon. Gentleman relies for his health policies on Guido Fawkes, he has problems. He ought to be reading the NHS documents that show that what we are saying is correct and what he and his colleagues say is wrong.
Mike Penning: Interestingly, the hon. Gentleman says that he has the final draft. The full copy was leaked to me; it dates from 15 January, not 18 December. I will give him a copy after the debate. A reputable journalist-actually, he is a journalist from the Daily Mail who supports the Labour party-was sitting opposite that Liberal Democrat activist, who was boasting on the phone that he had spun a story that was not true to the London Evening Standard. Is that person still a member of the Liberal Democrats, and why did they have to spin a story to a local paper if all the facts were there to be publicised?
Mr. Davey: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman listens to all Conservative activists, as they often give some very rum quotes. We are talking about two Members of Parliament who met four chief executives and one medical director, and who had NHS documents that we are putting in the public domain. That is serious politics, unlike the politics that he seems to go in for.
I am grateful to the Kingston Informer, the Kingston Guardian and the Surrey Comet, which have attended our press conferences, listened to what we have had to say, read the documents that we have put in the public domain and reported our campaign fairly. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg), whose wife Miriam gave birth to their third son at Kingston hospital. My right hon. Friend can vouch personally for its excellent service. He has come down to join and support our campaign to save these services.
Will the Minister ensure that all the documents will be put into the public domain in full? We want a debate based not on myths and half-truths but on the full facts. We have now got the facts, and we want all the back-dated documents and all the working papers. We want to see the assumptions that the NHS, the McKinsey consultants and others are using to come up with these ludicrous proposals.
More than that, we want the Minister to give the people of Kingston and Surbiton, the people of Richmond Park, the people of Twickenham and the people of south-west London a guarantee that Kingston hospital's A and E and maternity units, its paediatric in-patients department and its elective surgery facilities-all of which have had important investment from the Labour Government in recent years-are not going to be closed. We need a guarantee that the investments and the campaigns that have been run to build up our hospital are not going to be given up on. The people of my constituency want the hospital's services to be saved, and it would be outrageous if secret, undisclosed plans that are being looked at by unelected bureaucrats were to produce a fait accompli for the next Secretary of State for Health. It is time that we had this debate, and I hope that the Minister will ensure that it can be a fully informed, public debate.
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