Ealing Hospital

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Rupa Huq

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Although the debate is difficult, it is a great pleasure to follow my two neighbours from the London Borough of Ealing, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) for securing this debate today. As the MP for Ealing hospital, no one has done more than he has to champion the cause of that hospital over the four years that it has been under threat. As we see from the petition that generated this debate—not the first petition of this size—he is admirably and clearly reflecting the view of the vast majority of people not only in Ealing borough but across west London.

Apart from their choice of Member of Parliament, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) may be one of the most unlucky in the country. To lose one A&E department may be considered unfortunate; to lose four must be an all-time record. Following the closures of Central Middlesex and Hammersmith and the downgrading of Ealing and Charing Cross to non-type 1 status, her constituents will be in a very difficult position, as will all our constituents.

I am here today for two reasons. I am not an Ealing MP, but I want to support my colleagues and I want to say—I think the Minister will accept this—that the proposals for Ealing hospital are inextricably linked, under the “Shaping a healthier future” programme, to the future of the eight other major hospitals in west and north-west London, four of which, as we have seen, will undergo substantial change and either closure or downgrading of services, or at least movement of services elsewhere.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton said, we have debated this subject many times. I do not think that is surprising. I make no apology for that, given the importance of the issue. In the recent debate in March, which was an across-London debate, “Shaping a healthier future” was raised several times. One of the matters on which I and others pressed the Minister was when we would see the next developments. I was grateful when the Minister said that Members would have the next important document—the draft of the implementation business case—as soon as possible.

Since that debate we have also managed to fix a date, 25 May, for the 11 MPs to meet the health service management across north-west London. Unfortunately, I have been told by my clinical commissioning group that the document will not be available for the meeting, although it will be available later in the summer. The sooner we can see that document and have an update on what the proposals are for Ealing and the other hospitals, the better. I say that because this will be familiar not only to Members here, but to the many people in the Public Gallery. The difficulty we have had over the past four years is a lack of information.

We began with the bombshell proposals in the summer of 2012, which effectively proposed the closure of Ealing and Charing Cross hospitals, leaving just a primary care facility on the site. There was a modification when the final proposals were brought forward in February 2013. Those proposals—which most of us regarded as a fig leaf, albeit a very expensive fig leaf—were for the demolition and disposal of a substantial portion of the site, but with the building of new facilities, primarily for primary care and some other treatment, while still using the majority of emergency and acute services on the site. Since then, nothing. Indeed, we have been waiting a couple of years for the business case. In the place of factual information, rumours tend to spread. As was mentioned previously, nothing has changed.

As for Ealing hospital, the very strong rumour is that, given the poor financial condition of the NHS and the scepticism of the Treasury about the programme, it is likely that the service cuts and reconfigurations will go ahead, but also that the existing buildings will be retained. Those buildings were not designed for the purposes for which they will now be used and will not receive the funding to modernise them that was at least the mitigation in the previous proposals. The sooner we know one way or the other on that, the sooner we can have a proper discussion about it. The news that Imperial will have a £50 million deficit this year—I think the situation for north-west London hospitals is even worse—suggests that the financial imperative is continuing to drive this

Although the health service itself may have been quiet—certainly in what it has told Members and the public—my constituents and those of my hon. Friends have not been quiet over the past few years. As I say, the petition that generated this debate is not the first petition of more than 100,000 signatures that has been lodged. I hope that more attention is paid to this one than has been paid to previous ones. I pay tribute to the thousands of people who have not only signed petitions but been active in the campaign, which is going into its fifth year. The uncertainty is not helping anyone.

The public, the organised campaigns and the local authorities have acted responsibly. The local authorities commissioned the Mansfield report, a serious document that was not taken seriously enough by the NHS. The level of demoralisation is extremely high, and is combined with issues relating to the junior doctors’ dispute. Places such as the Imperial College school of medicine are centres of excellence for training junior doctors. I have spoken many times to the staff there and their morale is very low. All staff morale is very low because people do not know where they are going to be working or what job they will have. They do not know whether the facilities they are working in will survive, or whether they are going to be run down in the meantime. Consequently, we have a substantial overreliance on agency staff. That is not a good template for the NHS.

I appreciate the fact that there are financial difficulties throughout the country and that the situation in west and north-west London is not unique. Nevertheless, I do not think that any other areas have had to put up with this reorganisation—or whatever we want to call it—for as long as we have.

[Dr Huq]

When my hon. Friend made the point about the loss of four A&E departments, he reminded me of the saying, “Once is unfortunate, twice is a coincidence, but three times is beginning to look like a habit.” I do not believe that any saying even goes up to four. Does he agree that it is unprecedented to lose four A&E departments?

[Andy Slaughter]

Yes, I do. I anticipate that we are unlikely to get much by way of an answer from the Minister today, although I will be delighted if she does have some news to impart. I hope she will take the debate in the spirit it has been conducted, because there is genuine anxiety. What we are asking for and what will help is transparency. It may be that we do not like what we hear any more than we liked what we heard three or four years ago, but it is getting beyond a joke now.

We talk a lot about hundreds of millions of pounds of money and about people’s love for institutions such as hospitals, but if we are pragmatic about it, at the end of the day the important thing is whether individuals receive a good standard of care. By coincidence, this morning I spent half an hour on the phone to a constituent whose husband’s life was saved two years ago when he had a serious aneurism. They were told by the professor who operated on him that had they taken a few moments longer to reach Charing Cross hospital, which they live very close to, that would have been the end.

The rider to that is that last week the same gentleman was rushed to Charing Cross hospital again with a recurrence of that issue. He spent seven hours there before being transferred to St Mary’s in Paddington, where he again received very good treatment. I hear again and again that the system is beginning to break down and people are not necessarily taken to the right place at the right time or, when they do get there, they are not seen quickly enough. That is not a criticism of the staff, who are working extremely hard against the odds and are highly professional.

We are very lucky to have such world-class hospitals in west London. We do not take that for granted, but I have given just one example of the kind of story I could probably repeat every week. I worry about the future of the health service for my constituents and those of my colleagues if we do not get to grips with the situation quickly. We are drifting in a way that means that the excellent and superb levels of healthcare we have become used to over the years are no longer likely to be maintained.

NHS in London

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Rupa Huq

Thursday 24th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huq]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We are trying to have a serious debate, but we are pooh-poohed at every turn. When my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) asked a question about the Mansfield report, he was told that he was living in a bygone age. I cannot recall the exact remark, but it was something like, “You’re an old soldier fighting a war that’s concluded.” Dismissing people in that way does not inspire confidence.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I always do what I am told by my hon. Friend—the dismissive comment was that the Mansfield report was commissioned by five Labour councils. I have actually had a slightly more considered response, but it was still dismissive. It was a very serious independent report, and I am sure my hon. Friend will agree that the Minister should take it a bit more seriously.

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend puts it very well. People’s concerns are serious and should not simply be dismissed.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) that the community pharmacy network is a vital component of our country’s health and care system. Suddenly, the Government seem to be imposing arbitrary cuts in a high-value, easily accessed, community-based facility, which relies on private investment as well—pharmacists are small businesspeople. Hiten Patel of the Mattock Lane pharmacy opened my eyes when I spent a bit of time shadowing him there. I saw how the burden on the NHS and GPs is reduced by people having such pharmacies at the end of their street. For most people, they are much nearer than a hospital or even a GP service.

Hiten Patel and his staff help people to make lifestyle choices. They provide a range of services and information to promote health, wellbeing and self-care. They are a useful check on prescribing errors and are dedicated and trusted people. We have such pharmacies all over the country, and they form obvious back-up and support at a time of crisis for GP recruitment and retention. We should value those people, not make life more and more difficult for them.

Last Sunday, I collected my elderly mum’s meds from Harbs pharmacy in South Ealing Road. That pharmacist is open out of hours. I recall that one year he was open even on 25 December—I did not go past this year, but he was probably open then as well. That releases the Ealing Park surgery practice next door for more acute and specialist care, but the Government seem to do short-termism. The long-term impact of eroding the network will have a disastrous effect.

Another troubleshooting service that is located at the heart of the community and has hidden value is opticians. They, too, have a valuable role of social contact, with networks and support mechanisms, and they can contribute to signposting and safeguarding the vulnerable. As the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) pointed out in connection with community pharmacists, opticians can also catch things early.

I visited the Hynes opticians in Northfield Avenue, where staff are worried about the continuity of their supply chain. Joint strategic needs assessments enable clinical commissioning groups and local authorities to work in tandem, and the Ealing Council assessment mentions effective eye services and sight loss, but the NHS Ealing CCG does not use the JSNA in its commissioning decisions. Will there be some guidance from the Minister about how to integrate CCGs and local authorities better?

I could go into mental health services, which are chronically underfunded and a huge cause for concern. The Prime Minister made a speech about them last month, but I would like to see more action. Labour has a shadow mental health services Minister. The chief executive of Central and North West London Foundation Trust, Claire Murdoch, has claimed in an interview that mental health can be an “easy target” at times of belt tightening, saying that

“during recessions mental health tends to be hit first and hardest and recover most slowly…There is an absolute anxiety that people are depressed and really are suffering as a result of some of the economic reforms. What we don’t know yet is the extent to which some of the welfare reforms are driving people to real, serious illness.”

I have the sense of morale taking a nosedive locally. My constituent Michael Mars, who is now retired but was a senior consultant at Great Ormond Street hospital, said:

“The essential problem is the feeling of impotence experienced by those at the coal face

because of an

“overwhelming management culture where clinical knowledge and experience is secondary to management.”

Such words echo, because we hear them from a lot of other public service professions such as teachers and the police. They all say that they are doing all the paperwork and are not allowed to do what they are supposed to do. Michael Mars talked about survival in the culture of management and worries that we might be in danger of forgetting what clinical consultants are appointed to do.

At the other end of the career scale are junior doctors, on whom there was a debate in this Chamber on Monday. I have had numerous representations from constituents who are junior doctors. The latest NHS staff survey showed that the percentage of junior doctors suffering from work-related stress has gone from 20% in 2010 to 34% in 2015.

High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Rupa Huq

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I rise to support new clauses 26 and 32. Paradoxically, I agree with most of what has been said today, because I do think that it is possible to be pro-infrastructure investment, pro-progress and pro-brand new trains. I am pro the concept of high-speed rail, but I am not pro-HS2 Ltd and, as the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) said, the rather cavalier way it operates. In the Select Committee its QC called my residents tedious, which I thought showed complete contempt for them.

New clause 26 is about protecting vulnerable businesses and the time given for relocation. I have spoken to some of the businesses in the Park Royal area of my constituency. The businesses there are quite mixed. Many of them deal with food preparation—for example, supplying olives to restaurants in the west end—and need to be close to the A40, which is a vital artery. They are family businesses. They have been told that when it happens they will be given three months to relocate. They have a combined turnover in the millions. They are all extremely concerned that they will be forced to close because three months is not enough time for them to start again.

I spoke with a prop hire company. It occupies thousands of square feet of warehouse space, with antiques and big fat televisions behind wooden veneer cabinets. It supplies props for films such as “Star Wars”. It would find it very difficult to find alternative premises quickly. Those companies would also like an assurance of 100% compensation for their sites, not the 90% on offer.

The Conservative party is the party of business, surely. It is the party of small and medium-sized enterprises. [Interruption.] I think this new clause has genuine cross-party support, judging by the Members who have signed it. It is deeply worrying that those firms are being forced to move towards what is called extinguishment, because apparently their balance sheets do not show enough turnover, so HS2 considered their financial value to be too small to warrant relocation. That is a slap in the face and an insult to hard-working, small family businesses.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is doing a brilliant job of representing her constituents, as she always does. Does she agree—I think this is the purpose of her new clauses—that it is often the businesses in urban areas that are the most fragile and therefore the worst affected, but the levels of compensation and concern shown to them is the worst on offer—[Interruption.]

Prisons and Probation

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Rupa Huq

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter]

The cuts in staff lie at the root of many of the problems I am identifying. The fact that in many cases prisoners now spend 22 or 23 hours in their cell, and have restrictions on work, education and association, is leading to increased violence and poor behaviour in prisons. That is a very short-sighted development. I think the Government realise that, but perhaps too late.

Turning to probation and reoffending, figures I obtained last month revealed that almost one in 10 offenders are convicted of an offence within 18 days of release. HM inspectorate of probation’s fourth report on the implementation of transforming rehabilitation was published on 15 January. It highlighted the disparity in performance between the national probation service, which is still part of the National Offender Management Service, and the 21 community rehabilitation companies managed by private providers. For CRCs, one quarter of the offenders sampled had been convicted of a further offence, whereas for the NPS the figure was less than one fifth. On child protection and safeguarding on home visits, the NPS again outperformed CRCs. Earlier this month, the Lord Chancellor’s Department stopped publishing figures relating to staffing figures at CRCs. Why was this, except to conceal the hundreds of experienced probation staff being laid off across the country to promote the bottom line for the CRCs’ owners?

Let me turn to the youth estate, and in particular the role of G4S. We welcome the measures announced yesterday by the Lord Chancellor to effectively put Medway secure training centre into special measures. This is unsurprising, as they are exactly what I called for in an urgent question two weeks ago. I also welcome the decision by the director of Medway to stand down. However, individuals should not bear the entirety of the blame for what looks like corporate failure by G4S. I have now written to the Serious Fraud Office to ask that it investigates the allegations, made in the BBC “Panorama” programme on Medway, that instances of disorder were concealed to avoid G4S incurring fines under its contract. This is in addition to the ongoing SFO investigation into G4S and Serco’s manipulation of the tagging contracts for financial gain.

G4S has a truly dismal record of managing public contracts here and abroad. At Rainsbrook STC, six staff were dismissed and the contract was terminated last September, following an inspection report that said some staff were on drugs while on duty, colluded with detainees and behaved extremely inappropriately with young people. The company taking over the contract is MTCnovo. It is a name not well known in this country because, in origin, it is a US prison firm. As such, it presided over a riot in an Arizona state prison and ran a youth facility in Mississippi that a judge described as

“struggling with disorder, periodic mayhem, and staff ineptitude which leads to perpetual danger to the inmates and staff.”

It probably left that reference out of its application, along with the fact that its directors helped to set up Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

The problems of the youth estate go way beyond G4S, however, which is why the chief inspector of prisons has called for an inquiry into the failings at Medway and the implications for the wider youth justice system.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

On the Justice Committee, we interviewed the chief inspector and found his answers on ministerial interference in his reports very interesting. Does my hon. Friend agree that, to the outside world, the fact that the chief inspector’s contract is not being renewed makes it look like he was doing an effective job in holding the MOJ to account, and is now being silenced?

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, and one that I will come on to.

If the Lord Chancellor is a prison reformer, as he is now billed, we are prepared to work with him. He could start with the Prison Reform Trust report, “Correction or care? the use of custody for children in trouble”, published last year, which looked at successful models around the world. Successful prisons are becoming smaller, more focused and more rooted locally, which is why he is right to abandon his predecessor’s plans for a new borstal. Although he is also to be commended for wishing to close unsuitable prisons, if, as a consequence, prisons are built a long way from friends and family or we move from local to titan prisons, that will have its own drawbacks.

We need prison watchdogs with real teeth and independence. The outgoing inspector, Nick Hardwick, has done a great job in spite of, not because of the Government. This brings me to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq). The reports last week that the MOJ had tried to control or muzzle him were outrageous. I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s announcement yesterday that he will retain Mr Hardwick’s expertise as head of the Parole Board, but let us use this opportunity to shake things up. We need a stronger, more independent inspectorate that is able to produce reports with total independence from the MOJ and to conduct more frequent and unannounced inspections.