A and E (Major Incidents)

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rehman Chishti

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman did not want to talk to the House about his own local hospital, which is performing extremely well for A and E. It would be good if more of those on the Opposition Benches talked about the good things that are happening in the NHS, including nine out of 10 people who go to A and E being seen within four hours.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the £13.4 million given to Medway Maritime hospital’s A and E department. Will he assure me that everything that can be done is being done to turn around hospitals in special measures such as Medway, which had the seventh highest mortality rate in 2006 yet nothing was done? Will he also join me in paying tribute to all the front-line staff who do a fantastic job at Medway?

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to do that. One of the things that this Government are most proud of is what we have done to turn around hospitals with entrenched low standards of care following the terrible tragedy at Mid Staffs, with 18 hospitals put into special measures and six of them turned around. Despite all the pressure on me and on this Government to hit targets, we are sending out signals to the system, loud and clear, that targets matter, but not at any cost, and that we do not want corners cut when it comes to patient safety.

A and E and Ambulance Services

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rehman Chishti

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I do agree. The first thing we could do as a step towards that is properly integrate out-of-hours care, linking out-of-hours GP services, A and E departments and 111 departments. Obviously, that needs to be linked into the in-hours GP care that people will give. I wish to commend the efforts being made in Cornwall to improve A and E performance, which has been getting better in recent weeks. We are all very encouraged by that, because there have been a lot of challenges in that area.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the personal support he has given to Medway Maritime hospital, particularly the extra £5.5 million given to the hospital to improve its A and E services. Will he confirm that hospitals in special measures and in challenging circumstances will receive any additional resources they need over the coming winter months?

[Mr Hunt]

We absolutely will make sure that we give Medway what it needs. I wish to thank my hon. Friend for his tireless campaigning to improve the situation, as it is very challenging there at the moment and he has taken a responsible attitude towards it. It is really important to praise the staff at the hospital, who are working very hard, and to reassure his constituents that although there are many improvement to be made, there is a lot of excellent care in that hospital and we all want to get there as quickly as we can.

NHS (Five Year Forward View)

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rehman Chishti

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I warmly congratulate the hon. Gentleman on being the first Labour Member to say in this House that a strong NHS needs a strong economy. May I encourage him to transmit that message to those on his Front Bench, and perhaps to the shadow Chancellor, who might then understand why people in the NHS are backing this Government because they know that we will deliver a strong economy? I do not know whether we can do all the things the hon. Gentleman talked about, but we will have a better chance with the fastest-growing economy in the G7.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for the support that he has personally given to Medway Maritime hospital in my constituency, including, at a meeting last week, a commitment of £5.5 million to increase its A and E capacity. Can he assure me that hospitals in special measures that have problems going back to 2006 with high death rates will be given extra resources from the funding announced today to ensure that they are turned around as quickly as possible?

[Mr Hunt]

I assure my hon. Friend, who has campaigned very hard to improve standards at Medway hospital, that, first, we want to support its doctors and nurses, who are more passionate than anyone about putting this difficult period behind them; and that secondly, I have no greater focus than on making sure that we do turn around these hospitals in difficulty. It is a challenging process, but the extra funds that I have announced today will benefit all hospitals, including Medway.

Five Year Forward View

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rehman Chishti

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady has made an important point. We would like more NHS land to be sold off for precisely those purposes.

There is a broader point to be made about housing, which is also important, and which I thought the hon. Lady was going to make. If we are to think about care in a more integrated way, we shall need to reform the NHS so that we look at people’s problems holistically, and that will include looking at their housing, which has a direct impact on their health. I think the structures that feature in the five-year plan begin to make such an approach possible for the first time, and I find that very exciting.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the key aim of our reforms is to support hospitals which have not been fully supported before? Medway Maritime hospital, which is in my constituency, had one of the highest mortality rates in 2005-06, but nothing was being done. I thank the Secretary of State for putting the hospital into special measures, so that it can secure the support that it needs to turn things around and my constituents can have an excellent hospital that delivers for them. I also thank him for visiting the hospital recently and meeting its excellent front-line staff, who do a great job.

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he has done for Medway Maritime. That was a very good visit: I met both management and staff, and gained a better idea of the challenges faced by the hospital.

The report makes it clear that we must become much better at tackling variations in care. Never again must we have a system in which hospitals are struggling and delivering poor care, and that poor care is swept under the carpet and nothing is done about it. The Government have put 18 hospitals into special measures—more than 10% of all the hospitals in the NHS—and that has been very challenging. We have been accused by Opposition Front Benchers of running down the NHS when we have done it, but do you know what has happened? Six of those hospitals have now come out of special measures, and nearly all the others have improved dramatically. It is time that the Labour party got behind what is a really good inspection programme, based on openness, honesty and transparency about problems.

Patient Safety

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rehman Chishti

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that very harrowing issue. I hope I can reassure him by saying that we are progressively extending the changes we introduced to hospital inspections to inspections of general practice and adult social care settings. The new inspection regime is designed to be much tougher when it comes to identifying problems. It is never possible to identify all abuse in an inspection, which is why what I have announced today is so important: it is about the creation of a culture that tries to prevent such problems from arising in the first place.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I welcome the statement and the work that the Secretary of State is doing. Mr Mufti, who was the medical director of Medway hospital under the last Government, raised serious concerns about the bullying of staff, which he feared was affecting the quality of care and patient safety. Will the new provisions address that problem?

[Mr Hunt]

That is exactly the intention. Following my conversation last week with Nigel Beverley, the chief executive of Medway, I think that the hospital is making good progress after going into special measures. However, it is important to recognise that while it is possible to change things externally, real culture change must come from inside. This is not a day on which we are announcing new targets or top-down initiatives. The Sign up to Safety campaign to be led by Sir David Dalton will be voluntary: hospitals must choose whether to sign up to it. I think that that will enable us to make more progress than we would make if we tried to do things in the old way.

Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rehman Chishti

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We have based our recommendation today precisely on what Salford Royal does. It uses the kind of model to ensure minimum recommended staffing levels on every ward that we want every hospital to use. We say that we want those data published monthly, but that is a minimum. Salford Royal publishes them every day, which is very impressive. Given that most hospitals are not using tools anything like as sophisticated as that, it will be a big step up for most hospitals to do that. We want to do it. What is significant about our announcement is that we want to assemble those data for every trust in the country so that they can be compared on a monthly basis and so that people can know how many wards and how many shifts are being safely staffed at their local hospital compared with neighbouring hospitals.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will know that Medway Maritime hospital in my constituency had the seventh worst mortality rate in 2005 and 2006, yet nothing was done until he put the hospital into special measures. It is now linked with the outstanding Frimley Park hospital, sharing good practice and turning things around, so that my constituents can get good care, while inspections are also on their way. He said that if hospitals do not turn things around in the short term, they will be put into administration, but what does “short term” mean—is it a year or six months?

[Mr Hunt]

Our intention is that the maximum period when a hospital is put into special measures should never be longer than a year. After that, if it is not making significant progress, there is the possibility of it being put into administration. The reason for that, precisely as my hon. Friend said, is that we cannot let poor standards and poor care persist over a long period. I am pleased about the progress made at Medway Maritime in recent months; Frimley Park, which is my local hospital, delivers truly outstanding care. He is absolutely right to say that it should never have taken so long to get to the heart of the problem.

Hospital Mortality Rates

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rehman Chishti

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I struggle to find the link between that question and Sir Bruce Keogh’s report on the 14 hospitals, but as the hon. Gentleman has asked about A and E, and as he is trying to take the moral high ground, perhaps he would explain why he has not been standing up in this House campaigning against Labour’s abysmal record, as it has missed its A and E targets in Wales since 2009.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

In 2005 and 2006 Medway Maritime hospital had the seventh worst mortality rate in the country, yet nothing was done. May I thank the Secretary of State for the actions he has put forward today, which will help improve the quality of care for my constituents and people from further afield?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is right. There were high mortality rates in his hospital in six of the nine years they were measured under the last Labour Government, and there were problems with A and E and with inappropriate medical interventions. He can say to his constituents today that the Government have identified the problem and have been transparent about it, and we will be accountable for sorting it out.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rehman Chishti

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Who exactly are the section-75 bogeymen that the hon. Gentleman hates: Whizz-Kidz who are supplying services to disabled children in Tower Hamlets, or Mind, which is supplying psychological therapy to people in Middlesbrough? The reality is that those regulations are completely consistent with the procurement guidelines that his Government sent to primary care trusts. He needs to stop trying to pretend that we are doing something different from what his Government were doing when in fact we are doing exactly the same.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

2. What support his Department has given to local authorities in respect of their new public health responsibilities.

Mental Health Act 1983

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rehman Chishti

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I shall certainly pass my hon. Friend’s question on to Dr Harris. It is not clear that the irregularity is a result of reorganisations, but I want to give Dr Harris a completely free hand. We shall then listen to what he says very carefully.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

rose—

[Rehman Chishti]

I am so sorry, Mr. Speaker.

I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for his statement. Despite the irregularity, sections 2 and 3 of the Mental Health Act give patients an automatic right to a tribunal hearing, and the tribunal will have been able to consider their applications for release.

[Mr Hunt]

That is correct. Nothing in the legislation will affect any rights that patients have, except with respect to the technical irregularity involving the authorisation of doctors under section 12.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rehman Chishti

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

What a disgraceful comment. We do not need the Prime Minister to come before the House because I can tell the hon. Gentleman that Kettering hospital is safe, and that it is totally irresponsible scaremongering by the Labour party in the run-up to a by-election to suggest anything else.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

T4. Will the Secretary of State join me in welcoming the progress that has been made to reduce mixed-sex wards and improve patient privacy at Medway Maritime hospital in my constituency?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Rehman Chishti

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We have not announced a decision, but we have said that we are considering such action because we want to hear everyone’s views. The UK Film Council spends £3 million per annum on administration. We want to ask whether that money could be better used to support film makers.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

When is the Shott review likely to report back on the creation and viability of local television?

[Mr Hunt]

In September.