Transport Infrastructure (West and South Cumbria)

Debate between Lord Walney and Jamie Reed

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Reed]

It is absolutely in the best interests of Carlisle to develop the A595. Considering that we have all worked on a cross-party basis for many years to try to get the airport developed there, it needs to be served by good road infrastructure, otherwise the benefits from it will be not what they should. I will come on to the health service in due course.

In reality, more than 10,000 people work on the Sellafield site, and it will soon be one of the biggest construction sites in Europe as decommissioning progresses, whether or not new missions are secured. The report goes on to state:

“Without any interventions, planned development is likely to result in further deterioration in network performance.”

The case for investment to upgrade the A595 is overwhelming. It is undeniably in the national interest, and the Government should recognise that fact and act accordingly. In less than a fortnight, a petition arranged by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness has gathered well over 1,000 signatures. It calls for investment, and more people add their support daily. A few testimonies from the many people who have signed the petition show just how much of an impact the A595 has on their daily lives. One person said:

“I am the manager of a health centre and cannot get to work by any other road. When it blocks, we cannot get essential staff to work. When this happens, our patients are affected.”

Another said:

“Every day my travel to work of 17 miles exceeds one hour, ten minutes.”

I would like to see people in London put up with that kind of delay. Another simply added:

“Something needs to be done.”

My constituents rightly demand that the Government take a lead on this matter. As I have repeatedly said, this infrastructure is of national importance and the economic case is indisputable. West Cumbria can be a world leader when it comes to the creation of skilled jobs, and we are already hugely significant in that regard. Imminent inward investment from around the world means that our position as a global centre of excellence will be not only maintained but enhanced. Our vision is to become a global centre of nuclear excellence and through that to diversify and grow the economy through spin-outs, but the only way we can realise that potential is to have the infrastructure in place to support the growth and make it stick. It is a clear example of where a return on investment would greatly outweigh any initial costs and would improve the lives of many thousands of people.

So far I have spoken mainly about the economic benefits of new investment in the A595 and the economic cost of inaction, but a failure to invest would have wider ramifications, not least for health care, as the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) pointed out. There is great strain on ambulance services in the region, but North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust envisages more patient transfers in the coming years. The journey time between West Cumberland hospital in Whitehaven and the Cumberland infirmary is already upwards of two hours bed to bed. As congestion worsens, that travel time is set to deteriorate further. Without investment in the A595, there will be serious ramifications for the health of my constituents, and that is unacceptable. It is also a key reason why patient services should not be further stripped from the West Cumberland hospital. This is not the place to air those issues, but let me be absolutely clear: there must be no further erosion of services at the West Cumberland hospital and no more unjustifiable transfers of services from Whitehaven to Carlisle. Not even the best road in the world would be capable of shortening the 42 miles between the two hospitals. No road upgrade could ever justify further service erosion.

In west Cumbria, we are building a 21st-century economy on 19th-century infrastructure. By failing to act, any Government would be knowingly acting against the economic interests of the region and the country as a whole. Cumbria simply cannot reach its full potential if we do not have the roads to enable us to achieve our ambitions and to make the unprecedented investments coming our way stick. The ambition of west Cumbria is there. It is manifest in our community spirit, our ambition and our determination, all of which bind our local economic ambitions—north, east, west and south.

Will the Minister make a commitment to undertake a feasibility study of what improvements will be necessary to cope with future economic developments in the area and future demands on the road network? The scope of that work need cover not simply road improvements but how more Sellafield workers, for instance, could be located away from the Sellafield site in Whitehaven town centre and right across Copeland in new office buildings, thereby achieving town centre regeneration and reducing site risk and road congestion. Will he also give a commitment to meet me and my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness to discuss the issues in more detail? The Minister is usually amenable, and I know that he is a committed and passionate public servant when it comes to dealing with requests from all parts of the House.

In west and south-west Cumbria, we are about to receive the single largest private sector investment we have ever seen. It has been hard won over many years, and it has not happened by accident. These are once-in-a-generation investments, and every opportunity must be seized. West Cumbria’s best days are ahead of us, but we can only reach our true potential if significant improvements are made to the A595. These are not tiresome partisan issues, but issues of national strategic importance. Will the Minister back our drive for growth?

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust

Debate between Lord Walney and Jamie Reed

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased to have secured this debate. It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth.

I represent a community in shock, reeling from the suddenly announced intention to transfer Furness general hospital’s beloved special care baby unit and consultant maternity services out of the county, from 9 o’clock this morning, to Lancaster. Pleas to rethink that emergency transfer have so far been rebuffed, leaving expectant mums distraught at the prospect of a 50-mile trip in the back of ambulance if they suffer complications in labour. I will set out our concerns in detail and stress the areas in which we hope the Minister, who is of course an expert in the field, will agree to intervene, but first I will discuss the wider issues the area faces, which prompted my application for this debate.

There is the forthcoming review of hospital services, triggered by the need for significant budget reductions across the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust. All of us here are acutely aware of the long-term threat that that might pose to key provision, such as the need to sustain a consultant-led maternity service and accident and emergency provision across more than one site in the area.

There is also the campaign against the removal of A and E, maternity and intensive care units at Royal Lancaster infirmary, on which the Downing street petition in the name of Matthew Hood already has thousands of signatures. I think that my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) wants to do exactly that—move Lancaster’s A and E department to the Westmorland general hospital. Let me simply say that any attempt to question Barrow’s need for an A and E department would be met with horror not only by every single resident of the Furness area, but by the prized and highly regulated industries on which the nation depends.

The broader question facing the Morecambe Bay trust is how best to locate services when the population is far more spread out than in most areas of Britain, and when centres of population are often connected by a single road that winds through Cumbria’s unique landscape. In other areas, a trust for hundreds of thousands of residents might naturally be based around one A and E department and one maternity unit, but that would put an unacceptable strain on residents of Morecambe bay. People in pockets of severe deprivation in Barrow and families who, for whatever reason, just do not travel would be forced to go to another county and be completely cut off from their families. In an emergency, it would result in journey times of more than an hour on routes that are prone to become blocked by breakdowns.

I want to ask the Minister four questions about the four tests in the Government’s forthcoming consultation. His first test is the evidence base. Will he ensure that the options and risks are properly weighed, so that the risks inherent in long-distance ambulance travel are set alongside what might otherwise be the optimal configuration of services? The second test is whether there is the support of GP commissioners. The past 24 hours have shown the damaging shambles that can occur when a trust attempts to press on against the will of local commissioners. The Government back the new system, so will the Minister ensure that local GPs have the teeth to insist on the services that communities need? The third test is choice for patients. Will the Minister ensure that problems of isolation and lack of access to services are an integral part of the assessment when it arrives on the Secretary of State’s desk? It is hard to imagine the test of choice being passed if, for example, an isolated peninsula’s only consultant-led maternity unit were downgraded. The fourth test is strengthened public engagement. The trust needs to do much better than the mess of the past few days, which has left women desperately worried and confused. I shall say more on that in a moment, but the underlying point is that engaging means listening and acting. Of course, health professionals have a duty to present the options and a proper assessment of safety in each case, but if the public weigh that up and say that they want to keep the services they need close to home, the Government should listen to them.

Another major issue is the need for Ministers to ensure that our local hospitals and the wider national health service adequately learn the lessons of the significant and prolonged failings in hospital management at the Morecambe Bay trust. There have been tragedies about which people are still demanding answers and which apparently did not trigger sufficient improvements, despite laying bare shortcomings in areas such as maternity provision several years ago.

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

As usual, my hon. Friend is making an excellent case on behalf of his constituents. Many people in the south of my constituency use Furness general hospital, as well. Does he share the fear that some of them have expressed to me that the rapid removal of the special care baby unit heralds a stealth reconfiguration of services there?

[John Woodcock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that that is indeed the great fear. It is up to the trust, and ultimately to Ministers and the Government, to demonstrate that that is not the case, but there are still questions to be answered.

The need for lessons to be learned has been shown by such problems as the basic lack of grip in key areas in recent years—for example, the failure of new computer systems designed to remind patients about repeat appointments, which has clearly put lives at risk. A police investigation into a number of deaths is ongoing. There is also a lack of openness at the trust.

I pay tribute to the hard work of the staff in the maternity unit and across Furness general hospital. They are dedicated people, who come to work wanting to help others and to save lives. There have been real improvements of late, and we should recognise the immense strain placed on staff by the ongoing spotlight on the hospital and the longer-term uncertainty over their future. None the less, families are still grieving because of past mistakes made in a poorly managed system. The Minister was good enough to write to me in response to a letter from my constituent James Titcombe, and again recently on the need for a genuinely independent inquiry into the lessons for the wider NHS of management failings at Furness general hospital.

Cumbrian Shootings

Debate between Lord Walney and Jamie Reed

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

The events of 2 June will never be forgotten by my community. An ordinary day in England’s most remote and, in my opinion, outstandingly beautiful constituency ended with the senseless loss of 12 members of a remarkable community—the community into which I was born and where I was raised and still live.

Nothing that I or anyone in the Chamber can do or say will undo the wrong done to my community. Nothing can, perhaps nothing should, ever erase the memory of those events. The west Cumbrian community will be defined more by its response to those events—indeed, it is already being so defined—than by the events themselves. The collective response that is sweeping across west Cumbria is, I believe, to those in many other parts of the country, an enviable response.

A number of lessons are to be learned from the events of 2 June, and we will by no means hear an exhaustive summary of them today. One of the most remarkable lessons—it is a source of the greatest pride for me and other west Cumbrians—is that something that we have always known can now be seen by the rest of the country. It is that our area, our community, our home—the towns of Egremont and Whitehaven, and the villages of Seascale and Boot—represent the kind of Britain that much of the rest of the country longs to be like. That view is strongly shared by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and by a number of the media commentators who have written about the events of recent weeks. This is not false sentimentality. Many communities outside the metropolitan areas of the United Kingdom are very much like that.

I have touched on the fact that the purpose of today’s debate is not to rake over the facts. They are not yet exhaustively understood, and will be examined in due course. However, given what we know at the moment, I wish to learn what the lessons of the tragedy are for my community and our country. There may be lessons for the police, the emergency services, local authorities, and Members of Parliament as legislators—but it does not necessarily follow that there will be.

Parliament will not serve my community or the country well by rushing to make judgments because of the need to be seen to be doing something in response to the tragedy. Equally, should clear lessons require us to act, in the form of new legislation or practices, the House would betray my constituents and the people of this country by not acting swiftly, decisively and in concert.

My community has shown itself at its best in recent weeks—in truth, we usually do at such times—and it is time for Parliament to follow our example. That means acting with solemnity, dignity and purpose. As Tony Parsons, the author and Daily Mirror columnist put it, my community is trying to “understand the senseless”. So, too, must the country. In trying to reach that understanding, we must learn from the destructive behaviour demonstrated by so many in the print and broadcast media over recent weeks.

Communities dealing with the aftershock of seismic tragedies such as that which took place on 2 June are the worst places to be invaded by the media. In such situations, there is no place for the media’s invented exclusives, its prurience and voyeurism, its mawkish brutality and its cold-blooded pursuit of profit at the expense of the families of those most affected. Everyone expects intense media coverage of tragedies such as that which affected Cumbria, but do people really expect the news to give way to entertainment? I wish to talk about the behaviour of much of the media in recent weeks, and the anger and dismay that it has caused among my community.

May I say how grateful I am to the Minister who is to reply to the debate? These are not exclusively Home Office matters; I have some sympathy for him, as his brief cannot cover them exhaustively.

I return to Tony Parsons, and to reflecting on the piece to which I referred earlier. It was printed under the headline “The haven of decency that will remain unbroken”. He wrote that west Cumbria

“feels like an England that many of us remember from our childhoods…An England that we thought had disappeared into the mists of history. It is not a flashy place. It is not a place that ever gets much attention. But it is still out there. And among all the horror, we are reminded that it is still real. And that it represents all that is best about this country and our people. No place was less built for violence, and madness, and the mayhem of the modern world. No place deserves it less.”

I cannot describe the effect that those words have had on my community, how grateful we were that we had been seen as we see ourselves, and that our culture and our values had been recognised. How fitting it was. It was a small way of remembering those who had been taken from us. I can only hope that those words helped to fetch some comfort for the families of those who lost family members.

Parsons observed that when Cumbria

“gets attention from the leering outer world, it is seen through a prism of prejudice and ignorance…It is not too much to say that the communities of Cumbria could teach a lesson to us all.”

He continued:

“While we hear so much about the ugly face of the modern world, we forget that there is a Britain that is emphatically unbroken. And where all those old virtues—decency, tolerance, kindness, innocence and goodness—still prevail and thrive.”

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

I wholeheartedly endorse the sentiments that my hon. Friend expresses. In Barrow and Furness in southern Cumbria—I have the huge privilege of being the new Member for that constituency—I see that spirit every day. Barrow and the surrounding area was once considered part of Lancaster, and many in the area still retain a great affinity with Lancashire. Indeed, if we were to ask, some would say that they would like to move back to being part of it. Does my hon. Friend agree that the tragedy and the many difficulties that the Cumbrian people have experienced in recent months underline the fact that there is a Cumbrian spirit and a Cumbrian community? Indeed, such ties bind my constituency with his and the people of that great region.

[Mr Reed]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He has been a Member for only a short time, but I know of the huge esteem in which he is held by his constituents. I am personally grateful to him for making the trip to Whitehaven on the weekend after the shootings to pay tribute, on behalf of his constituents and everybody in the Furness region, to people 40 miles to the north. We were standing shoulder to shoulder. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to talk about community spirit and community values. One of the lessons that we need to learn is that that spirit and those values do not come about by accident; there is a deep cultural purpose to those values, but they are supported, helped and strengthened by policy decisions taken by the House. There will be a time to address such matters, but it is not now. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments.

Tony Parsons continued his article by saying:

“No, this Britain is not broken.”

That is the spirit to which my hon. Friend alluded. Perhaps most fittingly, Parsons gave us—or at least me—a simple phrase that encapsulates not simply the area but those whom I represent. Home to England’s deepest lake and tallest mountain, he wrote that we have

“a beauty that is beyond landscape.”

When that was read out in church on the Sunday after the tragedy, I am told that it had a remarkable effect on a usually stoic congregation. It certainly had a remarkable effect on me, and I will always be grateful. Why is it important? It is because the media, perhaps the most important force in our society—more so even than politics and politicians, even those in the Chamber today; we kid ourselves if we say that that is not so—have the ability to achieve so much good. We all know that the truth will set us free—it is a well-known phrase and a cliché, but it is true—so why do the media turn their collective back when they have the capacity to achieve so much good, so readily and so often?

The media local to the tragedy—the Whitehaven News, the News & Star, the North West Evening Mail, Border television, BBC Radio Cumbria and “Look North”—reported the tragedy with a care and diligence entirely different from that of the national media. That is because they are rooted in the area and care about the people about whom they are reporting. They understand the power of their roles and the effects of carrying them out in particular ways. The Whitehaven News was particularly impressive, as just one week before, it had reported the tragic deaths of Kieran Goulding and Chloe Walker, constituents who were killed in the Keswick bus crash. Like the News & Star, the Whitehaven News understands the role that it plays in my community and how it can help the community’s healing process—not the families’ healing process, perhaps, but certainly the community’s. To give a parallel—I know that this is a difficult issue—certain national newspapers have elicited feelings in my community similar to those that were elicited in Liverpool by the way that the Hillsborough tragedy was reported.

The first lesson of the tragedy is that communities such as mine have a lot to teach other parts of the country about the power of community, cohesion, social justice, compassion and solidarity. Social policy must protect and strengthen those values and virtues. The second lesson is not to seek to curb the freedom of the press or broader media, but to seek a better, enforceable code of conduct for the media. Certain desperate, spiteful journalists have written some dreadfully inaccurate copy simply because members of the community would not speak to them on learning that they were journalists. That reflects badly on those journalists; naming them would surprise nobody and so serves no purpose today.

I come to the second lesson. One price we pay for a free press is its freedom to write such misleading and opinionated bile. However, press intrusion is not a price anyone has ever agreed to pay. Nobody ever agreed to have journalists camped on their doorsteps while they were in the immediate aftermath of bereavement; to have friends and family members offered money if they spoke to, or obtained a photo of, a distraught relative of one of those who died; or to have six-figure sums paid for exclusives, or smaller sums paid to them if they could tell the whereabouts or movements of certain individuals, even if those individuals would be going to school that day.

If the west Cumbrian community demonstrates just how far from being broken Britain really is, then behaviour like that from certain sections of the media demonstrates just how dysfunctional and broken the media’s values are, and that their attempts to infect decent society with their values are iniquitous and wrong. I know journalists who have had their stomachs turned by the actions of some in their fold—they are far from being all the same—but surely such behaviour cannot be sanctioned and must be stopped. To that end, I will write to the National Union of Journalists and the Press Complaints Commission to seek meetings, and to discuss how the issue can be taken forward and how professional codes of practice can be improved significantly. I have spent so much time talking about the media because the activities of certain sections of them have weighed particularly heavily on the community in recent weeks. They have caused particular distress, anger and concern, and I feel duty-bound to articulate those concerns today.

The third lesson, so far, of the Cumbrian tragedy will be to review gun law; that is now essential. It does not necessarily mean that gun law can, will or should change; we must await the full facts of the case before we can assess them through the prism of the gun ownership laws. If any changes to the law could have prevented this tragedy, reduced its chances of happening or mitigated its effects, then it is a reasonable proposition to expect those changes to be made. Certainly, those are the views of some of the family members of those who lost their lives on 2 June. However, we do not yet know if changes are necessary.

The fourth lesson—this is imperative—is that the Government should release the £100 million pledged by the previous Labour Government to rebuild the West Cumberland hospital in Whitehaven. The cheque for the new development was in our hands on election day but taken from us when the new coalition Government were formed. The hospital is the fulcrum of my community and the entire west Cumbrian community, and demonstrated its worth again and again in the days and weeks that followed 2 June. Halfway through the general election campaign this year, that hospital saved my life, and it has saved countless more since. When my community needed it most, it was impeccable. The Prime Minister saw for himself just what a remarkable and valuable group of professionals there are at the West Cumberland hospital. I ask the Government again today to please release the funds required without any further delay.

Demolition of the old hospital has commenced in anticipation of the new-build programme, and any delay beyond September will have serious consequences for the project, for service configuration and for the entire community. Please return to my community the money given to us by the previous Government. The Government must acknowledge the importance of the matter and act in the only human, compassionate way imaginable by returning this money as soon as possible.

There will be other lessons—about the value of GP practices, retained fire fighters, the civil nuclear constabulary, the Church and the essential role played by voluntary agencies. Those lessons need to be brought before the House, and I expect that they will; that should happen soon. I am grateful to the Home Office for the interest it has shown and the time that it has taken to address the issues so far. I expect a full and frank inquiry, the terms of which should be determined principally by my community and the families of those affected.

I expect that the Select Committee on Home Affairs will want to undertake its own investigations, too. I am particularly grateful to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), for visiting my constituency earlier this week to speak with Cumbria constabulary and Copeland borough council about their experiences in recent weeks. That was extremely beneficial and welcome. For the benefit of all those affected, inquiries should probably be undertaken sooner rather than later, but not in an immediate rushed sense.

It is imperative that no inquiry should begin with the purpose of attributing blame. The conclusions of the Association of Chief Police Officers investigation that is currently under way should be placed in the public domain as soon as it is completed. The Cumbrian constabulary has nothing to hide and is a source of pride among my community. It performed fantastically on 2 June as events unfolded, and I know, through my conversations with it, that it is determined for the full facts of the investigation to be known by the public. No price can be placed on the truth—that is what we seek before anything else. We do not want inquiries that seek to validate opinions or theories; we want the facts, and those facts must be acted on. Other issues, such as the support services in place for the bereaved and applications to the criminal injuries compensation scheme must be addressed, but those are not issues for today. Fundamentally, the concern of politicians must remain once the cameras have moved away.

Finally, none of us will ever forget Michael Pike, Garry Purdham, David Bird, Kevin Commons, Susan Hughes, Kenneth Fishburn, Jane Robinson, Darren Rewcastle, Jennifer and James Jackson, Isaac Dixon and Jamie Clark, and this House owes it to their memories, their families and my community to understand and act on the lessons of 2 June. They deserve nothing less.