Community Hospitals

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) for securing this very important debate, which, as she will see from my speech, is very timely given what is happening in my constituency. I also congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), on her elevation to the Front Bench. It is always fantastic to see someone from the midlands in that position.

I want to pick up on points that were made in the last two speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) spoke about the ownership of the hospital and the future and the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) said that market forces determined the future of some hospitals. That was apt given what is happening in Cannock, where we have a situation with our community hospital.

Cannock community hospital was built in the 1980s. It is a fantastic facility with many years of life left in it, but over the past 20 years it has seen a gradual decline in use and is now chronically underused. It has gone from having nine wards when it was opened to having only two, and just last week the kitchens were closed to save £200,000-odd a year. Cannock forms part of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust and shares it with Stafford hospital, and many colleagues will be aware of the problems there and the extra funding the Government have had to put in. The trust that controls Cannock and Stafford hospitals has a problem, as it is losing £15 million a year and £8 million of that through running Cannock community hospital. That cannot go on.

There are only three options for Cannock. First, it could be sold off and the remaining services could be transferred to Stafford hospital, which is a bigger acute hospital, with some of the receipts from the sale being used to expand services at Stafford and to accommodate them. That is unacceptable to my constituents, local people and local politicians on both sides of the divide. We are not willing to see our local hospital close—a hospital that was bought with local money from the National Coal Board and with local donations. There are therefore only two other options to secure the future of Cannock hospital, given that it is such a loss-making enterprise; it costs some £34 million a year to run and pulls in about £24 million from the commissioning of services.

The first of those options is for the GPs to fill the hospital. I am sceptical about that because they have not filled it so far and it takes a brave man to persuade the clinical commissioning groups that they must fill the hospital so that it becomes a going concern that does not lose any money and is fully utilised. GPs simply have not done that in the past. If we cannot fill it with services, I have come to the conclusion—I have just come from giving interviews to the local media on this point—that the only solution to secure the future of our community hospital is for the district council to purchase the facility or purchase a controlling part of the hospital estate. A clause in the contract would mean that the council could use the part of the estate it owned only to meet health and social care needs.

I think the future for our hospital will be for Cannock Chase district council to buy 50% or 60% of the estate—or even all of it—and decant some of the health and social care services that it runs into it, including GPs’ surgeries, walk-in clinics, polyclinics, advice centres and so on. The hospital would once again be a going concern. It was valued just four months ago at £34 million, so Members can see that even buying 50% of it would cost the council £16 million to £17 million. As a council with a turnover of several million pounds a year that can borrow £80 million a year, that is feasible. I hope today to set up a working group of local hospital bosses, council leaders and officers, the friends of Cannock hospital and any local stakeholder who wants to be involved. I do not know what the answer is or how feasible this might be, but I see no other way of securing our hospital’s future and getting it utilised again unless the district council steps in, buys part of the estate and utilises it itself, or even buys the whole estate and leases part of it back to the trust, which currently uses part of it for rheumatology, orthopaedics and eye surgery but not all of it.

I will conclude briefly by asking the Minister whether she and her Department would approve, in principle, of district councils helping to secure the future of our beloved community hospitals in that way. If so, perhaps she would consider sending an official from the Department to serve on the steering committee we are setting up to investigate the possibility so that they can guide us on how best to secure the future of our community hospital and retain its use for health and social care services, as the current reality is that it is losing money and financially is not a going concern in the long term.