Hinchingbrooke Hospital

Alan Campbell Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burns]

I am rarely speechless, but I am left speechless by the sheer effrontery of the hon. Lady. I have to remind hon. Members that this process stems from the previous Labour Government’s legislation in 2001, which was consolidated in 2006. This process started in 2007 at strategic health authority level, when she was a special adviser in the Department of Health. It continued, and the decision to move forward from a Department of Health level was taken in 2009 by the then Secretary of State for Health, who is now the shadow Secretary of State. It is often thought that shadowing a Department that one ran is helpful because one knows where the bodies are buried. The problem for the shadow Secretary of State is that not only does he know where the bodies are buried, but he was the one who buried them in the first place.

The hon. Lady asks how many bidders there were. As she will appreciate, a number of processes have taken place. There were 11 bidders at the start, the vast majority of which were private sector bidders, although there were some NHS ones—this was in 2009, under a Labour Government. The number reduced to six in December 2009, again under a Labour Government. Of those six bids, one was from an NHS body and one was from an NHS body in conjunction with the private sector. In February 2010, when I believe the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) was the Secretary of State, the number reduced again, this time to five. All these bids were from the private sector, except one, which was made in conjunction with an NHS trust. In March 2010, again under a Labour Government, the number reduced to three, with one bid associated with an NHS body, and then it reduced to two, with both bidders in the private sector.

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

When did that happen?

[Mr Burns]

In July last year, as part of the ongoing process started by the previous Government.

The hon. Lady also asked whether the contract and the business case would be put into the public domain. They will be published in due course although, as she will appreciate, certain commercially sensitive information will be redacted, which is only reasonable. She also asked about staffing and whether there would be redundancies. May I tell her that there will not be redundancies as a result of the operating franchise? Circle has said that it might need to redeploy and retrain some staff within the hospital, but it does not expect job losses. I reassure the hon. Lady—I think she would like this reassurance—that, as I am sure she understands, Hinchingbrooke will remain an NHS hospital, the staff will remain as NHS staff, and the services will continue, as I said in my statement, within the format of all other services provided in every other NHS hospital, which is within the format of reconfigurations, if and when. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady says I cannot guarantee that they will stay over. I can give the greatest and most honest guarantee as of now because nobody—listen carefully so that it is not got wrong—can guarantee what services a hospital will be providing in 10 or 15 years, due to different and changing circumstances.

The hon. Lady also mentioned, as a hare that she wanted to start running to frighten people, the question of the 20 hospitals within the NHS that are having financial and other problems. The fact is that in the past month or so all those hospitals have published their tripartite formal agreements with regard to the foundation trust pipeline, and I can tell her that all those are options by which to move forward, either as stand-alone bodies or possibly mergers and acquisitions with other foundation trusts within the NHS.