Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) for securing this important debate. His speech highlighted the very real danger of closing his local A&E department while the trust is, sadly, in the protracted throes of special measures.

I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) and my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) for their contributions. All have been champions for patients at the Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust for a number of years. Like my right hon. and hon. Friends, I pay tribute to the staff at the trust who, in very difficult circumstances, are working hard to deliver high standards of care to patients.

As we have heard, the trust is facing particularly profound challenges. It is one of the largest in the country, serving a huge and diverse population. There is a lot of churn and movement of people and, as a result, things are even more difficult for GP and primary care services, which, as we know from elsewhere in the country, have been under intense pressure in recent years. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking made some particularly pertinent points on that: if someone cannot see their GP, the pressure is moved on to local hospital services. When those services are already in difficulty and struggling to cope, they could well do without the added pressure of extra demand.

I hope the Minister will accept that the trust needs real support, because it has been hit hard by certain decisions. The trust itself must bear some responsibility, but I am afraid that some of the previous Government’s policies came at the wrong time. Last winter, as we heard, the trust suffered its worst quarterly A&E performance since records began. In January, more than one in four patients were waiting longer than the recommended four hours in A&E—some were even waiting longer than 12 hours.

In December 2013, the trust was placed in special measures following a Care Quality Commission report that raised serious concerns about patient safety and care, particularly in A&E. The report said that staff at the A&E at King George

“did not have confidence in the trust leadership to make the necessary improvements in A&E.”

Although some of the problems at the trust are deep-seated, the CQC report was clear that many of the problems, such as the difficulty in recruiting staff to the emergency department, have either become worse or emerged in recent years. The report also suggested, for example, that staff were concerned about the wide range of locum doctors turning up to shifts. They felt that there was no problem when they were assigned locums with whom they had worked before, but they were clear that the lack of permanent staff posed a risk to patients.

The trust is in a difficult financial situation. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking said, and she was echoed by other Members, that is not helped by its having to spend £27 million on agency staff last year because of a shortage of qualified staff. The trust has also been forced to recruit nurses from overseas because not enough home-grown nurses are being trained. It is well worth remembering that, despite what Ministers claim, the NHS now contains fewer nurses per head than in 2010.

The future of A&E services at King George hospital obviously remains in doubt. I remind the Minister that the 2010 Conservative manifesto promised to

“stop the forced closure of A&E and maternity wards”.

Since then, the maternity ward at King George hospital has closed. The plan to close the A&E unit and relocate it to Queen’s hospital has been delayed, but not abandoned. The Minister can, hopefully, update us on those plans and address the valid concerns not only of local MPs, but of the local communities that they represent on the capacity issues that have been mentioned.

Clearly, many of these challenges cannot be tackled in isolation and require working across London and, indeed, considerable support from the Department of Health, but I hope the Minister has listened carefully to the assessment of the problems laid out by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South. I also hope that he is prepared to take on board some of my right hon. and hon. Friends’ suggestions. What they have said is eminently reasonable. With the right support from central Government, I know that their constituents can receive the standard of care that they deserve.