Southern Cross Healthcare

Andrew Percy Excerpts
Thursday 16th June 2011

(13 years, 5 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Paul Burstow Portrait Paul Burstow
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Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

I can assure the hon. Lady that, first and foremost, clear arrangements are in place to deal with a catastrophic failure, which I think is now increasingly unlikely. More importantly, we need to ensure that we learn lessons from past care home closures and take them into account in future. However, we can also be clear that the underlying viability of this business is very strong indeed. We need care homes, and that is why we now have a route towards a solvent restructuring of the business.

Andrew Percy Portrait Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
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My concern is for the residents of the two care homes in my constituency, one in Goole and one in the Skippingdale area of Scunthorpe. It would be wrong if anyone tried to use the situation as a shield for making cheap political points.

Given that there are going to be up to 3,000 job losses, what measures will the Government take to monitor the quality of care and the staff ratio at individual homes, to ensure that there is no negative on impact on the residents? We are all concerned about that.

Paul Burstow Portrait Paul Burstow
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The hon. Gentleman asks an important question about the impact on the quality of care if there are staff losses. When it became clear that the company was posting a figure of 3,000 redundancies, I instructed the CQC to undertake additional assessments to ascertain any likely effect and ensure that there is no impact on the quality of care.