North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust

Debate between Andrew Stephenson and Matt Vickers

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Andrew Stephenson)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Charles. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing this important debate. He has used it to raise important questions that are vital to NHS governance—localism, transparency and accountability. He is right that patients in his constituency and the wider region should be at the forefront of decision making about their healthcare. NHS England has found that shared leadership and group working arrangements between trusts can stabilise governance and align approaches to help improvement.

[Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)]

I thought that those were very legitimate questions and concerns about the way forward with mergers—joint working—but one of the issues in our part of the world is that South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was burdened by the last Labour Government with a huge PFI deal at James Cook Hospital that cost £1 million a week. That is what makes this contentious. That is what makes it so difficult to see joint working in our part of the world.

[Andrew Stephenson]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. I recognise that they are two trusts with very different characteristics. He is right about the eye-watering legacy in one trust—I think it is £57 million a year of PFI debt—which can make joint working controversial. However, as I will come on to say, I have been assured that the two trusts want to work together with joint arrangements, but not merge. I hope we can set the record clearly: in doing the research behind this speech, I have heard that this is not the prelude to a merger through the back door; rather, it is about trusts wanting to work together to address the healthcare needs in the area.

It is right that any decisions about shared leadership arrangements are made in Stockton, not Westminster. However, where an NHS trust is facing performance challenges, the Government back targeted interventions by NHS England, bringing the trusts together to properly diagnose the problem and develop an improvement plan, which could include shared leadership. Any leadership changes should be kept under constant review to ensure that they are effectively delivering for patients and the local area. The point is to help challenged trusts to improve and take ownership of local issues. External evaluations of NHS England’s leadership interventions have found them to be effective.

I will address the current leadership arrangements of the North and South Tees trusts. Up and down the country, trust governance fits a variety of different frameworks. As the hon. Member for Stockton North knows, putting a round peg in a square hole is pointless. However, although we support a diversity of models, I am crystal clear that every arrangement should be geared towards building a faster, simpler and fairer NHS that works for both patients and staff. I am happy to assure him that, in this instance, I have been assured that the shared leadership and joint working arrangements are not in any way a precursor to trust mergers or acquisitions. In other words, both trusts intend to remain statutory organisations in their own right.

NHS England promotes those models of working to maintain consistency within trusts and to ensure that everyone is on the same page when lessons are being learned. However, for over 10 years now, North and South Tees trusts have been discussing how to work together to provide a better offer for the people of Stockton.

Transport

Debate between Andrew Stephenson and Matt Vickers

Thursday 19th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Andrew Stephenson)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered transport.

It gives me great pleasure to open this debate on what the Government are doing to build a world-class transport network. I do not need to remind the House of the vital economic and social role transport plays in our day-to-day lives. The pandemic revealed as much, with rail staff, bus drivers, seafarers and road engineers—to name but a few—continuing to work throughout so that the country could keep moving. It is why this Government have spent billions supporting our transport industry over the past two years, ensuring key workers and essential goods could get to where they needed to be.

While our transport network helped to keep this country going throughout the pandemic, it now, with covid firmly in the rear-view mirror, must help the UK thrive, helping us rise to new challenges such as rebuilding our economy in a way that is fairer and greener, and helping us to level up our cities, towns and villages by giving people the means to get on and improve their lives and livelihoods.

[Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)]

I am sure my hon. Friend is only too aware of the story of Teesside airport, how it was saved by Ben Houchen and how it has gone from strength to strength. Executives at Heathrow have recently whacked up landing fees by 37%, showing complete disregard for regional connectivity and killing the viability of the Teesside flight. Will he look again at what can be done about that issue?

[Andrew Stephenson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Of course, I join him in paying tribute to the phenomenal work of Ben Houchen and others in supporting that local airport. I am aware of local concerns on this and I hear what my hon. Friend says. Sadly, as he will know, this is very much a matter for the independent regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, but I am sure it is something that it will want to take a close look at.

Before I speak to the legislation the Government introduced in last week’s Queen’s Speech, I want to outline just some of the measures that we are already taking to improve transport links across the country. Our levelling-up fund gives local authorities the means to invest in infrastructure that improves the everyday lives of people across the UK, including upgrading local transport. The first round of funding will see 105 projects across the four UK nations benefit from £1.7 billion in funding.