Patient Safety

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to do that, and I would particularly like to congratulate my hon. Friend on the insight he has brought with regard to the power of data. In one example of why this is so important, the latest figures showed 43 or 44 people dying in the NHS because of medication errors, but if the person giving the medication had been able to see the patient’s entire prescription history, those horrific tragedies might have been avoided. That is why proper sharing of data is so important.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I want to ask about the safety of the 22,000 patients who use Hammersmith hospital A and E every year. There is no increased capacity in the acute primary or community care services locally, which the Secretary of State set as a prerequisite for any A and E closures in west London. Will he ask Imperial Healthcare Trust to review plans to close the A and E at Hammersmith on 10 September? Will he answer that question, as my constituents in Shepherd’s Bush and White City deserve an answer to it, not the spin and the game playing that I always get from the Secretary of State?

[Mr Hunt]

I am afraid I will take no lessons in spin and game playing after what the hon. Gentleman wrote in local election leaflets in Hammersmith and Fulham, failing to tell his own constituents about the brand new hospitals, the opening of a seven-day GP surgery and the 800 out-of-hospital professionals. I think he behaved absolutely disgracefully.