health

Baroness Bray of Coln Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

I am very pleased to have the chance to alert Ministers once again to the devastating plan, courtesy of NHS North West London, to close the A and E departments at the four hospitals that are closest to my constituency and my constituents. Unsurprisingly, there seems to be very little local support for the plan. As far as I am aware, no local GPs have spoken up in favour of it, other than the very few who are working alongside NHS North West London. I suspect that, like the rest of us, local GPs are highly doubtful about a plan that rests on the massive assumption that it is possible to dismantle four A and E departments in a small, concentrated part of London with little or no negative impact on the community that depends on them.

The plan envisages a scaled-down but super-efficient new system of care delivery. I think it fair to say that we would like that new system to be in place, up and running and serving the needs of our constituents, before supporting the dismantling of any of our A and E departments. There is cross-party agreement locally, in Hammersmith and Fulham as well as Ealing, that the plan is reckless and extreme. Last weekend, we held a rally on Ealing common at which all three parties spoke out against it.

Our main concern must be the increase in travel times. The proposals attempt to demonstrate that, at the very worst, just a few minutes might be added to some journeys made to hospitals further afield. I think that anyone who knows that part of London will be aware that those timings must have been conducted at 2 am rather than 2 pm, and I think that most of us would prefer slightly more realistic assessments to be carried out.

There must be real concern about adding to A and E queues at the hospitals that have been left to take up the patients who will no longer have access to A and E departments closer to home. Even if the new facilities work for some people—as I am sure that they will—many, many people will still want to go to straightforward A and E departments, particularly those that are familiar to them and that they know and love.

Those, obviously, are extremely important issues that will need to be considered, but we should also bear it in mind that Ealing has one of the fastest-growing populations in the country. It seems strange to us that anyone should consider dismantling important parts of the health infrastructure at a time when we expect to see a much larger local population.

The consultation will continue until 8 October, but, as I have said, the form is extremely long and tricky to fill in, and rather off-putting as a result. It takes a lot of time; indeed, it took me an hour and a half to fill it in, and I have spent a considerable amount of time focusing on this issue.

Naturally and unsurprisingly, in common with all other well-honed consultations, this consultation is designed to draw participants to its own desired conclusions—although with a bit of serious work and concentration, it is possible to avoid that. However, marching and filling in petitions is all very well and fine, but we must remember that it is only the responses to the consultation that legally count. The Conservatives had a stall on Ealing common last Saturday, and we handed out more than 500 consultation documents, because we felt that that was one way to help the campaign practically. We apologised to everybody in advance for the time that it was going to take to fill them in, of course.

I understand that the consultation received an award for its clarity of language, but the intention behind it is clear to us: to get its desired result, which is support for closing the four A and E services that are closest to my constituency. I hope that Ministers will resist any such recommendation.