East of England Ambulance Service

Debate between Anna Soubry and Robert Halfon

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I begin by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) for bringing this matter, quite properly, to Westminster Hall this morning, for giving an excellent speech, and for her outstanding campaign on behalf of her constituents. In simple terms, she seeks to hold the ambulance trust, which clearly has performance figures that are simply unacceptable—they are the lowest in the country—to account. There is a clear feeling of anger—that is no criticism at all; it is based on frustration. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) has joined her in this admirable work, and despite raising the issue and notwithstanding all their efforts, they are frustrated and angry because they feel that it has taken many months for the trust to even begin to make some sort of attempt to address the inherent problems that it clearly faces.

Another thing that clearly emerges from the many interventions and excellent speeches by hon. Members this morning is that there is wholesale support, and many tributes, for the staff—the front-line workers. Nobody is for one moment saying that there is any failing on their part. The failing is clear: it is failing at a leadership level and at board level. There is a failing of leadership, which must be addressed as a matter of some urgency.

I only have about 12 minutes to address the many points that have been made, so the usual rules apply: anybody who has asked a question that I am not able to answer in my short speech will, of course, get a written answer. I just want to deal quickly with the important point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham), who asked whether the usual rules that apply to non-executives on public limited companies, or on companies that are listed on the stock exchange and so on, apply to non-executives who are appointed to NHS trusts. I must tell him that the rules are not the same; their responsibilities and duties are different. I will provide more detail in a letter to my hon. Friend, but it is not as simple as it is when people are non-executive directors on other bodies, where it could be said there is much more accountability and much more of a duty on them to resign when there have been the sorts of failings that we have heard about today—if that was applied to a business, for example.

[Robert Halfon]

Will the Minister give way?

[Anna Soubry]

May I just make one other point? Then I shall be more than happy to give way, although the clock is against me, as my hon. Friend will appreciate.

Here we have another issue that should concern, as I know it does, all hon. Members, on both sides of the House. It is the culture that is now becoming clear. I take the view that it is not a new culture. I suspect that it has been there for many years. It is just that it is now being exposed, often through the admirable work of Members of Parliament and because of the work of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health. That is a mates culture, where people’s priority is to protect their mates, systems and procedures, as opposed to what should be the absolute priority for somebody in the NHS, which is to protect the patient—not their friends and the structures, but the patient—and also, of course, the hard-earned money of the taxpayer.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend will have heard me set out the treatment of Harlow residents. Does she agree with me and with our hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) that the East of England ambulance trust is too big and should be broken up, and that we should restore the Essex ambulance service trust?

[Anna Soubry]

That is a good point, but it is not for me to say whether it has any merit that should be taken forward. But clearly it is an important point, which must now be considered.

May I quickly pay tribute to all the very helpful interventions from hon. Friends? My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) talked about the buck passing in the NHS and the recycling. We also heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) and for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly). My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) made an excellent speech. My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal also made an excellent and important speech. There were interventions from my hon. Friends the Members for Clacton (Mr Carswell) and for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and from my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst). There were speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for Harlow, for North West Norfolk and for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon). They all made important and good points.

We know that overall in England in 2012-13 the number of emergency calls to ambulance services was 9.08 million—a 6.9% increase. That is an important figure, I would suggest. We know that overall, in England, the performance figures are stable. That does not really assist in this debate, of course, because we also know that the East of England ambulance trust and, I have to say, my own, the East Midlands ambulance trust, have serious failings and the performance figures are simply not good enough.

The best that I can say of the performance of the East of England ambulance trust is that it has not been good. It is clearly recognised as the lowest-performing ambulance trust in England. As with the national picture, its overall poor performance figures hide huge discrepancies between the services and response times in the urban and rural areas that it covers. There are too many stories—we have heard many today—of patients in distress having to wait hours for ambulances, or solo paramedics being sent when an ambulance is needed. Solo paramedics cannot transport patients and might not, for instance, be able to lift or move a patient unaided. It is simply not good enough.

It is clear to me that some hon. Members and many patients might be forgiven for thinking that the trust seems to have forgotten that it is there to serve all patients and not only tick the performance boxes as far as it can. Concentrating resources in towns and effectively abandoning people in the countryside is simply unacceptable.