Rural Healthcare

Debate between Anne Marie Morris and Bob Seely

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Anne Marie Morris]

I absolutely agree, and it is an excellent suggestion. In a similar vein, when we are asking primary care networks and others to deal with the backlog, it is important that we try to give them much more freedom in how they address the problem. I talk to many of my local commissioners, and they say that they are having to make decisions that they know are right, even though they are not currently in the guidebook as best practice. We need to give them that trust to be able to do the right thing.

C is for care. Members will not be surprised to hear that the adult social care discharge fund, although welcome, is not going to be enough. The reality is that the bed count is often low in rural areas. In the south-west, we have the lowest bed count per head of population; I think it is the lowest in western Europe, although I am happy for the Minister to correct me. It seems to me that we used to be moving towards saying, just in time, “Let’s have care in the community.” However, because of the shortage of care in the community, and the lack of proper validation that it works other than whether people are readmitted, we need to put a halt to closing community hospitals and to look at how they can be used. Some could be repurposed. Perfection can often be the enemy of the good.

Teignmouth Community Hospital in my constituency is on the closure list, but to me that is not a wise decision. There are no nursing care homes in the area. Without that residential care, and without adequate care in the community, removing the only other source of beds is not the way to solve the backlog problem.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate and this important conversation. I also thank the Minister for the community diagnostic centre announced for the Isle of Wight this week. That is great, but we still have a problem similar to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris): unavoidably small hospitals. There are dozens of those in England and Wales, of which St Mary’s is the most isolated. We were able to work with the Government to improve the funding formula in 2019, so unavoidably small hospitals have got some more money. My concern—the same might be true for hospitals in my hon. Friend’s area—is that that is not enough to cope with the health needs and the demographics in our communities. It would be great if the Minister could meet some of us to discuss the future of unavoidably small hospitals in places such as Devon, Cornwall, Cumbria, Northumberland and the Isle of Wight to see what more we can do to support these important community centres.