South London Healthcare NHS Trust

Baroness Jowell Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Let me take those two points in reverse order. First, on GP commissioners, all six local commissioning groups support the principles upon which these proposals were developed. To meet the London-wide clinical quality standards, which are not being met in south-east London at present, it is necessary to centralise the provision of more complex services in the same way that we have already successfully done for heart attacks and strokes. That principle applies as much to complex births and complex pregnancies as it does to strokes and heart attacks, and it will now apply for the people of Lewisham to conditions including pneumonia, meningitis and if someone breaks a hip. People will get better clinical care as a result of these changes. That is the most difficult project in all the work of the trust special administrator. The project has been to try to resolve an unsustainable financial situation while improving clinical care for the people of south-east London, and I think that, in the end, we have got a set of proposals that does that.

[Dame Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware of the dismay with which this statement will be heard across south London. Whatever eloquent argument he advances, the people of south London will take from what he said that the maternity and A and E services at Lewisham have been downgraded.

I have had the opportunity to look briefly at the wording of his statement, and I am alarmed by the degree of risk that Sir Bruce Keogh identifies, particularly in relation to the relocation of the paediatric service. The clinical outcomes to which he refers are dependent on extremely difficult interconnections among ambulance services, receiving staff and inpatient beds, and rely on them all working effectively. He rightly recognises the knock-on effect for other hospitals, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) and I, together with all south London MPs, also recognise those knock-on effects. Given that King’s college hospital has seen a fourfold increase in cancelled operations since 2009-10, we are therefore very concerned about the consequences for the care of the constituents whom we represent. We are also concerned that the responsibility for the PRU, which King’s is prepared to welcome, will be properly and adequately financed.

[Mr Hunt]

The right hon. Lady talks about the risks that Sir Bruce alludes to in his analysis of the trust special administrator’s proposals. Those risks are precisely why I have not accepted the proposals in their entirety and have put in place a series of additional safeguards.

Not resolving this issue, which is effectively what the Labour party is calling for because it has put forward no alternative proposals, would carry a high degree of risk. It would mean that south London would not meet the London-wide clinical quality standards. It would mean that £1 million a week would continue to be diverted from front-line patient care into funding an unsustainable deficit. That would be bad for her constituents and those in neighbouring constituencies.

We must look at the south-east London health care economy as a whole, but the objective must be to improve the services that people receive. That is a difficult balance to get right, but I think that we have the right balance in the proposals that I have outlined this morning.