National Health Service

Baroness Wall of New Barnet Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Turnberg for securing this debate; almost every other speaker has referred to the appropriateness of its timing. I declare an interest as the chairman of Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, as I will refer to it considerably.

This debate is about the future of the NHS. I was fortunate as the chairman of Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to meet a group of young students who have just started their medical training at Milton Keynes Hospital through a partnership that we have just sealed with the University of Buckingham. They were bright, enthusiastic and committed people who are looking forward to their future and, I suggest, to the future of the NHS.

It perhaps seems appropriate to look back, as other noble Lords have done, at where we are now and what we are learning from where we are, alongside debating and sharing what future this magnificent service can have—a service of which we are proud and which offers care from cradle to grave. My noble friend Lord Turnberg referred to medical and technological interventions and developments, as did other noble Lords in their speeches. As other speakers have said, although these have clearly made a huge difference to people’s lives—and we welcome that—I do not think that any of us realises the strain that has fallen on the hospitals as a result, in particular on acute hospitals that provide these services.

I will share things that I know happen in my hospital and elsewhere. It is now almost taken for granted that, if a baby is delivered at 22 weeks, it will survive and flourish, which is an admirable thing to achieve. However, to do that, the service required from the NHS is huge as regards the care that that baby needs—in some instances it involves one-to-one specific nursing requirements. The same applies, as other noble Lords have said, at the opposite end of the service. Milton Keynes is a community that includes people of all ages, from the very young to the very old, so it has the same problems as many other hospitals. The interventions and developments that we have had in treating cancer and other medications for improving health, to which noble Lords have referred, have made immense improvements and breakthroughs in people’s lives. However, I am not sure that, as the noble Lord, Lord Desai, rightly said, although in very different terms, we—patients, communities or any of us—understand just what the effect of that is. We all welcome the improvements made in our lives—any of us would want our relations to have all that—but the implications for an acute trust of funding and service provision are extensive.

Over the last few weeks and even days, my trust, like many others, has been seeing very poorly patients, mostly old men and women, brought in with chest pains, breathing difficulties and even with pneumonia, and others are heading that way. We, like other hospitals, have dedicated staff, from consultants and nurses to healthcare assistants and, importantly, porters, who are often not mentioned but who make the wheels of the organisation move—porters moving trolleys in and out of A&E can make a big difference to the facility that we have to look after patients, and that support is absolutely crucial, particularly at this time. The staff have a huddle every morning or at every shift change and look at what is going on. If you come in, morning after morning, and find that not a single bed is available for anyone who comes through your doors that day, that is a big challenge to start the day with. However, every member of staff works in high spirits and with complete dedication. They care—as I think we all do—about the type of service that they are going to give. They worry, as we all do, when the stress goes on for as long as it has, that they are not able to give the care that they want each and every patient to have who goes through their hands.

The reasons for that are multiple and we have discussed many of them today in this debate. I will pick up on one thing that my noble friend Lord Warner just talked about, which is our relationship with local authorities. As my noble friend Lord Warner and other noble Lords said, many of the bed-blockers—it is a most unfortunate phrase; these are wonderful people who have had interesting and dedicated lives—are there because there is nowhere else for them to go. The ability of local authorities to purchase places in nursing homes and care homes, not just in Milton Keynes but elsewhere, has been reduced because of the cuts, so there is nowhere for people to go.

In addition—and I shall say this quickly, because I am running out of time—what has accelerated the process and caused the overwhelming concern over the past few days is that we have just experienced what in hospital terms is called a “double weekend”. Christmas Day was on Thursday, Boxing Day was on Friday and there followed Saturday and Sunday. The consequences are that we already have challenged services but we also have consultants and nurses who are not working over those days, which means that we cannot provide the usual service.

The Front Bench is getting anxious that I am not finishing in time, so I will finish there. All that I would seriously ask on behalf of my staff in the hospital is that we should not have massive change. Please let us not have a whole new look at what we are doing, with someone coming out with something entirely different. Everybody is weary with that, so let us just look at what we have and make sure that we can make it work better.