NHS Trusts: Finances

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I say to the Minister in all friendliness that I hope the region is aware of his upcoming tour. It sounds a most exciting prospect.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister think carefully about what has happened up and down the country? Health trusts such as mine in Calderdale and Huddersfield have run successfully for many years, but recently—I think this is something to do with the destabilisation of clinical commissioning groups—many problems have entered into the general life of those trusts. In Huddersfield we do not want the closure of A&E in our hospital, or the closure of the main hospital and its replacement by a much smaller one. Will the Minister look carefully and forensically at what has happened in the Huddersfield and Calderdale area? It is not just the whipping boy of the unfortunate independent financial arrangement that was negotiated under John Major but signed under Tony Blair.

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of Parliament and, as he will know, there was a time when reorganisations and changes in the structure of the NHS, and the way that hospitals were disposed, was very much decided in Whitehall. That changed as a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, and such changes are now led by clinicians. The changes to which he alludes—which we will discuss tomorrow in Westminster Hall—are led by local clinicians, and ultimately the Secretary of State must defer to their opinion. An independent reconfiguration panel judges those changes, and so far the Secretary of State has always concluded that the panel and local clinicians have been correct. That is the right thing to do. In this case I hope and expect that we will do the same, but I will look carefully at the hon. Gentleman’s concerns, and ensure that I take them on board and relay them back to the CCG.