Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust

Debate between Ben Gummer and Baroness Hodge of Barking

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Ben Gummer]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s points. I accept that uncertainty is created at the King George site and that the effect of that is potentially destabilising, especially when the hospital and the trust have had to endure the whole process of special measures. His solution, however, is a false one in two senses.

First, the decision was clinically led in the first place, so to go against it would be to go against a clinical decision after several reviews. The hon. Gentleman is therefore suggesting that we make a political intervention against a decision made by doctors about the best distribution of trauma centres and urgent and emergency care centres according to population. Decisions have been made on a similar basis throughout the country. I do not believe that he really feels that that would be an acceptable route to take. Secondly, even were we to do that, it would not remove uncertainty, because there would still need to be some sort of reconfiguration in future in order to get the best outcomes for patients. So the uncertainty would remain.

The hon. Gentleman’s point is valid to an extent. If the situation were to occur again—clearly none of us would have wished things to proceed as they have done —we need to make it clear that reconfigurations can happen only when we have the correct sustainability in receiver organisations. That should be something we think about as we go ahead. However, we are where we are now with his trust, and to proceed on the basis that he suggests would not give either the patient outcomes or the certainty that he desires, whether for staff or his constituents.

[Margaret Hodge]

The Minister referred to a decision that was initiated in about 2009. That is correct, but circumstances change. Our area is the most rapidly expanding in London. I do not know the figures for Redbridge, but those for Barking and Dagenham show, potentially, another 30,000 to 35,000 houses being built over the next 10 to 15 years. That is massive expansion. I put it to the Minister that not only is the number of houses increasing, but the nature of the households is changing. What used to be a house lived in by a couple with perhaps two kids now tends to be lived in by intergenerational families with many more people. What regard has he paid to those changes? Should he not pay regard to them and review his decision in the light of them?

[Ben Gummer]

It is not ultimately my decision. It is the decision of the Secretary of State, but only on the advice of the Independent Reconfiguration Panel. The IRP takes a view over a long horizon, so it takes population growth into account in the original decisions—

[Margaret Hodge]

It did not.

[Ben Gummer]

I will come back to the right hon. Lady with a final comment, but that is what I understand. In the end, such decisions are left to local commissioners, who are the experts in buying the right kind of health provision for their patient groups. If their decision changes, that should be reflected in the IRP’s final decision, but the commissioners remain certain that that is the correct way to go for east and north-east London, and while that remains the case, we as politicians should support that clinical decision.

I will respond to some of the other points made by hon. Members. The finances of the hospital were brought up several times. It is true that it has had a sustained poor financial performance, but it is unlike other hospitals which have become indebted or are lifting up. The hospital’s position is a sustained one involving a large number—£38 million, which includes a very large figure for agency workers. That figure is now declining as the new management gets a grip on recruitment, and I heard some good stories about the improvement in recruitment when I went there only a couple of weeks ago. There is also £60 million annual provision for PFI payments, which is a problem in many trusts around the country, but there is no point rehearsing those issues, which the right hon. Member for Barking looked at many times in her previous role.

The chief executive is clear about the deficit. He shares my view and that of the Secretary of State that financial performance and quality go hand in hand. No hospital in this country offers outstanding care but has poor financial performance. We cannot get efficient care anywhere if the books are not being looked after at the same time, because the two work together. The chief executive understands that getting the trust into a decent financial position is central to providing the kind of consistently high-quality care that he wants to see across the trust, and not only in the specific areas rightly highlighted by the hon. Members for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) and for Ilford North.

The hon. Member for Ilford South was right to talk about capacity. There was a serious lack of capacity because of the failure to discharge patients and to get people through the system, which caused problems at the front end, in A&E. Remarkable change has been achieved in the past six months through the new measures put in place by the new management, but it is true that there is a great deal more to do. I heard a different story from the one the hon. Gentleman recounted: actually, they thought that the last CQC judgment was completely realistic; the action points highlighted were in large part already being addressed and needed to be done. The new management recognised that special measures was a regime that had to be exited once a sustainable improvement over time had been shown. That was gratifying to hear, because when it is heard from the shop floor, the management and the CQC, that shows that the whole team understands the problems and how they need to be addressed.

Several Members mentioned the problems in primary care, and I am aware of the acute issues in east and north-east London. They are the reason why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State launched the new deal for GPs a couple of weeks ago. NHS England is now mapping hotspots of GP shortage across the country. It will use that information to target resources to make sure we are putting the new GPs being recruited into the right places and using every possible incentive to make sure that under-doctored areas are brought up to parity. Members will know that this is a historical problem and it will take a great deal of heavy lifting from all of us to change it. It is not simply about sheer numbers of GPs; we must have new models of delivering care and new diversity, so that we can deliver primary care appropriately rather than in a way that is based on a model that does not fit.

The right hon. Member for Barking raised understandable concerns that the existing system for the Barts trust was set up to finance one PFI deal. She is not alone in those concerns. I am taking a deep interest in the progress of the special measures regime at Barts. The financial performance and accounting procedures at that hospital and trust when it went into special measures were frankly shocking. They have now been changed, and we will be reviewing the situation on a weekly basis. I hope that if she discusses the matter with the CQC and the trust, she will understand better that it is not that the trust is subsidising one PFI but that there are systemic financial problems across the trust. I take her point completely, however. As we address the financial problems in east London we must reassure everyone that mergers have not happened simply to prop up one organisation at the expense of another.

Finally, I welcome the constructive approach and fair questions of the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne). I hope I have answered the majority of his questions, but I question the idea that Government policy has made the situation worse. The reason we are debating here is that the CQC gave an inadequate rating to the Barking hospital trust and put it into special measures. The ratings and the special measures regime were a creation of the previous Government. They have provided transparency and clarity that we did not have before and allowed us to have an honest discussion about what is wrong and what is right. I can now stand up and say where the problems are and accept responsibility for what needs to change. None of that was possible when we could not say that anything was wrong and had to pretend there were no problems, because there was a culture of denial rather than one of transparency and openness.

We are not at the acme. We have a great deal of distance still to make up, but we are in a much better place than we were back in 2013, when the trust was put in special measures, or in 2010, when the review was completed. We now have clarity about what we need to do and the process for doing it. I believe that we will soon have a much better health economy in north-east London than the one that Members have had to endure so far.