Health Provision (South Gloucestershire)

Chris Skidmore Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti), for securing this important debate. Many people in South Gloucestershire are listening, and I put it on record that he has been a strong local champion for his area. At every moment, he has not been afraid to speak truth to power about what we feel is going wrong with healthcare across South Gloucestershire. The Minister will be more than aware that we have put South Gloucestershire on the map in raising our concerns about local healthcare provision. We have met her twice, and the last time was on 23 June. My hon. Friend and I have also met the Health Secretary. Over the past five years, we have secured several such debates in the House, and we will continue to do so until we resolve the issues that need to be resolved on behalf of our constituents.

Today, my hon. Friend has raised the issue of Frenchay. The delay caused by the CCG, for whatever reason, is inexcusable and needs to be solved, but I also want to talk about the situation at Cossham hospital, which is also part of the feted Bristol health services plan that took accident and emergency services from Frenchay to give to Southmead on the other side of Bristol. As part of that health services plan, a minor injuries unit was promised at Cossham hospital. Do not get me wrong—Cossham hospital had a full £20 million refurbishment after it was threatened with closure under the previous Labour Government in 2004, which is fantastic. As a member of the league of friends of Cossham hospital, I have volunteered to make the tea and, before we had our new baby, we turned up for antenatal classes at the hospital. It is a superb facility, but it has an empty room that should have housed a minor injuries unit, which, alongside Frenchay, is an outstanding sore point among my constituents, who were promised a minor injuries unit at Cossham and a community hospital at Frenchay. Those promises have not been delivered.

Cossham hospital is just outside my constituency in Bristol East, but it is used by 80% of South Gloucestershire residents, so it is a critical healthcare facility. There has been a 20,000-signature petition to the House of Commons, of which I delivered 2,500 signatures. That petition led to these debates and, just the other month, a referral to the IRP was published by the Health Secretary, who signed off and agreed the IRP’s recommendations. I understand that no Health Secretary has ever not agreed with the IRP’s recommendations, but the recommendations were that the CCG could go ahead as planned and not provide a minor injuries unit at Cossham. Instead, the CCG wants to pilot the introduction of minor injuries provision at general practitioner centres.

There is a problem for my constituents, and for constituents elsewhere in South Gloucestershire. There is a minor injuries unit in Yate, which I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) will discuss. It is a fantastic resource, and only one patient at the unit has not been seen within the four-hour target, but we should have had a minor injuries unit at Cossham because people pay their taxes and it was part of the deal, which has been signed and sealed but not delivered. We have now been grinding away at this for years, and we seem to be going around in circles. The CCG has not come up with any alternative provision, so someone in Kingswood with a minor injury such as a broken leg or a broken arm has to go up to Yate. There is simply no provision in place, which is totally unacceptable. The IRP reported the exasperation that constituents feel about Frenchay, which is happening all over again and is mirrored with the minor injuries unit at Cossham hospital.

I have three points to raise with the Minister as the MP for Kingswood. I will continue to fight for a minor injuries unit at Cossham. At the moment, the CCG has not ruled out a unit. It is common sense that, while a room is empty and there is an X-ray department just down the corridor, it is far simpler for someone with a broken bone to get to the X-ray department than having to go to a GP surgery to be treated by a nurse practitioner before getting in an ambulance to go up to a minor injuries unit at Yate or Southmead. It is that lack of joined-up thinking that I and my constituents find incredibly frustrating.

One of the recommendations in the IRP report published last month—moving forward from its regrettable conclusions—was about the CCG request for external support from NHS England to help to solve its problems with delivering the community hospital at Frenchay and minor injuries unit provision across South Gloucestershire. It has asked for help, citing the problems it has with the deficit it inherited from the PCT. To reassure constituents and campaigners that the CCG will gets the help it requires, can the Minister tell us what kind of support NHS England can provide and how soon that can take place? We need answers and we need a road map.

As CCGs become more embedded and more autonomous organisations, accountability becomes an issue, and I do not believe arrangements are in place. That is general point that could apply across the country. The Secretary of State for Health has rightly copied the model of the Department for Education and introduced an accountability regime into hospitals. We now have a chief inspector of hospitals and hospitals will be graded on whether they are inadequate or need improvements. We need that system for CCGs. We need to be able to turn around, as a local community, and stare at our CCG, and know that if it has failed in public engagement, as South Gloucestershire CCG patently has, it will be branded as needing improvement or even inadequate. I urge the Minister to take that policy proposal away and look at it, because the problem will only grow.

Funding in South Gloucestershire is a well worn theme. My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke has raised the fact that we have a rapidly aging population. With 30% growth in the over-65s demographic since 2004, there will be problems with co-morbidities and long-term chronic illnesses, which effect everyone once we reach a certain point in life. That is what we need to deal with in South Gloucestershire, but we can only deal with it with improved funding. When we look at South Gloucestershire and compare it with Bristol, there may as well be a Berlin wall running through the county boundary: on one side is Bristol with several thousand pounds per head more funding than South Gloucestershire. Yes, we have had an incredibly welcome health funding increase of 7% in the past year—17th largest rise in the country—but we need a fairer funding settlement. We have the f40 group for schools, and we need the same in healthcare to ensure that South Gloucestershire residents get the healthcare that they desperately deserve.