Healthcare: Hampshire

Danny Chambers Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

Whether I am door-knocking at the general election or reading my inbox, the NHS and healthcare services are, by a long way, the single biggest worry that people talk about. After 14 years of Conservative mismanagement of both the economy and the NHS, I have heard from many people about how they are struggling to access NHS services not only for themselves but for their children, which causes huge stress for the family and friends of those involved.

In 2019, Boris Johnson announced that Hampshire would have one of 40 new hospitals. In 2024 the sitting Conservative MP I stood against repeated once again that there would be a new hospital in Hampshire. It was frustrating, although possibly not surprising, to find out after the general election that not only had there never been any money assigned to the new hospital in Hampshire but that there is a £22 billion deficit that we had not previously known about.

Hospital managers, along with the chief executives of hospital trusts and integrated care boards, are trying to plan the future of healthcare in Hampshire, which becomes difficult when the goalposts keep moving and when they do not know whether there will be a new hospital. It is also causing huge stress for the residents around Winchester, especially those south of Winchester, who have been told that they might lose their accident and emergency department and their consultant-led maternity services as part of the new hospital plan. I have heard from thousands of people, including up to 30,000 who signed a petition, about the importance of keeping our A&E and consultant-led maternity services in and around Winchester. I have heard from many people whose lives were saved at Winchester and who are worried that they might have to travel further.

There has been a public consultation on the location of a new hospital, and it is currently being reviewed. Winchester residents are very concerned that none of the suitable potential sites in Winchester was included as an option. People had to choose between north or south of Basingstoke. This is not only a concern for people in Winchester, who will have to travel further for emergency healthcare; it is also a concern for the management of Southampton hospital, who are concerned that the further north a new hospital is built, the more that people will go to Southampton because it is closer. At the moment, Southampton hospital is operating at capacity and would need significant new resources if the hospital were built too far north.

When we look at the future of healthcare in Hampshire, we should seriously consider why we would build a new hospital so close to Frimley Park, which is going to be rebuilt because it has reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete and is only 20 minutes away along the A3. Why would we have two new hospitals so close to each other? I would appreciate having a meeting with Minister to discuss the potential location of any new hospital, so that we can ensure everyone in Winchester can access healthcare in an appropriate place.

The location of any new hospital is key to the future of healthcare in Hampshire because it will provide healthcare for decades to come. However, we are aware that the proposed new hospital may not be included in the new hospital programme after the review, so we need to focus on our current hospital. The NHS staff at that hospital are fantastic, but we need to look at how we can support it now and in the decades to come.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

I apologise for intervening on the hon. Gentleman without notice; I appreciate him giving way. He outlined the case for a new hospital at junction 7 of the M3, but he is slightly muddling the argument. Clinical professionals recommended a location for that hospital, with replacement services that were being taken from Winchester hospital, while maintaining a Winchester hospital with certain services. Blue light times showed that there would be no significant difference in accessing healthcare for someone living in the north half of my old constituency of Eastleigh and someone living the part of his constituency that he mentioned. The hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend, the new hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis), opposed the new hospital, so is it not a little bit awkward for him to say that the Government had no funding plans, when he opposed the location and that hospital being created? That meant there was a muddling of decision making because he and his colleague opposed that hospital being created in the first place.

[Dr Chambers]

We never opposed a new hospital—that was something the Conservatives were saying about us. We support a new hospital, we want a new hospital, and we want modern healthcare services in Hampshire. However, we were very concerned that the proposed location of the new hospital is not suitable when we look at how healthcare is delivered throughout Hampshire. Sites just north of Winchester were identified as suitable; when we look at a map of Hampshire, it is clear that those proposed locations would be much more suitable for people throughout Hampshire, including those in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, to reach emergency services.

Our current A&E department, like other A&E departments, is hugely busy, especially as we head into winter. We know that many people attend A&E because they cannot get the primary care they need. Up to 20% of people who turn up at A&E are there because they cannot get a doctor’s appointment. People who are in a mental health crisis—many are often already on a waiting list—are going to A&E. They take up a huge amount of time and staff resources, often needing 15 to 18 hours of constant monitoring before they can be taken to a place of safety. We also have people turning up with dental issues because they cannot access an NHS dentist.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. While there are other hon. Members in the Chamber know the issues well, does he agree that the ability to bring healthcare into communities is vital, particularly for people in isolated communities who cannot hop on a bus every 15 or 20 minutes, or even every hour, to get to their appointments? Some areas simply cannot have centralised care or a new hospital; they do need localised facilities. If the hon. Gentleman is asking for that, then he is asking for the right thing.

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[Dr Chambers]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. As a vet who has worked in public health programmes around the world, I know that it has been proven time and again that it is always more cost effective to treat people in their communities and keep them healthy, than to treat them in hospital when they get sick. We need to focus on that. I know the Government have said that they want to move treatment from hospitals into the community.

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

I suspect the hon. Member understands that I probably will not agree with him on the thrust of his argument about Basingstoke hospital. However, on the point about local community services, in my seat, in Whitehill and Bordon, there is a debate about whether we should keep the old Chase community hospital or build a new health hub. There are arguments on both sides, but the one thing that unites the two is the lack of communication from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight integrated care board. Does the hon. Gentleman find it as frustrating as I do that that ICB seems to not want to communicate with residents across the county?

[Dr Chambers]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman; when there is a lack of communication with residents, decision makers and any other interested stakeholders, that is when there are difficulties, such as rumours and unnecessary anxiety. Improved communication, whether in healthcare or in any Government Department, solves a huge number of problems.

On the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about accessing healthcare when people live in rural areas, I have a story about Margaret, who lives just south of Winchester and who wrote to me saying that she had been given an appointment at Basingstoke for a particular type of X-ray. Her journey to Basingstoke hospital took well over an hour and involved multiple buses and a train, plus considerable walking time. Margaret has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and gets exhausted walking long distances, and she cannot easily afford a taxi all the way from Basingstoke back to Winchester. She asked me whether people without cars were to become second-class citizens and be denied access to decent healthcare options. We have to look at individuals’ situations, and that can include needing really good public transport. The more community care we have in people’s towns and villages, the quicker they can get there from their homes.

The other side of emergency care and A&E departments is social care. We have said many times that we cannot fix the NHS without fixing social care. We know that in the Hampshire hospitals NHS foundation trust, there are between 160 and 200 people at any given point who are well enough to be discharged and more appropriately cared for in the community with social care packages, but who are currently stuck in a hospital bed and cannot be discharged. That means that patients cannot be moved out of A&E and people cannot be removed from ambulances as quickly as they could be, which means that ambulance waiting times are longer.

When I spoke to the CEO of Winchester hospital, he said that the single biggest help they could get from Government would be another 160 social care packages. Although people ask where the money will come from, we know it is more expensive to keep someone in a hospital bed than to give them a social care package. We have winter pressures coming up—indeed, winter has already started—and the CEO has told me on more than one occasion that, to help with those winter pressures, more social care packages would probably be the single biggest intervention that would make a huge difference. Local authorities struggle to afford social care packages and the NHS trusts have to fund some of those packages out of their NHS budget, which is primarily meant for treating people in hospital.

One of the biggest concerns raised by Winchester residents is the potential removal of consultant-led maternity services at Winchester hospital. That means that if a woman were to haemorrhage or require an emergency C-section during labour, she would need to be transferred. To put that into perspective, in April 2024, 22.7% of births were performed via emergency C-section at Winchester hospital. It is clear that surgical interventions are not an unusual eventuality, but something that will affect more than one in five mothers.

An emergency transfer in such a situation would inevitably put the lives of some women and babies at serious risk and, tragically, some could be lost. A constituent wrote to me about her daughter, who had recently haemorrhaged badly after giving birth to a baby who was in a breech position. The blood transfusion and lifesaving surgery to remove her placenta needed to happen within minutes, and it is unthinkable what would have happened had there been no consultants on hand. As someone who has performed many emergency caesareans—on animals rather than on humans—I know that time is of the essence, and anything that delays surgical intervention can make a huge difference, not just to whether the person and the baby survive but to whether the baby has potential brain damage and other life-changing complications.

As the Liberal Democrat mental health spokesperson, I see this debate as a chance to highlight how desperately we need more resources put into mental health, alongside a more holistic approach to treatment. When speaking to residents in Winchester, one of the most common concerns is the difficulty in accessing mental healthcare, and that is especially true for parents who are struggling to access mental healthcare for their children.

I spoke to a constituent near Swanmore who was struggling to access the mental healthcare and support they needed for their child who was anorexic and had an eating disorder. They had been informed that their child had to reach a lower BMI to qualify for the threshold to get treatment, because resources are so stretched. That would not be considered even remotely acceptable for any other disease. A person with cancer would never be told that they needed to reach stage 4 before they qualified for treatment. We know that outcomes with delayed treatment for mental and physical health disorders, of which eating disorders are a combination of both, will be much less successful and much less cost-effective, requiring longer and less successful treatment the longer that the condition is left. I urge the Minister to look with particular concern at the mental health of young people and children. Delays in mental health treatment for anyone can be catastrophic, but a three-year delay for someone who is only 13, 14, or 15 is a huge chunk of their life.

As part of that, we urgently need to invest in primary care. Failing to address this will only place greater pressure on our already overstretched hospitals. I have spoken to people who have spent extended amounts of time in hospital beds, because they cannot get the mental healthcare that they need.

Similarly, the lack of NHS dentists often forces patients to turn up to hospital, sometimes needing a general anaesthetic, to sort out tooth root abscesses, which costs more than providing NHS dental care. It seems as though all the dentists I speak to say that their current contract for performing NHS care is not fit for purpose. I urge the Minister to look at this as an urgent priority, because so many people are not receiving the dental care that they need. It seems as though this whole issue will not be resolved until the NHS contract is looked at.

The other issue that affects people getting healthcare in their communities, especially around Hampshire, Winchester and the Meon Valley, relates to struggling pharmacies. The situation for pharmacies seems to be very similar to that of the dentists in that their arrangement with the Government for providing prescription services does not seem to be fit for purpose. It seems to be costing pharmacies money to provide prescription drugs, and they are telling me that their businesses are no longer viable. The more pharmacies that we lose, the further people will have to travel to not only collect drugs, but get medical advice and vaccines.

In conclusion, I wish to pay tribute to NHS staff. I imagine that they dread the winter coming up. Every year, it is a stress for them. Every year, they are overworked. And every year, we know that both clinical and non-clinical staff will work longer hours than they are contracted to do. I know that they will be bracing themselves right now. They will be busier, and they will be putting themselves at risk from getting things such as flu, covid and the other respiratory diseases that we see in the winter. One thing that we can all do, both as the public and the Government, is to encourage everyone to get vaccinated ahead of these winter pressures. Anything we can do to prevent a trip to hospital will make their job easier and make it less likely that they will get sick.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman speaks eloquently on a wide range of healthcare challenges in Hampshire. Does he agree that our shared integrated care board for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight must do all that it can to make the best of the situation, particularly in relation to NHS dentistry and funding for hospices across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight?

[Dr Chambers]

The hon. Member makes a good point about hospices in particular. Only about a third of hospice funding is provided by the Government. It is a hugely emotive subject, which affects not only the people in the hospice but the whole family, who are trying to care for a loved one who often has only weeks or months left to go. We have two hospices in Winchester, one of which is a children’s hospice, Naomi House. Some of the most moving visits I have ever done have been to hospices, where the staff and patients are incredibly brave. We have a debate coming up on assisted dying. We will really have to look at palliative and hospice care and how it is funded, and how we make it sustainable and fit for purpose. I thank him for that important intervention.

Many constituents write to tell me about the excellent care that they receive in hospitals, and how much they appreciate the hard work of NHS staff. A Winchester resident called Owen wrote to tell me that he honestly does not believe that he would be alive today were it not for Winchester hospital. Owen sadly suffers from a brain tumour in the pituitary gland, and has needed many emergency treatments. Owen lives five minutes from the hospital and has managed to have lifesaving treatment there on multiple occasions.

We need to avoid the trap of cutting short-term costs, such as by not investing in social care, which has ended up costing the state so much more money in the long run. We need a comprehensive plan to give people adequate local healthcare throughout their lives, and escape the endless cycle of crisis after crisis. We know that winter is coming this year, and coming next year. What are we doing to ensure that we will not have an NHS crisis in Hampshire next winter as well?

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[Andrew Gwynne]

Absolutely. I will try to be as unpartisan as I can, but the hospital programme that we inherited from the right hon. Member’s Government did not have anything like the money it needed to back it up. Conservative Members can shake their heads, but it is true. It had nothing like the money needed to bring forward those hospitals. As I have said, we will review that. Our intention is to bring forward those schemes, but that has to be done in an achievable programme, with the finances to back it up. When we announce to the House how we will schedule the hospital programme, I expect that all the answers he wants will be there. We intend to introduce the hospital building programme, but it must be done with money—we cannot build them with fresh air.

[Dr Chambers]

any potential new hospital is decades away, while the hospital we have needs to be maintained and improved. The quickest way forward is to provide 160 new social care packages for Winchester hospital. Will the Minister meet me and the chief executive officer of Winchester hospital to work out how we can deliver those packages as quickly as possible, and provide good A&E, hospital and social care services for everyone in and around Winchester?

[Andrew Gwynne]

It is crucial that we have the best possible health and care services in place for today’s needs while we plan for the future. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concerns, and I will ensure that they are communicated back to the Minister for Secondary Care, so that she can consider them. I will ask her to report back to him on that. Ultimately, all decisions are best made locally, so that they can cater to local interests, and are clinically led. This is no exception. I know that the hon. Gentleman’s trust will consider all feedback from the public consultation held earlier this year, including from those who will access the new facilities, as well as wider bodies of evidence. The result of the public consultation on location and services will be put to the local integrated care board, and we look forward to hearing the outcome of that.

[Dr Chambers]

I apologise for intervening again so soon. One of my main concerns about the public consultation is that the NHS had assessed sites in Winchester as suitable, but they were not then included in the consultation. The people of Winchester want to know why those suitable sites were not included in the consultation. Can the Minister assure me that that will be addressed by the ICB, and anyone else publishing the consultation?

[Andrew Gwynne]

As I said before the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, ultimately these are local decisions, and they must be clinically led. If the trust has decided that certain outcomes that he would like to see are out of scope of the consultation, we must take it as read that there are sound clinical reasons for that. If he thinks otherwise, I am sure that he can bring that up with my hon. Friend the Minister for Secondary Care, but ultimately we must be guided by the clinicians. They know, more than we Ministers in Whitehall will ever know, what the better outcomes for their areas are.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned primary and community care. We know that patients nationally and in Hampshire find it increasingly difficult to see a GP. We are committed as a Government to fixing the front door to the NHS, to ensure that patients receive the care that they deserve. If patients cannot get a GP appointment, they end up at accident and emergency, which is worse for them and more expensive for the taxpayer. That is why we will shift the focus of the NHS out of hospitals and into community. One of our three big shifts is from hospital to community; the others are from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention. Those three things, taken as a whole, could be quite transformative in how we deliver primary care.