Debate on the Address

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley). Let me be the latest Member to congratulate him on his long-running leadership of the campaign for leasehold reform; I am thinking of my constituents who have had to suffer from the mismanagement of their leasehold arrangements by Redrow and Persimmon. The hon. Gentleman’s case for more substantive leasehold reform is well made, and I hope that there will be urgent action on that. As a Member of the Co-operative party as well as the Labour party, I have always supported the principle of commonhold. However, I recognise that we have much to do to establish commonhold as the norm in England and Wales. I hope that reforms will allow that to happen.

I want to concentrate my remarks on the state of our public services and on Brexit. As a proud Co-op MP, I am disappointed, but not entirely surprised, to see once again nothing in a Queen’s Speech about how the Government might want to help the co-operative movement expand. There is nothing to help energy co-operatives expand to grow the usage of renewable energy still further, which is essential if we are to get our emissions down quicker. There is nothing to help housing co-operatives expand to tackle the housing crisis, particularly, but not exclusively, in London. There is nothing to help co-operative schools either.

I share the disappointment of the co-op movement that there is no commitment in the Queen’s Speech to bring forward as a matter of urgency legislation to reform the rules on credit unions. The Government know that there is a growing consensus within the credit union movement on what needs to happen to release credit unions from some of the red tape that holds back their expansion, yet there is no commitment to legislate on that. Some of the legislation that governs other forms of co-operatives dates from the Victorian era and needs to be modernised. Work by the Law Commission and a commitment to legislate for reform would have been timely.

It is the biggest co-op businesses that struggle on occasion to get access to the level of capital that they need to expand, and that is where there is the most urgent need for Government legislation. Withdrawable shares could help the biggest co-ops, such as the Co-op Group, to expand and go to the capital markets without their co-operative status being threatened. Such legislation has been successfully introduced in Australia, and I hope that the Treasury will move forward on this issue in the next 12 months.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) set out, the Co-operative party has long supported action to reduce violence against shop workers; his leadership of the effort to get the Government to legislate has been notable. I add my voice to his in hoping that we will see significant Government movement on that very soon.

It feels as if there is nothing in this programme suggesting that the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary, the Education Secretary or the Home Secretary truly have a plan to tackle the crisis in our public services. The crisis in the national health service and social care facing my constituents is the most urgent issue that I want to address. The three major hospitals serving my constituency are all either directly in crisis or clearly exhibiting signs of the huge pressures that they are under. Alternatives to acute care in my constituency and the neighbouring ones are being closed. Three walk-in centres have either closed or are being closed. Primary care in my constituency is under growing strain. GP surgeries report increasing difficulties in recruiting staff, and the users of those surgeries report increasing difficulty in getting appointments. The clinical commissioning group and the trust are millions of pounds in the red and have often been in the red in the past. Nothing suggests that the deficits that they have at the moment are likely to get significantly better in the coming years.

I turn to something that many on these—and, I suspect, the Government—Benches will recognise. Years ago our local council had to give up providing social care to all but the most chronically in need. It is fair to say that it is struggling even to do that successfully, given the shortage of funding in local government. In May, an independent inquiry by clinical experts ruled that Mount Vernon Hospital, one of the three that serves my constituency, can no longer operate safely—that it is unviable and cannot maintain the safety of its patients. It is a 117-year-old cancer hospital. It is so dilapidated and short of doctors and nurses that it cannot provide modern cancer care or even basic elements of treatment, such as consultants undertaking daily ward rounds, new in-patients being reviewed within 14 hours of arrival, or rapid access to diagnostic testing and results.

It is the first time in the history of the national health service that a major facility, specialising in this country’s biggest disease—cancer—now poses a direct risk to patients and has been declared unfit for purpose. It was therefore astonishing that when the Health Secretary recently announced funding for building six hospitals and for work on a bunch of other hospitals, Mount Vernon Hospital was not included in the mix. I hope that we will shortly hear some sense of a plan for investment in Mount Vernon Hospital to keep the hugely valued cancer facilities there, which until now have been hugely successful. There is a huge affinity with the hospital and its staff, and it urgently needs the Government to show it a little care and attention.

Central Middlesex Hospital serves my constituents in part and it also needs a little love and attention from the Government. Only 10 years ago, after considerable investment, it was being marked out as the future for the NHS—a hospital able to get people in and out very quickly. Ten years on, its accident and emergency department has closed—permanently, some five years ago—and now its urgent treatment centre has closed at nights. Many in its vicinity worry about what is coming next.

The major acute hospital serving my constituency is Northwick Park Hospital, which is under huge pressure. Northwick Park Hospital last met the four-hour accident and emergency target—95% of attendance lasting no longer than four hours—over five years ago, in August 2014. For the first half of this year, from April to September, demand for A&E services was up again, by 4%, which is vastly higher than the average of 0.2% across the rest of London. Occupancy rates for bed usage across the trust are above the national average. Staff vacancy rates appear to be significantly above the national average too, at almost 20% for medical staff and over 13% for nursing staff. Porters, cleaners and caterers, who do such essential jobs, are being paid less than the London living wage, while the chief executive of the company they work for, Medirest, has a salary of over £1 million. It is hardly surprising that the staff should be contemplating industrial action.

It is, however, the scale of backlog maintenance at Northwick Park that particularly bears highlighting. According to its risk register, over £38 million is needed to tackle the high and significant risks that have been identified around the Northwick Park estate.

Some seven years ago, Ministers and Conservative Members of Parliament decided to use north-west London as a health experiment and brought forward a document, “Shaping a Healthier Future”. Over six years, they set out to close a number of A&E departments and spent over £75 million on consultants. This was going to be the way in which other services, including those that serve my constituency such as Northwick Park, were going to see additional investment. No additional investment has been forthcoming. After huge campaigns, two of the four A&E departments that Ministers wanted to shut, Ealing and Charing Cross, have been saved. However, Hammersmith and, as I alluded to earlier, Central Middlesex, have closed. It is difficult to see what has been achieved to make things better for my constituents directly, other than increasing demand on our acute hospital.

To be fair, some of the original analysis in the “Shaping a Healthier Future” programme was prescient, even if the resulting strategy was deeply flawed. We have a significantly growing population. There are huge health inequalities in our area. We have an ageing population and modern lifestyles are exacerbating some of the care needs that my constituents face. “Shaping a Healthier Future” did set out a need for significant new investment and a bid for over £500 million was submitted to the Department of Health and Social Care and the Treasury last year. Included in that were efforts to tackle the maintenance backlog across all the hospitals in north-west London, including Northwick Park, which serves my constituency. That bid was rejected last summer and, so far, nothing has been brought forward in terms of significant new moneys to tackle the issues that “Shaping a Healthier Future” originally identified.

Seven years ago, the authors of that document were a little prescient in that they wrote:

“Unless things change, we predict that most hospitals in NW London will end up in financial difficulties.”

That has certainly been proved right for Brent and Harrow. London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs Central Middlesex and Northwick Park hospitals, is over £30 million in the red. Harrow clinical commissioning group, which serves my constituents, is over £40 million in deficit. It has been in deficit since it was first set up and no one expects that to change any time soon unless there were to be, as there should be, a significant increase in funding for the NHS. What is even more worrying is that London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, to try to reduce the scale of its deficit, had to sell off land owned by the NHS.

The particular issue that my constituents have noticed in the crisis in NHS care is the closure of walk-in centres. In November last year, Alexandra Avenue walk-in centre closed. It had been open from 8 am to 8 pm, 365 days a year, allowing people in my constituency to walk in off the streets and see a nurse or a doctor usually within 15 or 20 minutes. Belmont walk-in centre, which serves the constituency of Harrow East primarily as well as some of my constituents in Wealdstone, is set to close at the beginning of next month. The Pinn medical centre, which serves the northern part of my constituency but is located in Pinner, Ruislip and Northwood, is being earmarked for closure, too. There is a funding crisis in the NHS and it needs to be sorted as a matter of urgency, in particular in my constituency.

It is now seven years since we had a police force in Harrow that was recognisably up to the task of tackling violent crime and antisocial behaviour. Then, we had a sergeant, two constables and three police community support officers in every ward of my constituency. The Mayor of London has done what he can do to make sure there are dedicated police constables and a PCSO in each ward, but £1 million extra a year needs to go into the Metropolitan police budget if we are to be able to return to having dedicated neighbourhood, ward-based teams with sufficient officers to tackle crime.

I echo the concerns of other Opposition Members about our future relationship with the European Union, which is the big issue dominating the Queen’s Speech. I am a pragmatic pro-European. As a Minister who went to Brussels on what sometimes felt like more than a regular basis, it was not always easy to feel passionate about the European Union. One saw it up close, warts and all. However, when one stands back from those occasional frustrations, the case for staying in the European Union remains compelling: our economy is stronger, our security is enhanced and our influence on the world stage is much greater.

Following the referendum result, I voted to respect that result by triggering article 50 to allow formal negotiations to begin. However, every Brexit scenario advanced by the Conservative party suggests that our economy would be significantly poorer and our influence on the global stage much more limited. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn rightly alluded to the fact that until our future relationship with the European Union is resolved crucial elements of the security of our country remain very substantially at risk. To his list, I would add the issue of people smuggling. We have to co-operate across the European Union to tackle the gangs who try to transport people illegally into our country.

A no-deal Brexit is without question the worst of all the Brexit scenarios that have been advocated. One heard last week the statement by the president of Nissan that there may well not be a future for Nissan in the UK under a no-deal Brexit scenario. Manufacturers giving evidence to the International Trade Committee, on which I have the privilege to sit, set out the huge damage to the steel sector a no-deal Brexit would deliver. There is, perhaps, a compromise to be had. It requires the current occupant of No. 10 to be a little bolder in taking on the European Research Group on his own Back Benches and to agree that any deal he negotiates must be put back to the British people. Then and only then should we have the election that I suspect we all want, on both sides of the House.

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that this is an odd time to be having a Queen’s Speech. It does not answer any of the significant challenges facing our country and I look forward to opposing it next week.