Minor Injuries Services (Devizes)

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) on securing this important debate. I know that local health services are a top priority for her and that she campaigned vigorously before coming to the House, and has done so since, as we have heard today, on behalf of her constituents to ensure that she obtains the best health care provision for the people she so ably represents. I admire her dedication and determination in fighting that battle for her constituents. I pay tribute to the NHS staff in Devizes and throughout Wiltshire for the excellent care and dedication that they provide day in, day out when looking after my hon. Friend’s constituents and those of other hon. Members in the county.

My hon. Friend is aware that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has launched our White Paper on liberating the national health service. It is our vision for freeing the NHS from the shackles of politicians and bureaucrats in Whitehall, giving power to people locally, and working with clinicians and general practitioners to provide those services that local communities in Devizes, Wiltshire and the country need. It is a vision for making the NHS more accountable to patients, whether my hon. Friend’s constituents in Devizes or people elsewhere. We want to free staff from excessive bureaucracy and top-down control. We want patients to be at the heart of everything that the NHS does and we want local people to have more choice and control than they have ever had and a greater say in their treatment, their needs and their health requirements. People in Devizes and the other small towns and villages that my hon. Friend mentioned will be in charge of making decisions about their care and provision of health requirements.

My hon. Friend has outlined the strength of feeling in her constituency for local minor injury services, and the support for the NHS generally. The minor injury units for Devizes and Marlborough at Savernake community hospital closed in September 2007, and my hon. Friend and her constituents were, understandably, disappointed at the decision, and have been frustrated by the difficulties and delays that have resulted from it. I am aware that people living in different parts of her constituency access different minor injury units, including those at the community hospitals at Trowbridge, Chippenham, Andover and Newbury, and that minor injury treatment continues to be available at the A and E departments in the acute hospitals in Salisbury, Bath and Swindon. As my hon. Friend rightly said, transport access causes problems for some of her constituents. I have considerable sympathy with the points she made about that.

I am also aware that my hon. Friend’s constituency covers a large rural area. She gave some interesting figures and comparisons with other rural constituencies when making her point so powerfully. I understand her desire for local minor injury units that are accessible as quickly as possible to her constituents. But I must be frank with her. Given where we are at the moment and the processes that have taken place in her county and constituency on reconfiguration of services, I am unable to ask the NHS to open previously conceded processes, or to halt those that have passed the point of no return. I know that that will disappoint my hon. Friend, but I am afraid that at the moment we are where we are because of previous decisions and the degree to which they are in process.

My hon. Friend asked what could be done, and whether pilot schemes could be introduced as a forerunner to the abolition of PCTs in 2013, and she suggested other ways of working with outside interests. I want to give her as clear a steer as possible, and unfortunately, until the PCTs are closed and cease to exist in 2013, due processes and proper procedures must be adopted to move forward. Until they are phased out from 2013, the PCTs will continue to have the same responsibilities that they have now for the provision and commissioning of health care in the areas for which they are responsible, including Wiltshire.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) for carrying on the work that we have all been doing for a considerable period on hospitals in Wiltshire. I spent three years of my life trying to keep them open. The Minister is saying that in reality, whatever the situation, despite the Health Secretary saying in 2007 that clinical need should justify closure, despite this being fundamentally an accounting measure, and despite decisions apparently not being reviewed before 2013, people are desperate for a hospital to reopen that is pre-existing, prepaid and sitting there—

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that interventions should be brief.

[Guy Opperman]

It is a long question. I apologise, Mr Streeter, but the hospital is still there, and capable of being used. With the greatest respect, I fail to see why it is not being used.

[Mr Burns]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention and I fully appreciate his frustration at the situation. I also appreciate the greater frustration of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes, because her constituency is directly affected by the issue that we are discussing. I repeat: we are where we are. We have a vision of a health service that works from the bottom up rather than the top down. However, until the changes occur, we are in a straitjacket because of procedures currently in place that have to be adopted.

Before the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), I was responding to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes about the way forward. I hope to give her a glimmer of hope and I will give her some advice about how I see the situation, both as a constituency MP and as a Minister. As long as we are in what is effectively an interim period since the publication of yesterday’s White Paper, with the PCTs still commissioning services and having the lead role, I advise her to continue her spirited and dedicated campaign to get what she seeks for her constituents. She should continue seeking to persuade the PCT, local clinicians, GPs and the local community to stay onside in the desire to establish a minor injuries unit, and ensure that the other care services she mentioned are instigated for her constituents. At the moment, that route is the only way forward because the PCTs are the commissioning agents.

I urge my hon. Friend to continue her campaign in the hope that during the interim period over the next three years, she will see a change of heart if that is possible. If it is not possible, when the changes come in, she should use the new system to seek to persuade those in charge of reconfigurations and the provision of services to reinstate the services that she so passionately and rightly believes are needed and deserved by her constituents. That is my advice. It may not be as palatable as she would hope, but I know that she will appreciate and understand that under current circumstances, we have not yet changed the system. That vision was announced yesterday and it is a vision for the future.