Community Hospitals

Debate between Guy Opperman and Jessica Lee

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

At this moment, Mr Speaker, you must be feeling like Shakespeare’s Henry V at Agincourt, and I suggest you will look back on 6 September 2012 as the day when hon. Members in the Chamber heard many potential Ministers speak for the first time. We had the great honour and privilege of hearing my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). She is a doctor and spoke with great wisdom when she introduced the debate. The other doctor in the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), also made a fine contribution. We welcome to the Whips Bench my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), who formerly distinguished the Department of Health, and throughout the past hour and a half a plethora of Labour Members have indulged us with their oratory and commitment to community hospitals. Finally, I welcome the new Minister who, as you prophesied, Mr Speaker, has a glittering career in front of her. Those were fine words, although I believe that you also admonished her most robustly for being a little too chatty when she was a Parliamentary Private Secretary.

I strongly look forward to hearing the gentle, reticent, shy, self-effacing style that the Minister has characteristically formed throughout the past two and a half years as an MP. Some have described her as Nottinghamshire’s modern Boadicea of Broxtowe, which may stick in the future. If she is able to survive the cake-fests of south Dorset, and future requests to visit many a hospital, she will surely go far.

I must make a brief declaration because I would not be in this House were it not for my campaigning as a lawyer on behalf of community hospitals, and the fact that my grandmother was an NHS matron. Furthermore, over the past two and a half years, I have probably spent more time in hospital than any other Member of Parliament, conducting an in-depth study of all aspects of NHS treatment. Owing to the fact that I was not a very good jockey, I have conducted an in-depth study of orthopaedic skills because I repeatedly seemed to come a cropper at the second last at Stratford, and various other delightful destinations. I am also fundraiser for various charitable organisations in my constituency—the Great North Air Ambulance service and the National Brain Appeal.

The subject of the debate is community hospitals. Amid the requests for preservation, strengthening and support, I want to enlighten the House with some success stories. The Haltwhistle hospital in Northumberland—a small community hospital in the heart of the town—is being completely rebuilt. There have been efforts to rebuild it for many years, and that is now happening on the same site in exactly the right way. That is what all hon. Members would like for their community hospitals. People in Northumberland would suggest that its integrated care is the way forward. There are standard community beds and care beds, and even one room for the larger patient, which is known in the trade as a bariatric room. That is a proper, integrated, long-term local solution in the community, for the community and involving the community. That must be the way forward.

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

Ilkeston community hospital in my community is held in great affection. Recently, one ward closed—the decision divided opinion among local GPs. We need to examine what services are provided and remind local residents and patients what facilities are available and what procedures they can obtain locally.

[Guy Opperman]

I endorse entirely what my hon. Friend says and am sure the Minister has taken due note of her comments.

I want to sell and extol the groundbreaking decision in Northumberland in favour of the PFI buy-out of Hexham general hospital. The hospital was built and opened under the former Prime Minister—the right hon. Member for Sedgefield as was—with a substantial PFI that patently impeded its ability to function, but it is among the first in the country to have been bought out by the local community. The way forward must be to try to refinance and improve the financial situation of such hospitals.

Northumberland has a rebuilt community hospital and a general hospital at Hexham, which delivers all the services, including cancer care and maternity, that we would like in local facilities. That should continue, but the problem I want to raise with the Minister is the future of rural health care—the problem will also apply to my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and any number of representatives of truly rural communities. Community hospitals are clearly at the heart of that, but the way in which community hospitals integrate in rural health care is one of the significant challenges for the Department of Health in the next five, 10, 15 and 20 years. I suggest that the way ahead must be for rural health care to become more automated—we should provide computer facilities for prescriptions and check-ups—but we must also integrate facilities using examples such as the Torbay and Haltwhistle models. We should also attempt to provide paramedic and GP services in an integrated way. It is good that the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), the shadow Minister, is in the Chamber, because that will take co-operation between the unions and between local facilities. Any problems should be overcome if we make the point that people in the community are helping one another.

The future of integrated services—health care, fire, police or ambulance services—must be addressed by whoever is in government. I strongly urge the Minister to come to Northumberland to see the flagship model of the health service and the great job that my trust is doing.