Changes to Health Services in London

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I can absolutely confirm that A and Es will remain at Charing Cross and Ealing hospitals, thanks in no small part to the remarkable campaigning that my hon. Friend has done for her constituents, both in public and in private. I commend her for that. The process that has to happen is clearly set out in what the IRP says and in my reply. There must be full consultation. There will be changes to the way in which services are provided, but they will be changes made in the interests of patients. Whatever those changes are, A and Es will remain at those two hospitals.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

It is a bit rich for the Secretary of State to accuse the Opposition of being desperate when he has been told by the court not once, but twice that he acted unlawfully in relation to Lewisham. The Secretary of State’s amendment to the Care Bill would enable him to do to other hospitals what the courts said yesterday he could not do in south London. Will he admit that under those changes no hospital would be safe, and that in fact he wants to inflict the blatant injustice that he tried to inflict on Lewisham on hospitals not only across London, but up and down the country?

[Mr Hunt]

I understand why the hon. Lady is rightly representing the concerns of her constituents, but she must also understand that I have to look at their interests as patients, as well as at the interests of the broader south London population. It is important to make that amendment to the Care Bill because hospitals are not islands on their own. We have a very interconnected health economy, and what happens in Lewisham has a direct impact on what happens in Woolwich and vice versa. If we are to turn around failing hospitals quickly—something that the last Government sadly did not do—we need to have the ability to look at the whole health economy, not at problems in isolation.