Health (CSR)

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

Thank you for your indulgence, Mr Gale, in allowing me to speak this afternoon. I apologise; I was in the main Chamber earlier for the debate on policy for growth. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) for securing the debate. To look at us, one would not believe that we are often mistaken for each other. I do not see how that comes about, but I understand that it does—it is something to do with the accent, I believe.

Despite pledges that the NHS would be ring-fenced from Government cuts, according to press reports, dozens of accident and emergency and maternity units have been earmarked for closure or merger. Let me highlight a few: Newark hospital in Nottinghamshire will have its A and E services downgraded, and emergency admissions will stop being taken from April 2011. At the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Welwyn Garden City, A and E services will be downgraded and the consultant-led maternity unit could be closed. There will also be a downgrading of A and E services at Rochdale infirmary. The Conservative’s election manifesto promised a moratorium on the forced closure of A and E units and maternity wards, so what happened to that pledge?

The situation proves that the settlement provided for health by the comprehensive spending review is not sufficient to meet the pledges made by the coalition parties. As my hon. Friend said earlier, the Prime Minister’s promise in January, and the coalition agreement pledge to

“guarantee that health spending increases in real terms in each year of the Parliament”,

will not be met.

[Mr Simon Burns]

Rubbish.

[Ian Mearns]

The settlement agreed by the coalition will leave the NHS unable to meet growing cost pressures, and that will reduce its purchasing power each and every year. The Government seem to be in denial—that has just been shown by the Minister’s sedentary comment.

Kieran Walshe, professor of health policy and management at Manchester business school, who has already been cited in the debate, puts the figure for reorganisation at up to £3 billion, but there is nothing to say that it will not cost significantly more. We do not yet see where the money will come from.

One of the last reorganisations under the Labour Government involved reducing the number of primary care trusts from 303 to 150. In oral evidence to the Health Committee, Sir David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS, stated that it generated

“significant management cost savings and gains at that time. If you look at productivity in the NHS in 2006-07, by 2007-08 you see productivity improved.”

If streamlining and reducing commissioning bodies has saved significant amounts in the past and created efficiencies, why does it appear that the Government now want to create more commissioning bodies? Some say that up to 500 general practice consortiums would be required, but it could be more than that.

The GP involvement in the process is questionable. My local experience in Gateshead as deputy leader of the council with the adult social care portfolio was that it was often difficult to engage GPs in the process of partnership working—they are very busy people. In addition, it takes time for any organisation to become an effective negotiator in commissioning relationships with acute care providers, and to develop health provision plans and purchasing capacity. Why is the coalition placing those additional pressures on the NHS at a time when it is cutting its spending power?

Press reports—the Minister refers to these as rubbish—give fairly extensive lists of hospitals facing A and E closures, maternity closures and cutbacks. Let me quote an example:

“Despite pledges that the NHS would be ring-fenced from government cuts, dozens of A&E and maternity units have been earmarked for closure or mergers.”

Those are the words of not some revolutionary incitement periodical, but The Sunday Telegraph. I do not think that many of the people on yesterday’s demonstration about the proposed hikes to tuition fees were hawking The Sunday Telegraph as some kind of revolutionary organ with which they could incite the crowd to further action.

The Sunday Telegraph refers to:

“More than 30 maternity and casualty units facing the axe”,

and provides us with a significant list of examples from all over the country. It also tells us that, as a result of the spending review, the NHS faces a bed-blocking crisis. It states that the permanent closures and downgrading of services agreed since May affect many hospitals.

[Mr Burns]

Give us some.

[Ian Mearns]

There is a long list. However, according to The Sunday Telegraph:

“Maternity units in Tiverton, Okehampton and Honiton, Devon: plan to downgrade services so they will not offer any midwife care overnight. Solihull Hospital: maternity unit was shut as a temporary measure just before the election. It re-opened in July as a midwife-led unit. Proposals to make the closure permanent due to be published within weeks”—

I could go on. For Hartlepool, in my region, we are told that there is a “proposal to close A&E” and that that will be

“replaced with minor injuries unit, and direct admissions for emergency medical cases.”

Of course, that comes on the back of the announcement a couple of months ago of the cancellation of the replacement North Tees hospital.

[Mr Burns]

I would hate the hon. Gentleman to mislead the Chamber. He can quote examples, but given that he is the Member for Gateshead, I would assume that he is familiar with this. Surely he knows that Hartlepool has withdrawn the application to close the A and E.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Mearns]

This is a very recent Sunday Telegraph report. I am glad to hear what the Minister says, but it is not the real issue for the area—that is the replacement North Tees hospital. As the Minister told us in a previous debate in this very Chamber, a brand new hospital worth £450 million, with brand spanking new service facilities, will be sacrificed for the grand sum of £11 million a year over the life of the hospital.

The Sunday Telegraph goes on to state:

“Hexham, North Tyneside and Wansbeck hospitals in Northumberland: Casualty units would no longer take ambulance cases if a new hospital is built near Cramlington.”

The Hexham hospital provides A and E services for people in a large constituency. I would not like to be dragged backwards by my hair between that constituency and Cramlington, because it is an awfully long way. There is a great deal more in the article.

The health service in my constituency is unrecognisably better than the one that we inherited in 1997. I would like to place on record my personal thanks to the staff of the neurosurgery unit at Newcastle General hospital, without whose efforts I would not be standing here today, because I had neurosurgery on my spine about 22 months ago. The Queen Elizabeth hospital in my constituency is now a very well regarded resource for the region and has a regional surgical support unit. Our other primary care facilities include the successful Gateshead smoking cessation service, which has reduced the prevalence of smoking—[Interruption.] I am not having a go at the Minister; I really mean that. However, the service is important to my constituents. We have reduced smoking rates in my constituency with its help from some 35% just over 10 years ago to about 21%. That is vital to the life expectancy of many thousands of my constituents. There is great concern, worry and uncertainty about what the future holds for such services as a result of the Government’s decisions.

The spending review will force deep cuts in patient care as the Government focus on a wholesale NHS reorganisation that will negate many, if not all, of the efficiency savings. I have real concern about commissioning, in that we will see GP practices coming together and then outsourcing to some fairly significant global players. Those players will take over the services on a local basis—they are out there, ready and waiting. It is not in the interests of patient care for money to go out of the public sector as profit for those companies.