NHS Maternity Services

Ian Roome Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

On Monday, the senior management of the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS foundation trust will meet again to make an important decision: whether enough consultants can be found to reopen maternity services at North Devon district hospital. North Devon’s desperate maternity staffing crisis is entering its 10th week, with all births still being diverted two hours to Exeter. Hundreds of families in my constituency deserve answers.

NHS maternity services across the country face massive pressure, but the timeline of the past 10 weeks makes for sorry reading. On 27 July, the trust announced that it was about to fall below the minimum staffing level of obstetrics and gynaecology consultants needed to keep the Ladywell maternity unit open. From 11 August, all births were suspended, and the trust began sending expectant mothers to the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital until further notice.

What followed has been agonising. The fear and anguish of frightened local mums has played out in regional and then national media. The outcry from the public has been furious: hundreds gathered in Barnstaple town square for the first of several Maternity Matters protests, more than 15,000 people signed my petition to get the unit reopened, and our TV and radio appeals have been answered by doctors as far afield as Australia.

I have written to more than 50 maternity authorities, NHS public bodies, charities and women’s health organisations to ask for help in recruiting new consultants and holding the trust to account for its decisions. The suspension was extended again on 14 September, with seemingly no end in sight. Even as new doctors were found, I was on the phone to local landlords desperately trying to find them somewhere to live in North Devon, and getting the Home Office to urgently extend work visas. The tier 2 registrars rota has now been filled with two new permanent doctors. A new consultant locum started last week, and one candidate is in discussions to fill the final vacant post.

Even if that is achieved, we are not out of the woods yet. When North Devon was merged into a wider trust back in April 2022, that was justified partly on the basis that it would make both trusts more resilient. We were told that medical staff in North Devon could be cycled through Exeter to boost training, and staff could be shared between North Devon, east Devon and Exeter to deliver extra resilience in a crisis, yet three years down the line we discover that the consultant rotas in Barnstaple and Exeter are not even interchangeable, and our maternity unit is still dangerously fragile.

North Devon district hospital is the remotest acute hospital in mainland England, serving hundreds of square miles of north Devon, Torridge and north Cornwall. My constituents and I are left wondering whether senior figures in Whitehall, NHS England and even our own hospital trust actually understand the basic reality of the geography we are talking about.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and Tavistock) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and on his indefatigable efforts on behalf of Barnstaple hospital; as he knows, although it is in his constituency, it also serves thousands of people in Torridge, which I have the honour to represent. Does he agree that the question the Minister needs to answer today is what the Government are going to do to ensure that isolated rural maternity services are resilient and can withstand the departure of a single consultant and prevent hundreds of mothers having to make a trek—in this case of 60 miles to Exeter, as the hon. Gentleman knows very well—to give birth. We need a policy that looks closely at how isolated rural maternity units can have built-in resilience, and trusts must have a duty to ensure it.

[Ian Roome]

I agree with the right hon. and learned Member and thank him for those comments. I hope the Minister has made a note of them.

It is a 53-mile drive from North Devon district hospital to the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital. We are talking about a catchment area larger than Greater Manchester without an open maternity unit.

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

On the point about rurality, I was alarmed earlier in the week to hear NHS chiefs talking about the fact that in order to consolidate services they may have to cut rural and coastal maternity services further. In Frome and East Somerset I have mothers who routinely travel over an hour to access maternity services. I know they are not the distances that my hon. Friend and other colleagues are talking about, but efficiency of maternity services should not come at the cost of women living in rural areas simply being able to access maternity care in a safe and timely way. Does he agree?

[Ian Roome]

I agree with my hon. Friend. That is precisely the point I am making about rurality and the remote services that many people experience. Many of my constituents would not reach the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital inside two hours. If a hospital shuts down in London, neighbouring units can absorb some extra workload without a dramatically heightened risk to mother or baby, but in this case, no neighbouring hospital exists. Most of the road route is not even a dual carriageway. In terms of journey time, it is like announcing that women cannot have their babies delivered in London and that mothers going into labour must be diverted to Bristol.

It is little wonder that would-be parents across northern Devon and Cornwall are terrified at the extra pressure of getting to Exeter. I have recently been able to get the trust to agree to move some of the triage back to Barnstaple for women over 37 weeks with suspected broken waters, but many of those warned to travel early to Exeter have ended up being sent back to North Devon—a round trip that takes many hours.

Official trust figures record no “incidents” and fewer than five “births before arrival” over the past nine weeks. Will the Minister tell me the NHS’s official view on that? Is it credible to claim that a baby born in an ambulance or non-medical area of a hospital should not qualify as an “incident”? The Daily Mirror has reported that two babies have been born in the back of ambulances, two in accident and emergency, and one in a hospital reception, although I have not been able to verify that. The trust is clear that it reviews every one of those “births before arrival” carefully, and cannot give a more exact breakdown without breaching patient confidentiality. However, it also insists that:

“There is a difference between the NHS definition and a patient’s definition of experiencing an “event-free” birth.”

I am a father and a grandfather who remembers those tense few hours well, and I understand why trust senior management feel the need to be dispassionate about a baby arriving early, but when expectant mothers are travelling so far by ambulance, that kind of statement surely stretches the credibility of NHS guidance to breaking point.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

I like my hon. Friend’s analogy of pregnant women having to travel from London and Bristol to give birth. The issue is not just that they are having to travel that distance—it is what they find when they get there. A constituent from Ottery St Mary wrote to me earlier this week to explain that the Exeter labour ward has only 10 rooms plus two birthing centre rooms. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a question not only of distance travelled but of the experience of the queues encountered on arriving?

[Ian Roome]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend that the problem is extending and forcing problems on to neighbouring maternity units. I know that the maternity unit in Exeter is now under pressure because it is having to cope with the births coming from North Devon.

I appreciate the Government’s maternity adviser meeting me last week. She speaks passionately about fixing the crisis in our maternity units across the country. When the new Prime Minister addressed this question in this House, he was up front that North Devon is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to structural weaknesses in NHS maternity services. Things have clearly come to a head in the south-west. First, Yeovil maternity unit suffered a staffing crisis and closure last year, and now Barnstaple has suffered the same. In Yeovil's case, a full reopening took almost a year. I am told privately by senior figures that there are other NHS trusts around the country that are also perilously close to something similar. Just like North Devon, their maternity units hang in the balance.

The national maternity and neonatal taskforce’s new action plan is due in December, and I want the Government to treat this sorry episode as a case in point. Maternity units should not be suddenly suspended out of the blue. Our trust wrote its own continuity plan for our maternity services, set its own staffing benchmark below which closure would be needed, and decided its own reopening criteria. If the unit at North Devon district hospital can reopen with a fully staffed doctors’ rota, we are at least protected against this happening again in a few weeks’ time, but without national guidance on when suspensions should happen, we are running this unit on an operational cliff edge of the trust’s own design.

We know that the trust was struggling with maternity recruitment since at least December last year, which continued right through to the spring. It is no wonder that my constituents are angry; it seems impossible that no emergency alarm was ringing months ahead of this crisis reaching boiling point. Why does it take a sudden suspension and a national media backlash, driven by me and local Maternity Matters campaigners, to get this issue to the very top of the chief executive’s to-do list?

Secondly, the Government’s workforce plan is already overdue, and it needs to have a special focus on maternity services in at-risk areas. For example, I am told that when the deanery decides placements for trainee consultants, especially in their final years, the trend is towards large urban centres that offer them more specialised teaching. The unintended consequence is that many of those candidates stay in whichever area they last trained and already know well. That boosts the ability of urban hospitals to recruit, even while hospitals in remote areas such as North Devon are crying out for doctors. I ask the Government to work with deaneries to ensure that trainee consultants are able to do their final years in rural and coastal acute hospitals. I believe that that would help to tackle the maternity workforce crisis in smaller maternity units.

On 2 October, North Devon district hospital’s consultant body passed a vote of no confidence in the trust’s senior management. When senior NHS staff with years of experience and dedicated service say that something is wrong, it should be a wake-up call. I am shocked to learn that senior figures in the trust have not even taken the opportunity to win hearts and minds by being present on site at North Devon district hospital during the crisis. Such things are completely symbolic, and that is entirely the point.

Thirdly, my constituents are owed a full, independent review into how this crisis came about. We need the official record to show what led to the suspension in North Devon, what happened, how it might have been averted and how we ensure that it never happens again. The trust has appointed Audit South West Assurance to conduct the review, but a letter that I received from the trust’s chair of the board on 12 October implies that the terms of reference for a review are being set by a sub-committee of the trust’s board of directors. If that is true, I ask the Minister if the Department of Health and Social Care has an official standard for the impartiality of reviews such as that one. Many of my constituents will suspect the tell-tale signs of a whitewash in the making—something that does not improve health outcomes for anyone—and I hope that we can count on the Government’s support.

Fourthly, what accountability exists for strategic failings in the NHS? A well-established structure exists to pursue clinical negligence and medical malpractice, but how can the NHS stamp out corporate failings, bad decision making or simply a lack of attention given by senior managers? I have asked that question of many organisations already, but I am yet to get a clear answer. If this crisis had been even worse, as it might be at someone else’s local hospital next month, what recourse would the public have? I was utterly shocked this week to read that the NHS Alliance’s lead director for acute care had told The Guardian that as many as 20 NHS maternity units across the country may be forced to close entirely. In more remote parts of the country, that should be unthinkable.

When services are centralised again and again, it is always remote communities such as mine that pay the price. There are many more questions that my constituents need answering, but above all, the question is: how can it be that senior NHS figures feel less publicly accountable for suspending maternity services entirely than they do for staffing an open maternity unit? To answer that question, I am forced to turn to the ultimate policymakers in government.

Short of defending this country from attack, I can see no greater duty for the British state than ensuring that the next generation can be born safely. Most people would struggle to think of any NHS spending that should take priority over that sacred responsibility. As such, my final question is whether the Minister understands that in remote rural and coastal communities such as mine in North Devon, which has suffered this nightmare for the past nine weeks, losing maternity services would be seen as the beginning of the end for the national health service itself.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Roome Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. That is why we have revised the women’s health strategy. It makes it very clear that medical misogyny is not acceptable and that women’s voices must be heard.

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

13. What steps her Department is taking to improve NHS maternity services in Devon.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Yvette Cooper)]

As I made clear earlier, we are determined to see support given to North Devon maternity services so that they can reopen to provide quality maternity care. It is the responsibility of the trust to ensure that safe staffing levels are in place, but NHS regional and national teams are also working to support them.

[Ian Roome]

I thank the Secretary of State for her earlier answer to my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) about North Devon maternity unit. As the local MP, I can attest to how urgent reopening the centre is to the local community. I heard what the Secretary of State said about the plans under way to improve local recruitment. Will she meet me to update me on the work that is under way and will she update the House on the national workforce plan, which is long overdue?

[Yvette Cooper]

The national maternity and neonatal intensive support team has visited the trust to look at what more can be done. The trust has a particular issue with the recruitment of consultants, and measures that it had assured us would be put in place ended up not being effective, so it now has to take further action. It is important that it continues to do so. We will keep the hon. Gentleman up to date with all the measures that we are taking nationally, but I know he is also in close contact with the local trust. Hopefully, the continued local, regional and national pressure will ensure that those services can open as swiftly as possible.

Baby Loss Awareness Week

Ian Roome Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

I thank Members on both sides of the House for initiating the debate. It comes at a very important moment for many of my constituents. Owing to a serious staffing crisis, all births at North Devon district hospital have been suspended for more than eight weeks, which has forced more than 180 expectant mothers to travel for at least two hours to Exeter to give birth since 11 August. Many fear that the journey is not safe, and have experienced weeks of stress and anxiety, picturing unexpected complications, the trauma of a difficult birth or the loss of a little one. This is a fear that cuts through the whole community, down every street and across every class and background. I that know I am not the only Member who receives private emails from constituents with heartfelt or even heartbreaking stories, shared only in complete confidence.

There are estimated to be 120,000 miscarriages in the UK each year, although the NHS does not know the true figure and some estimates are far higher. Losing a child is something that no one should ever have to suffer, and many families are left grieving for what might have been. Reading their accounts, one is struck by how much small acts of kindness matter. We read about how trusts go about investigating a tragedy, about whether overworked NHS staff took time to listen to parents, and about whether or not public bodies use their child's name.

In North Devon we are blessed with the hard work of a wonderful local charity called Families in Grief, which gave me a simple glimpse into how complex bereavement support can be. The loss of a child has an impact not only on parents but on siblings and extended family, and for a long time. People experience grief very differently, and a death can shatter whole families. Speaking as a father and, now, a grandfather, I can say that the national health service is a modern miracle for some families. According to the Office for National Statistics, the infant mortality rate has fallen by more than 90% since 1900, and by more than 35% in just the past 25 years, and yet in some ways we seem to have gone backwards. According to the pregnancy and baby loss charity Sands, the proportion of parents waiting six months or more for post-mortem results has trebled to more than one in five. That is especially painful when it stops parents planning for another child.

Bereavement support is still only offered to parents after they have experienced a third miscarriage. The Liberal Democrats have argued for bereavement care after every miscarriage, which has also been proposed by the national pregnancy charity Tommy’s. They advocate basic counselling and advice after the first miscarriage, then blood tests and more advanced scans after each successive miscarriage. Those are important for those experiencing bereavement, but also in respect of the underlying health risks that need to be identified for a future pregnancy.

In North Devon, our local hospital is desperately trying to fill the two consultant spaces for the rota so that births can resume locally, but hundreds of families in our community also deserve a full independent review into what has happened. We need accountability, so that it never happens again. No parent should have this major milestone in life ruined by inadequate access to services, poor-quality care or insensitive treatment.

In December, the Government’s neonatal and maternity taskforce is due to put together a new national action plan to strengthen maternity units in the hospitals across the country. The desperate case of North Devon district hospital, and the peril of young parents in my constituency, should be front and centre in the taskforce’s thinking. I have met many families who struggle even to get to Exeter because of a lack of transport in my rural constituency.

[Dr Prinsley]

I am aware of the problem in the hon. Member’s hospital, and I would just like to say something quite shocking. We are talking about baby loss tonight, but we must also consider those babies who have been damaged by obstetric catastrophes. I will share a simple fact: the cost of the NHS obstetric service is about £3 billion per year, but we spend £1.3 billion per year on negligence compensation, with a total liability of £37 billion. The average claim for a damaged baby is £11 million. Although we are talking about baby loss and the problems affecting the obstetric service, we must also consider those babies who have been damaged because of obstetric disasters.

[Ian Roome]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing his experience as a clinician to the House, and I totally agree with him.

After writing to the Secretary of State four times since July and not receiving one reply, I would welcome an urgent meeting with her to discuss the issues around maternity and how the closure of North Devon district hospital is affecting my constituents in North Devon.

Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

Ian Roome Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 4th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

My local maternity unit in North Devon is closed, causing heartache for many mothers living in a rural area. Some have to turn around midway to hospital to get to the accident and emergency department at North Devon district hospital. The shortage of obstetrics and gynaecology consultants is a national problem. We are okay for midwives, but not for obs and gynae. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that creates inequality between urban and rural areas, and does he think the Government need to address that?

[Iqbal Mohamed]

I completely agree with the hon. Member. Services must be of the same quality and standard, with the resources that the demand in an area requires. Whether in rural areas, urban areas or city centres, there should not be a postcode lottery for the quality of care that expectant or new mothers receive anywhere in our country.

These amazing individuals—healthcare workers, midwives and obstetricians—are working under immense pressure, as is our entire health system. We have seen a significant reduction in the health visiting workforce over recent years, while demand has continued to grow. If we are serious about giving the Bill meaning beyond good intention, the resources required to deliver it must follow. Health visitors in Kirklees and in my area used to have manageable caseloads, with a number of families that they could visit at the appropriate frequency and provide the necessary support. However, due to funding reductions and the necessary cuts to balance the books, there are reports that individuals now face mountains of casework and up to almost a thousand families per caseworker or healthcare professional. That is clearly not sustainable and will never deliver the support that those families need.

In conclusion, I am honoured and delighted to support the Infants, Parents and Carers Bill. It will not solve every challenge facing families with young children, nor should we pretend that this legislation can address the root causes of poverty, poor housing or widening inequality. However, it is a vital step towards ensuring that babies and their families are visible in public policy and that access to support becomes a consistent expectation, rather than the roll of a dice. Every child gets only one start in life. Our responsibility in this House is to ensure that that start is as fair, safe and healthy as possible, and we must act in the period when intervention can have the greatest impact. This is not simply a maternity issue; it is a health issue, a social justice issue and an education issue. I fully support this Bill.

NHS Capital Spending

Ian Roome Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) for introducing this important debate. I thank the Minister for visiting North Devon district hospital to see the estate for herself and for listening to the passionate pleas from NHS clinicians serving on the frontline.

The hospital is now the third of nine hospitals in wave 3 of the new hospital programme and faces a further 10-year wait for the capital funding it needs. That investment is desperately needed to replace an ancient intensive care unit and operating theatres that are nearly 50 years old. I thank the Government for approving phase 1, building new residences for staff and medical students, which will also recover land for the all-important clinical rebuild. On paper, however, phase 2 is unlikely to begin before 2035.

The cost of keeping these facilities running for another 10 years will be immense. Our hospital has a maintenance backlog of “high” and “critical” grade work of over £40 million, the most per square metre of any hospital in the south-west, higher even than many of the hospitals afflicted by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, or RAAC. Our NHS trust worries, as I expect many people in this Chamber worry, that that is simply throwing good money after bad.

In January, the National Audit Office released its update on the new hospital programme, which makes it clear that the current Labour Government have tried to financially rescue a programme that the last Conservative Government had doomed to disaster. However, many of my constituents feel that they have lost out yet again. It is not only that patients in northern Devon are being asked to wait another 10 years for new critical care facilities, but the ever-increasing maintenance costs of keeping their ageing hospital going will demand a bigger and bigger share of NHS funding from the area.

Worse still, the Department of Health and Social Care says that hospitals built to the new hospital 2.0 standard are expected to deliver operational savings. Whose hospitals will really benefit from that approach? When I queried it in a written question, the Minister said on 13 February that trusts and integrated care boards manage budgets, and that the centralised new hospital programme does not redistribute savings. If an NHS trust is lucky enough to receive the capital spending for new facilities sooner rather than later, patients in that community will benefit twice; if not, tough luck.

Furthermore, the estimated cost of the scheme in my area given in the new hospital programme review seems to bear no relation to the bid originally submitted by the trust. The Government will not answer questions on the multi-criteria decision support analysis tool that is being used to score the bids for capital funding under the new hospital programme, nor even answer freedom of information requests to state the name of the provider of the tool. Consequently, we as parliamentarians are unable to scrutinise that detail.

I have some questions for the Minister. First, will the Department explain these cost estimates, because £1.5 billion is a vastly inflated figure, which is far beyond the 50% adjustment stated in the review? That should not delay work on NHS hospitals such as mine in North Devon. The trust is ready to build the next phase now, so if there is any capital available, please bear North Devon in mind. In addition, what else can the Government do in the coming years to avoid entrenching real health inequalities in communities such as mine in North Devon?

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Roome Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is right that NHS mental health, ADHD and autism services have never fully met the needs of the population in a tailored, personalised or timely way. The independent review into prevalence and support for mental health conditions, autism and ADHD will explore the current challenges facing clinical services. My hon. Friend the Minister for mental health is currently overseas on departmental business, but I am sure that he would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend on his return.

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

T2.   Over Christmas, I was contacted by constituents in North Devon who have been without NHS dental care for nearly 20 years—one with a tooth held together with superglue. When will the Government reform the dental contract and properly tackle recruitment and retention, especially in rural areas, so that we stop the haemorrhaging of dentists from the NHS in the longer term?

[Stephen Kinnock]

We are in negotiation with the British Dental Association about the long-term contract reform that is so clearly needed, but I also draw the hon. Member’s attention to the announcement I made in December about a range of interim reforms, particularly on urgent work, where we are significantly increasing the fee rate for urgent dental activity. That will kick in from April and will make a real difference in access to urgent care.

GP Funding: South-west England

Ian Roome Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Martin Wrigley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but sadly, I must disagree. That is not what practice managers are telling me. Their costs have gone up so much that all of the increase has been swallowed up, and they are not sure they can keep the lights on. They are really struggling. I have partners in GP practices who are paying themselves less than the minimum wage, which is not sustainable.

Patient demand has also increased post pandemic, and continued cuts have seen the removal of many services and social care that have supported what GPs do. On top of the cuts to Sure Start and a 40% drop in health visitors since 2015, carers already stretched thin face the prospect of losing personal independence payment support, which will inevitably rebound on general practice—the first line of defence. That is not to mention long covid and pandemic backlogs. All of those drive more people to want to see their GP. The cost of living crisis is compounding multimorbidity, where the most vulnerable in society with chronic illnesses are further pressured.

And then, we get the new requirement to run the appointment schedule from 8 am to 6 pm, filling every single slot. From October, practices must hold digital front doors, open all day, for non-urgent requests. With 100% booked appointments, there is no spare capacity for the person who falls in the care home or for the child who needs attention after school. Partners in the Albany surgery in Newton Abbot warn me that an unlimited invitation will flood a service that simply cannot be limitless. This is unsafe—unfunded, unsustainable and unsafe.

Talented doctors are leaving. The partnership model, still the cheapest and most community-rooted option, is no longer attractive when partners shoulder unlimited liability for premises, pensions and payroll, yet cannot guarantee safe staffing levels. The Royal College of GPs reports a 25% fall in GP partners over the past decade. The chair, Professor Kamila Hawthorne, put it bluntly:

“It makes no sense that trained GPs cannot find sustainable posts while patients wait weeks for appointments.”

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. Patients in Lynton, one of the remotest communities in North Devon, will soon have access to a GP, but that only happened because of a spirited campaign by local patients. Does he agree that if we are relying on an active community to highlight gaps in provision, it will always be the marginalised communities who find it hard to see a GP?

[Martin Wrigley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I commend him on obtaining a ministerial visit to his hospital in North Devon. North Devon district hospital is fantastic and we need to ensure that it gets the investment it needs—just so long as we can get some south Devon patients there as well.

In Teignmouth, the previous four practices have merged into one, mostly due to not being able to find new partners. In Newton Abbot, one practice was on the verge of handing back its patient list due to not being able to replace retiring partners. We have not even talked about specific issues facing some of these surgeries, such as the unbreakable lease on a building that is not fit for use as a GP surgery, where the only possible course of action they could see was to declare themselves bankrupt. As doctors, that ends their careers.

And yet, these practices are doing amazing things. The Kingsteignton medical practice, partnering with the charity Kingscare, has created a model that is delivering for patients. Just think what could be done with a better funding model. Buckland surgery would like to link with the local school to tackle adverse childhood experiences before they turn into permanent ill health, providing better family support—much as it has already done with its links to a number of local support services through the Buckland hub.

Prior to the election, the now Health Secretary often quoted that a GP visit cost £40, whereas an A&E visit cost £400. I am not sure I agree with the absolute numbers, but the principle is fine: it is 10 times more expensive to put somebody through A&E than it is to put them through a GP. If we talk to Devon integrated care board on GP resilience and prevention, the evidence is crystal clear: prevention saves money. And yet, as Torbay and South Devon NHS foundation trust remains in NHS operational framework 4—we might perhaps equate it to “unsatisfactory” if it was a school—because of historical deficits, it is tasked with huge efficiency savings and is understandably risk-averse. Community services that once propped up primary and secondary care—the stroke recovery group, Devon Carers hospital service, the Torbay and Devon dementia adviser service—have vanished as funding evaporates. Closing gaps in prevention only widens cracks elsewhere. It is not getting better.

To sum up, the funding formula is broken. It delivers the inverse care law that the availability of good healthcare tends to be inversely proportional to the need for it within a population. We need to fix it. I am asking the Government today to: end the Carr-Hill formula, and make deprivation, rurality and workload properly weighted; invest in core general practice, not just peripheral schemes, so that partnerships remain viable; protect prevention budgets in the next spending round, as it is cheaper to keep people well than to rescue them later; support premises and digital infrastructure so that online access enhances rather than overwhelms safe care; and publish a workforce plan that retains experienced GPs, accelerates training and makes partnership an attractive career again.

Spending Review: Health and Social Care

Ian Roome Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for agreeing to visit North Devon district hospital very shortly, and I look forward to welcoming her to my constituency. Despite some welcome extra repairs under the estates safety fund, that hospital now faces many years of make do and mend. What provision have the Government put aside for those years of increasing maintenance costs?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. His invitation has been a long-running one, and sometimes his diary has been busier than mine, but I think we finally have a date to go to North Devon, which I am looking forward to. It is a challenged system—we had a good debate yesterday in Westminster Hall about many of the problems in Devon, and I know he will review that debate carefully. Devon is one of the systems that we are looking closely at. It has had deficit funding this year, but we want to eradicate deficit funding from the system, so we are looking very closely at how every single system uses all of its money. I know that the hon. Gentleman will continue to support the Government in ensuring that his local taxpayers get the best service for their money.

Hospitals

Ian Roome Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

Laying in an operating theatre, a patient at North Devon district hospital in my constituency can take great comfort in knowing that they are surrounded by some of the most dedicated healthcare professionals in the world. But astonishingly, the operating theatre around them is little changed since it was first built in 1978. The theatre is barely 60% of the size the NHS now expects, and it cannot accommodate more modern equipment. Much of the air-handling system and ventilation infrastructure has either never been upgraded, or is simply beyond repair when it breaks down. That is a critical risk to patient care. North Devon district hospital now has a maintenance backlog of £44 million, over £13 million of which is for its operating theatres alone. There are no independent providers, and the next nearest NHS acute hospital is more than 40 miles away. The trust says that failing theatre facilities are the most urgent threat it faces during the next five years—not 10 years, but five—so what happens next?

Well, we know what happens, because that exact scenario struck Torbay hospital in 2018, with failing air-handling infrastructure closing down a number of operating theatres and causing widespread cancellations of surgery for more than a year. North Devon district hospital faces the same nightmare. Thanks to woeful behaviour by the last Conservative Government, not a single penny was put in place to do something about it. Now the Labour Government say that none of the planned rebuild will be delivered until after 2035. North Devon is one of nine hospitals pushed right to the back of the line by the new hospital programme review, and the Government still fail to recognise the increased maintenance costs that will flow from that decision.

If the Government ignore the symptoms, the problems will only get worse. Our hospital trust has put forward alternative plans for a lasting refurbishment at North Devon district hospital that would cost just £250 million—a fraction of what is really needed, but enough to keep the maximum number of operating theatres open beyond 2027 and avoid spiralling costs down the line. I thank the Minister for agreeing to visit North Devon district hospital to see the facilities and to listen to the trust board’s proposals. I am really grateful to the Minister for listening, but I urge the Government to seize the initiative and act now before it is too late.

New Hospital Programme Review

Ian Roome Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her birthday wishes, even after I announced the timetable that I know she and her constituents wanted. On a serious note, I think people will see the contrast between sending Conservative Members from Milton Keynes, with inaction and broken promises, and sending Labour Members from Milton Keynes who are delivering. I am delighted with the work and improvements we will be able to deliver for her constituents. I hope Members right across the House, whichever wave their hospital is in, know that this Government have set out a timetable that is credible and deliverable, and a funding package that will be delivered for as long as there is a Labour Government.

[Ian Roome (North Devon) (LD)]

My constituents in North Devon were let down by the previous Government, and they will be utterly dismayed to find that the remotest hospital in England has been passed over again for essential repairs—it is now beyond 2035. Does the Department understand that if critical care and operating theatre facilities begin to fail within the next five years, as expected, there is no alternative critical care for patients for over 40 miles? I invite the Secretary of State to come to see for himself why investment is needed now, and to visit North Devon district hospital because it has not had a ministerial visit from this Government.

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his question. I can tell his constituents that, since his arrival, he has been absolutely dogged in pursuit of health and care investment in his community. I say to his constituents that we will deliver against this timetable. The funding is there, and it will be there for as long as there is a Labour Government. In the meantime, we would be happy to work with him to make sure that rural communities such as his receive the investment they need, and my hon. Friend the Minister for Secondary Care or I would be delighted to visit at some point soon.