Health Care (Gloucestershire)

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) and congratulate him on securing this debate, and thank him for working closely with me on this matter, which is extremely important to our constituents. My remarks will focus on my local hospital, Frenchay.

Before I begin, I would like to declare a personal interest of sorts. I have had a lot of serious health issues over the past year and have spent a lot of time in and out of Frenchay hospital. I want to place on the record my huge thanks and appreciation to all the doctors, nurses and staff who looked after me and made me better while I was there. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Thank you. I am pleased to say that I have now been given the all-clear and can get on with the rest my life. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that I probably would not be here without all the care and treatment I have had over the past year, for which I will always be grateful.

Sadly, health care provision at Frenchay hospital is to be fundamentally reduced in May, when the main part of the hospital will close until 2016. Its out-patient and diagnostic services, and probably beds, will be relocated. The Independent Reconfiguration Panel has given advice to the Secretary of State and I fully understand that it would be unprecedented for him not to accept it. I am of course disappointed with the IRP’s decision, but it has made some extremely important points.

I am particularly concerned about which health services will be provided when and if Frenchay hospital fully reopens in 2016. The future health care provision in south Gloucestershire and the future of Frenchay hospital have gone through a terribly long, drawn-out process. There have been about 10 years of discussion and it is still not clear what will happen in the future.

The previous Labour Government made the changes in 2005, when a vision was set out for health services in the Greater Bristol area, which included plans for a community hospital at Frenchay. Five years later, in 2010, the “emerging themes” proposals for health care in the area again promised a community hospital at Frenchay and we were told that the acute care services would move to the new acute hospital at Southmead.

We were told that the community hospital at Frenchay would have step-down and step-up services. The step-down service would be for patients who received surgery at the new Southmead hospital and were moved to their local community hospital prior to going home. That was in order to reduce the number of beds required at Southmead and to enable family and friends to visit patients more easily during their convalescence. Step-up patients are those who require hospitalisation for more minor matters but who do not require the full services of an acute hospital. The bed numbers for the new Southmead hospital were planned on the basis of community hospitals such as Frenchay being available for more minor matters.

In total, it was recommended that there would be 68 beds at Frenchay. There was also going to be a range of out-patient services and diagnostics and an enhanced community health service in order for care to be provided at home. On top of that, there was going to be space left on the site for a doctors’ surgery, extra care housing and possibly even a nursing home.

That was fine: it was not what local people wanted, but at least it was a clear plan with clear objectives. However, in July 2012 the primary care trust and the clinical commissioning group began to change their minds, but they did not fully update the South Gloucestershire council public health and health scrutiny committee until April 2013. At this point, they also confirmed that a stocktake was being taken of out-patient and diagnostic capacity at Frenchay. In September 2013, the council’s health committee received confirmation that it proposed no longer to have out-patients and diagnostics on the Frenchay site, while the CCG met and decided in August that, for the interim, rehabilitation beds at Frenchay would be moved to Southmead for two years.

Conservative councillors on the health committee came up with a plan, and identified funds in the council’s budget to keep the in-patient rehabilitation beds at Frenchay for two years until the new Frenchay health and social care centre opens in 2016. They proposed the plans to the health committee in September last year, but to my utter amazement, Liberal and Labour councillors on the committee joined together to vote against the plan to keep Frenchay fully open. I felt that that was purely and cynically party political, and not at all in the interests of the people of South Gloucestershire.

In the end, all the council’s health committee as a whole could agree was to ask the Secretary of State for Health to refer the decision to the IRP. My right hon. Friend made the referral which, I must say, is more than the previous Government did; had they done so, we might not be in quite this situation now. My constituent Barbara Harris wrote to me this morning that the IRP has made “scathing comments” on the way in which local health care providers have handled the issue of Frenchay hospital. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood has said, the IRP has said that it is understandable that residents

“should feel exasperated by the years of delay”

and by the “amendments to plans”. The IRP has concluded that the whole process shows a “marked lack of empathy” by local health care providers

“for patients and public who have the right to expect better”.

The North Bristol NHS Trust should now publish in full its findings on population growth and its stocktake of the diagnostic and out-patient capacity in south Gloucestershire, as the IRP suggested. That should be the local health care provider’s first step in fulfilling the IRP’s other recommendation on how hard it must work to regain the public’s trust. I fully agree with the IRP’s point that patient and public engagement must now be a core element in the design and delivery of how diagnostic and out-patient services are delivered in south Gloucestershire. I have said for a long time that health care providers should not feel that they can go back on their word as and when they wish.

South Gloucestershire council, our local residents and I need clarity about the plans for health care services in our area. Ten years down the line, my constituents deserve more than the ongoing confusion, broken promises and moved goalposts. I can understand why many of my constituents are not convinced that any health care provision, except perhaps a care home, will be left at Frenchay. I want a guarantee that health services are going to be provided at the Frenchay site in future. My constituents and I also want to know and to be reassured about the basis on which services will be provided.