NHS (Essex)

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Dobbin. Like my hon. Friends, I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) on securing this debate and on giving an articulate exposition of the inherent tension between process and outcomes. I think that one thing that we are all looking forward to from the Government’s health reforms is a greater focus on achieving outcomes and rather less on the processes that she has outlined.

This issue is of great importance to my constituents in Thurrock. Frankly, considering recent years in particular, the performance of our local health services needs to be better. I pay tribute to the staff involved in the care and treatment of patients—they discharge their efforts with the best of intentions and commitment—but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) has pointed out, what is often lacking in the health service is leadership. In south-west Essex in particular, poor management at a number of levels has resulted in too many people being failed and in local people’s confidence in the local health provision being too low. We all need to work hard to improve that and give people the health services they deserve.

I shall give some clear examples. My constituents rely on services provided by Basildon hospital, and the primary care trust responsible for delivering them is South West Essex PCT, which is currently implementing a severe programme of cuts, following a significant overspend. I shall deal with the hospital first, but as hon. Members will realise from my remarks, the ongoing issues at Basildon are interlinked with the overspend in the PCT. Dealing with that overspend will have implications for the hospital, too, so there is a great deal of uncertainty among my constituents, and a serious lack of confidence in local health services at present.

Basildon hospital has had a difficult recent history. In November 2009, the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), made a statement in respect of Basildon hospital, following concerns about excessively high mortality rates there, which my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West will remember extremely well. The then Secretary of State said:

“There is still considerable variation in standards throughout the NHS, from one hospital to another, and in some cases the variation is unacceptably wide. That is the case in respect of Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.”—[Official Report, 30 November 2009; Vol. 501, c. 855.]

[Hywel Williams in the Chair]

Since that time and despite various programmes to tackle poor performance at the hospital, my constituents and I are concerned that such variation is unacceptably wide. The hospital management tell me that things are improving, but my postbag tells a very different story. Although many constituents report excellent treatment at the hands of the hospital, simply too many do not. As I say, week in and week out, there are reports in the local press of new things that have gone wrong. The impact on my constituents is that they simply do not have confidence in the hospital and they do not want to be treated there.

It is true to say that there has been some improvement since 2009 but, returning to the then Secretary of State’s statement, that has happened from a very low base. The Care Quality Commission continues to find that there are serious deficiencies in patient care. Most recently, the CQC’s February 2011 report states that of 16 measures taken into account, four needed action and six received suggestions for improvement. Criticisms include a lack of consistent nursing care, a failure to check that equipment is safe, the need for improvements to care for patients with dementia, and issues with poor nutrition and weight loss going unreported.

The hospital’s management are taking rather too much satisfaction from the improvements reported by the CQC. It does no one any good that the reputation of Basildon hospital remains so low. However, there is an opportunity to achieve real change. The current chairman is due to depart and I hope that the Minister will take steps to ensure that the opportunity is taken to provide some decisive leadership to the board, so that the real challenge to improve performance can be dealt with.

On the state of NHS South West Essex, many treatments have recently been cut by the PCT—including in vitro fertilisation—and restrictions have been put on cataract operations. As a Government, we have promised to protect the NHS budget from cuts and we have held to our promise. However, in south-west Essex, people just do not believe us because they are faced with a cost-cutting programme to fix a black hole of some £50 million. How did the PCT get into such a mess? In the past two years, it has taken on 100 extra backroom staff. Those people were not involved in front-line delivery; they were working in the PCT headquarters. The PCT also spent money building a community hospital in Brentwood that is far bigger than required. When I visited that hospital, I went around switching on lights in redundant facilities. That service was commissioned under the private finance initiative, so it will be an enduring cost to the NHS budget. It is a classic example of complete incompetence in managing the commissioning of a service.

A further reason for the overspend brings me back to what has happened with Basildon hospital and the impact that that is having on the wider health provision in south Essex. As confidence in Basildon fell, patients were desperate to be treated elsewhere, which meant that the PCT had to buy services from other hospitals in Essex, London and Kent. The hospital was faced with a loss to its income because of the decline in demand, and it dealt with that by routinely booking additional out-patient appointments in the knowledge that the PCT would pick up the bill. Such a situation added to the financial pressure.

No one has been held to account for the PCT’s overspend. Patients therefore perceive what has happened to be a direct result of the Government’s programme. I cannot emphasis enough that that is not the case. The responsibility for that overspend rests firmly with the PCT’s management. It is disappointing and bad for public confidence that no one has taken responsibility. Unless someone is held accountable, how can we ensure that our constituents regain confidence in the system and trust what we say? When we say that we are ring-fencing the NHS budget, that sounds pretty hollow to my constituents. I pay tribute to Andrew Pike, the newly appointed chief executive of the PCT. He has grasped the nettle and is making the necessary painful decisions to turn the situation around. The price of that is an accelerated programme of redundancies and carefully managed demand for services. That means patients are not getting seen as quickly as they would have done, and my constituents are not getting the same standard of service they would if they lived elsewhere. It also means that the new hospital planned for Grays is likely to be delayed as we fill the black hole, which will lead to much disappointment locally.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on those issues. Too often, poor performance in the NHS goes unchallenged. While ever-senior NHS managers continue to draw hefty salaries, the least we can expect is that when things go wrong, someone steps up to the plate and takes responsibility. It is galling for members of staff to receive redundancy notices when the people who are responsible for that overspend remain on the NHS payroll. I hope that the Minister will take action to improve accountability among senior management because that will go a long way towards rebuilding confidence.