Hospital Services (South Manchester)

Jamie Reed Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. It is a pleasure, too, to be the shadow Minister in the Labour health team not running for the leadership of his party. That is a genuine pleasure, let me assure you.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) on securing this timely and important debate, which is of huge importance to his constituents and those of many colleagues from across the House who are in the Chamber today. However, I will be brief, Mr Hollobone.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House will appreciate that changes to local NHS services can often be difficult and cause our constituents major concern. It is entirely appropriate, therefore, that when changes are being proposed, hon. Members speak up for their constituents and express any concerns that their constituents may have. I have been doing that with regard to services in my own local hospital for the past 10 years. The Minister is aware of that, and we are working together to try to resolve the issues.

We all know that the NHS will have to make major changes over the coming years. One of the big challenges facing health and care systems around the world is how to do more for less; that is as true in the UK as it is anywhere else. The ageing society and the need to move services out of the hospital and into the community mean that difficult decisions will have to be taken in the course of this Parliament. If done properly—if done rightly—those decisions could and should lead to a better standard of care for our constituents and a more sustainable future for local health services right across the country. Where that is the case, hon. Members have a responsibility to support the changes, but where the clinical case has not been made, hon. Members are right to be questioning and to seek reassurance that any changes are focused on the quality and safety of services.

It is vital when any changes to hospital services are being proposed that a number of basic principles should apply, and I shall outline some of those. First, the public should be involved at the very outset of any proposal for change. The proposals should not be designed behind closed doors, and the clinical case must be presented to the public at the earliest opportunity; I struggle to count how many well intentioned reconfigurations have fallen foul of that test.

Secondly, there must be a proper, meaningful consultation. Too often, proposals for change are presented as a fait accompli and the consultations that follow are little more than box-ticking exercises. My party has previously proposed that the formal responsibility for consultation should be given to an independent body, such as the health and wellbeing board, instead of being a responsibility of clinical commissioning groups. That could go some way towards improving the consultation process and would certainly restore faith in the independence of the consultation process. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the process should be as open and transparent as possible. The public should be entitled to the full range of information and data required for them to have an informed view on any proposals put forward.

Today’s debate has focused on the Healthier Together review and, as we have heard from several colleagues, the review appears to have fallen short on a number of factors. My hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East spoke in particular about the decision not to choose Wythenshawe hospital as the fourth site to provide emergency abdominal surgery, as part of the single service model proposed by Healthier Together. He made a compelling case as to why Wythenshawe hospital should be recognised as one of the “fixed site” specialist hospitals. I do not want to take up too much time, as I am conscious that hon. Members have raised specific concerns to which the Minister will want to respond in as much detail as he can, but I would like to press him on a couple of points to which my hon. Friend referred.

First, it appears that the decision to allocate the fourth specialist site was made largely on the grounds of travel and access. The strapline for the review includes the phrase “helping to save more lives”, but it seems clear, not just in Manchester but across the NHS, that access to services and the quality and safety of those services are too often presented as a binary trade-off. We must improve on that way of configuring services, so will the Minister tell us what more can be done to resolve what appears to be an invidious choice facing people right across Manchester?

Secondly, I understand that during the public consultation 33% of respondents gave Wythenshawe as their choice for the final specialist site, while Stepping Hill was backed by 26%. The Minister will appreciate that that has led some to question the point of the consultation and, understandably, has led to concerns that the views of the public are not adequately being taken into account. Wythenshawe hospital’s medical staff committee said that the decision was “irrational” and, as we have heard, there were reports last week of a plan to apply for judicial review. That is in no one’s interests. No one wants their hospital or services caught up in legal disputes.

I hope that the Minister appreciates that there is genuine frustration among hon. Members across the political spectrum—he has seen that for himself here today—about the Healthier Together process and that there are important questions that require answers. More broadly, I hope he will ensure that the NHS reflects on what lessons can be learned from this process to ensure that the public can have confidence that future proposals for change are focused on improving the quality and safety of local NHS services, and also that access to safe and high-quality—indeed, world-class—services remains equitable for all service users and taxpayers.

My final point is about Manchester airport and the nearest adjacent hospital. As a country, we need to address the needs of those communities that host nationally significant, strategic pieces of infrastructure. That might be Manchester airport or Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in my constituency. The communities that house such infrastructure require special regard to be paid to them when it comes to the configuration and supply of services at their local hospital. We should do that as a nation. It is done in other countries. I hope that the Minister will reflect on such an approach. I look forward to working with him on precisely that approach and to hearing his response to the points that I have made.