Hospital Building Programme

Jill Mortimer Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jill Mortimer (Hartlepool) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) for securing the debate.

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown health inequalities in this country into stark relief. Those living in the poorest constituencies of England and Wales have been twice as likely to die from the virus as those in more prosperous constituencies. Figures from the Office for National Statistics covering March to May 2020 show that those living in the poorest 10% of England, which includes my constituency of Hartlepool, died at a rate of 128.3 per 100,000, whereas in the wealthiest 10% the rate was 58.8 per 100,000.

Any death in any part of the country is a tragedy, but such grotesque levels of health inequality cannot be allowed to continue in the world’s fifth-richest country. That is why I fully support the bid by the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust for a new hospital by 2030 to replace the current North Tees hospital in Stockton—another hospital crumbling with concrete cancer that has outlived its life span, and facing huge remedial costs.

The replacement hospital must be built in an equitable location for all residents north of the Tees, and I have a site available in my constituency—one of the most deprived areas of the UK, where health inequalities have been most apparent. The number of people suffering from a range of health problems is consistently higher in Hartlepool than the England average. Those include cancer, depression, asthma, obesity, heart disease and high blood pressure. As a result, life expectancy in Hartlepool is significantly and regrettably below the national average. If the Government are serious about tackling health inequality in the UK, they must start in Hartlepool.

Despite the sheer scale of deprivation and health inequality in my constituency, healthcare services in Hartlepool have not been expanding over the past decade, but shrinking. My constituents are often required to travel to the currently crumbling North Tees hospital in Stockton for urgent or specialist treatment. For example, owing to the lack of a doctor-led maternity ward in Hartlepool, mothers-to-be in my constituency must travel 20 miles in labour to the nearest hospital if there are potential complications, which, sadly, commonly occur with the prevailing underlying health conditions in my community. During the birth of their baby, mothers have to undertake that terrible journey to a hospital that is crumbling. A child’s first experience of this world should not be health inequality.

I appreciate that the coronavirus pandemic has placed unprecedented pressures on healthcare services in this country and I welcome the record levels of investment that the Government are injecting into the NHS to tackle waiting lists and treatment backlogs, but I fear that will not be enough to reverse decades of neglect and indifference on the part of my predecessors. Only a new hospital can do that. Levelling up must mean more than simple investment in transport and general infrastructure. Levelling up life expectancy across the country should be a priority. Plans must be put in place now to abolish health inequality in the UK and to ensure that our ability to live a good and decent life is not determined by an arbitrary postcode lottery.