Accident and Emergency Services: Merseyside and Cheshire

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[John Pugh]

There is also a petition in Southport, and I am sure there will be petitions wherever in the country this sort of thing happens. As the hon. Gentleman suggests, the ownership of the sustainability and transformation reviews is wholly unclear. No one quite knows who writes the plans, or how they are agreed, and few democratically elected bodies or people, or patients, have any kind of input. In fact, the Liverpool local authorities wrote in some indignation to the authors of the report to ask, “How can we be involved? It alleges in your report that we are involved, but we do not appear to be.” Furthermore, no one quite knows why the hospitals have been grouped as they are.

Southport hospital is in a particularly unfortunate position, because it has changed its chair recently and suspended its chief executive over a period of a year, so it is unclear to me how Southport and Ormskirk’s views could have been represented in any review. Roadshows were organised by the clinical commissioning groups to talk about the financial plight of the local NHS and things that need to be done, and I have attended some of them, but they spend all their time talking about things such as savings on prescriptions and none on the big league stuff that is agreed and discussed in NHS boardrooms. There is absolutely no transparency, and I am sure hon. Members share in my cynicism. We await the real cost-saving proposals—or, in some cases, the empire-building proposals that are often disguised by blather about clinical efficiency and safety, which come almost after the event.

I speak with some cynicism, because I am a veteran of such carryings-on. I regret all the back-stage manoeuvres and, in particular, that no one has been around to champion my local hospital in the review. There is a good case for keeping our A&E—elderly people throughout the country are the major clients of A&E, for obvious reasons.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The debate is clearly about Merseyside, but the issues for accident and emergency are the same everywhere in the United Kingdom, including in Northern Ireland. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern about A&E being on the frontline of the NHS, so that is where the spend clearly needs to be? Does he also share my concern about Government policies to close some pharmacies, with their role, which will push many minor ailments to A&E, creating even more problems?