Improving Healthcare: Isle of Wight

Jo Churchill Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jo Churchill)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts.

First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely) for bringing forward this important issue and securing this debate. I recognise his support for the trust and his desire, and the desire of others, to improve services. Today, however, he has highlighted three specific issues.

We recognise that the Isle of Wight faces different challenges from those on the mainland. As my hon. Friend said, the Island represents a very distinct healthcare environment. It is heavily dependent on acute services close by, but there is the difficulty of travelling across water and the challenges that that lack of accessibility brings to the Island.

I know that the local Sustainability and Transformation Partnership is considering how to put healthcare on the Isle of Wight and in Hampshire on a sustainable footing, with the high-quality care that my hon. Friend has asked for, in the interests of the system as a whole and for the long term.

The impact that those challenges have on local NHS systems needs to be discussed. I reassure my hon. Friend that we are committed to providing the high-quality care that he seeks to meet the needs of people across the Island and to accommodate people irrespective of where they live.

It is important that we do not let the NHS stand still, and my hon. Friend alluded to telemedicine and to making use of all such technologies in the future. We know that people are living longer, and the Island has an elderly population that is higher than the national average. That elderly population is living with multiple co-morbidities, which puts a higher pressure on the service, as he said. However, he also spoke about how the Island is beginning to address those challenges, using blue boxes and using the whole system to help the entire system to work better.

The long-term plan sets out how we will provide high-quality healthcare for all and ensure that people live longer, healthier and more independent lives, which is what we all want. The plan recognises that the NHS needs to change and implement new systems to meet 21st-century challenges, so we are actually at a point of opportunity.

We are committed to delivering high-quality universal care, irrespective of location. That is particularly important given the challenges that Island life brings and that my hon. Friend outlined. He knows that there are benefits of being on an island, but that there are also some constraints, which we must now sit down and work through.

We accept that there are additional costs for providing healthcare on the Island. It has individual challenges, arising from delivering care on the Island with the diseconomies of scale that my hon. Friend spoke about so well. Earlier this year, we committed £2.7 million in extra funding for the Isle of Wight under the fair funding review, to help to start working through some of these issues. This money is to support the plan of the clinical commissioning group, the NHS trust and the local council for integration of public services, which will improve the care that patients receive. I hear what he says about how we must work together to find solutions for the long term.

As my hon. Friend said, the Isle of Wight will also benefit from the announcement of the 20 hospital upgrades, and I am grateful that he mentioned the £48 million for the Island. This extra investment will lead to improvements in patient care, and hopefully will allow flexibility for Maggie Oldham, the trust’s chair, and the rest of the team to progress their ideas further, allowing the Island better to utilise innovative technology, improve efficiency and improve the quality of care, which he has highlighted is his key objective.

I pay tribute to all those who have been involved with the trust, given the difficult circumstances it faced when it received a rating from the Care Quality Commission of “inadequate”. It has begun the positive journey to make things better. I recognise the hard work that everybody has put in across the health and social care system in the area, which is a really positive start.

We will now look at the local system, supported by NHS England and NHS Improvement, to protect and build on those achievements. I have already spoken to the Minister for hospitals, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), who is more than happy to arrange a meeting at which he and his officials would be present, so that some of the specific questions may be given the proper and appropriate attention, because my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight would not expect specific answers today.

Moving forward, it is vital in the medium term that the Island develops a strong joined-up plan across its health and care system to deliver the vision of a person-centred, co-ordinated health and social care system that gives patients the support they need. That is a unique system that cares for people from birth to end of life. My hon. Friend highlighted the challenges around the ambulance service, for example, such as not being able to use the overlay ambulance services available more easily to those on the mainland. I have also heard his request about patient travel costs. I have been assured by my hon. Friend the Minister for hospitals that NHS England and NHS Improvement have been involved in the development of plans and will continue to work closely with colleagues on the Isle of Wight. I therefore hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight realises that we are all here to support both him and the development of the broader health system on the Island.

While I recognise the concerns of Members who represent island constituencies, I hope that they will be reassured by our ongoing work to ensure that appropriate NHS resources are available, both on the Isle of Wight and on similar islands, to support patients and to meet CCG obligations to commission the best possible care. The Government are committed to ensuring that all patients receive high-quality healthcare that meets their needs, irrespective of where they live. Whether it involves me or my hon. Friend the Minister for hospitals, I look forward this constructive dialogue continuing.

Question put and agreed to.