Healthcare in Oxfordshire

Julie Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Julie Cooper (Burnley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts) for securing a debate on this important subject. It gives us an opportunity to discuss a subject that I would suggest goes beyond Oxfordshire.

Forgive me if I am not as familiar with the healthcare scene in Oxfordshire as many of the hon. Members who have spoken today, but I have listened closely and what they have described resonates with similar situations across the country. I applaud their commitment and dedication on behalf of their constituents, which, by the sound of things, are quite justifiable. It is clear from what hon. Members have said that the people of Oxfordshire seem to be very unhappy about the proposals, and my research shows me that perhaps they have good reason to be.

The proposed changes will mean less hospital beds; changes to acute stroke services; changes to care at the Horton General Hospital, as the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) has just explained to us in great detail; changes to critical care; changes to maternity services; and changes to the special baby care services. I gather that there has been lots of vociferous opposition to these proposals on the ground, which has been reflected in hon. Members’ comments today. I understand that local people have said in a petition that they believe these proposed changes will lead to poor services, a cheaper service, overcrowding and long waits. I particularly noted what a local A&E doctor said about the process way back in August:

“This is just awful. Working in A&E is particularly difficult, and has been all year. We often have significant nursing and medical rota gaps, and long waiting times. Despite it being August, every shift has patients on trolleys in the corridor, with the time waiting for a bed over 12 hours…We are not coping”.

I also note that there is a proposal to reduce the number of hospital beds in the first instance by 110 further beds. Clearly, no one is listening to the NHS staff there in Oxfordshire.

Oxford City Council has also expressed its concerns and has quite rightly commented on the lack of a workforce plan. Interestingly, however, it also said that it understands the position that the clinical commissioning group finds itself in. We have heard a lot of criticisms of the CCG this morning and it has obviously been remiss in its consultation process. However, the council says it understands that the CCG is up against national policy.

That point is very important, because what we have heard this morning is not only a problem that affects Oxfordshire. The hon. Member for Witney spoke about his constituency being one of the few that still has snow. My constituency, too, still has snow—lots of it—and we also have in common a great dissatisfaction with the health services that we are receiving, particularly as we look forward, or maybe dread, the introduction of the sustainability and transformation plans.

At this stage, we have a national health service, and the changes that we have heard about this morning are Oxfordshire’s response as part of the STP group that takes into account Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and west Berkshire. The STP ordered by Government is one of the 44 they have ordered. In total, those STPs will look to save the NHS £22 billion and the share of the savings that have to be made by Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and west Berkshire is £480 million. That, I would suggest, is at the root of the changes.

[Victoria Prentis]

I accept that I could not possibly expect the hon. Lady, coming from Burnley as she does, to have the encyclopaedic knowledge of Oxfordshire health services that, sadly, we Oxfordshire MPs have to, but the changes to the Horton General Hospital apparently stem from recruitment—the inability to recruit obstetricians—and not a lack of money. Indeed, the changes started when the STP was just a twinkle in someone’s eye, so the situation is slightly more nuanced.

[Julie Cooper]

I note the hon. Lady’s points, and there is another issue we could talk about. Our NHS has a crisis on three fronts—a funding crisis, a workforce crisis and a systemic crisis—and I think that is what we are looking at today: some of the systemic problems.

Going forward, £480 million has to be saved. This is not something that the CCG has decided to do, and it does not matter how transparent the consultation is—it sounds like it needs to up its game on that—because it still has to make its share of that saving.

As for the national health service, I note with absolute horror that, when it comes to the percentage of GDP that we spend on our NHS, we are well down the league—indeed, we are close to the bottom—compared with nations that we would expect to be up there with. We are behind France, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, New Zealand, Portugal and Japan—I do not have time to list them all, but we are well down the list.

The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) quite rightly mentioned the issue of beds and how it is not really a bad issue—people ought to receive care at home where possible. I totally support that; the problem is that the cart is being put before the horse. The care, including social care, is not there in the first instance to allow us to reduce hospital beds and provide the excellent care in the community that we all want to see. When it comes to the number of hospital beds per head of population, we are again close to the bottom of the league.

For obvious reasons, healthcare in the modern NHS is delivered in a different way. In all comparable nations, the number of hospital beds has reduced, but nowhere near to the extent that it has been reduced in England. I particularly note with horror the reduction in maternity beds and mental health beds. There has been a lot of talk about standing up for the mentally ill, but beds in mental health care have actually been reduced by over 90%. That is very worrying when we all see that the necessary care is not there in the community. In fact, Oxfordshire County Council has said it is worried that there would be no impact assessment of some of the proposed changes. How was the community going to cope? Were the services in place in the community to provide support when, for example, hospital beds were removed? The council was not convinced that that was the case.

So, we are bottom of the league on spending as a percentage of GDP and close to the bottom—we are just bumping along the bottom—on hospital beds.

[Robert Courts]

I understand that the hon. Lady has her job to do, but I am quite keen that this debate, which is about a much more complicated local healthcare issue, is not reduced to one in which—if she will forgive me for saying so—some rather crude political points are made. For what they are worth, the statistics are that the NHS Oxfordshire CCG has received a funding increase of 2% in 2017-18 compared with the previous financial year, and another 2% increase is forecast for the following financial year, so more money is going into the CCG. What is clear—the CCG was quite open about this in the phase 1 consultations instigated and organised by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) and I—is that the issue is not funding. It is about transparency of consultation and organisation, so I would be grateful if the hon. Lady did not reduce this debate to a political or money issue.

[Julie Cooper]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am sorry that he thinks I am reducing the debate; actually, I am looking at the national health service—we do still have a national health service, and I am thankful that we do. I take the points that he has made. These local reconfigurations of healthcare services are very complex; I understand that. However, underpinning all this—it is well documented—is that the STP for the region must make a saving of £480 million. That will be the funding gap if things continue as they are. The changes are not being made for patient gain, and that is why right hon. and hon. Members are rightly upset. They listen to their constituents, and their constituents, as they begin to see the changes coming forward, know they are definitely not an improvement. There is a financial motivation behind them.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Witney for introducing the debate. It is really important. I sympathise with the people of Oxfordshire, as I do with people across the country in the 44 different STP groups—we are hearing the same story in each of them. I hope that the Minister will address the points raised and that he will encourage clinical commissioning groups to consult more widely, thoroughly and transparently and will equip them with the tools they need. In case anyone does not believe me, did anyone really think that Simon Stevens, head of NHS England, was lying when he said that the NHS did not have enough funding? When the chair of the Care Quality Commission said that social care was close to its tipping point—that has a bearing on this matter—did anyone think he was lying? Of course not. These are very important issues, and I hope that the Minister is listening, because this is part of a Government’s national plan for our health service.