NHS Provision (Brighton and Hove)

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

That would be a very interesting issue to debate. The hon. Gentleman can get his own debate on Worthing hospital, but what I know about are the particular problems that are facing Brighton and Hove, and I will point again to the particular complex needs that come together when one has a city full of young people as well as very elderly people, a lot of people with mental health problems, homelessness problems, vulnerability problems and so on. If he will give me a little more time, I will set out for him what some of the problems are in Brighton and Hove and also, crucially, what some of the answers are.

I was talking about adult social care and about the fact that, unfortunately, the Government are cutting yet more money from local authority budgets that is supposed to cover those essential care services for vulnerable people.

The Government know that social care in places such as Brighton and Hove is on its knees, and that that has very direct knock-on effect on the NHS that no amount of financial smoke and mirrors can conceal. Brighton and Hove National Pensioners Convention has begun a valiant campaign to protect adult social care services from cuts, with unions such as the GMB fighting alongside it. I really hope that the Minister is listening, because this is a crisis that lets down everyone and there is no hiding from it. Where should responsibility for this catalogue of troubles lie?

What has happened to the city’s non-emergency patient transport service goes some way towards answering that question, and I wish to look at this in a bit more detail. It also demonstrates what can only be described as an utter dereliction of duty on the part of the Secretary of State for Health and I want to repeat my call for his Department to step in and for him personally to resolve an unacceptable and untenable situation.

I am referring to a service that takes people to essential non-emergency appointments—kidney patients going for dialysis, and cancer patients going to and from chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Since April, it has been run by a private company called Coperforma and a number of subcontractors. Coperforma faced intense criticism from the outset, with patients saying that they had experienced delays reaching appointments and subcontractors reporting that they had not been paid. Two of those subcontractors, Langfords and Docklands, went bust in September, leaving some ambulance drivers with up to six weeks’ worth of wages unpaid. In early October, drivers for another Coperforma subcontractor turned up for work only to be sent home again.

Last week, the Patient Transport Service was plunged into a fresh controversy after an investigation by our local paper, The Argus, revealed that one subcontractor may not even have been licensed to operate a fleet of 30 ambulances. I have the headline from the local paper, which Members can see very clearly. It says that ambulances are now in a total shambles—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Do you want to put that paper down on the Bench? Thank you.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am sure that The Argus will be sad to see itself relegated to the seat behind me.

The subcontractor is a company called Docklands Medical Services Ltd. This is apparently a phoenix company for the aforementioned Docklands. As I understand it, the new company seems to be suggesting that it was acceptable for it to operate under the Care Quality Commission licence that was issued to its predecessor, the bankrupt Docklands. The application process for a licence is carefully designed to ensure that standards for vehicles and other safety checks and safeguards have been met. Just allowing a new successor or phoenix company to inherit a licence is setting the bar dangerously low, exposing patients and staff to unacceptable risks.

As a result of this debacle, our struggling hospital trust—yes, the one in financial special measures—has incurred £171,000 of private ambulance costs so far this year to plug the gap left by Coperforma and its subcontractors. To recoup this cost, the trust has, quite rightly, invoiced the clinical commissioning group, which appointed Coperforma. No doubt other trusts similarly affected will have done the same, with serious consequences for the CCGs’ budgets and, therefore, for the money available for other services. Whichever part of the Department of Health ends up footing the Coperforma bill, it represents an unforgivable waste of money and resources, and their diversion away from patient treatment and care.

I trust that the Minister will agree that patients in Brighton, Pavilion or anywhere else should not be paying the price for the failure of private companies that are profiting from NHS contracts. Will he therefore ensure that the CCG is not out of pocket in turn as a result of Coperforma’s mismanagement? I would also like his Department to stop passing the buck when it was his Government who passed the legislation that required services such as non-emergency patient transport to be put out to tender. It is unacceptable for no one in the Department of Health to know whether a fleet of 30 ambulances were properly licensed to transport Sussex patients for three months over the summer. When the Minister responds, will he tell us whether he agrees?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

This is the first time I have intervened on the Minister, and we do have about an hour left in which to carry on this debate.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I may be able to help the hon. Gentleman. That is only if the Minister wishes to speak for an hour, because nobody else will be allowed to do so.

[Tim Loughton]

Perhaps you will therefore indulge me on this intervention, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

As ever.

[Tim Loughton]

I have no problem with the principle of outsourcing. The Minister is absolutely right that the level of outsourcing may go up and may go down, because it should be based on the quality of an alternative provider that is able to provide a quality service at an affordable price and is best placed to do so at the time. Will he acknowledge the whole issue with Coperforma? It has been a major issue for all of our constituents. Vulnerable people relying on regular treatment have just been left at home or dumped elsewhere, and have not been able to access services. This has been going on for so long that, when we put a contract to such organisations, much better due diligence needs to be done. There also needs to be a fall-back plan, because given that the ambulance service, which declined to take on the contract in the first place, is now clearly not in a position to take it on anyway, there is little option for somebody else to take on the service urgently and provide the level of care that our constituents desperately need and that has just not happened in this case.