Patient Transport Services: Northern Lincolnshire

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

I could not disagree with a word the hon. Lady said. She has stolen my thunder—[Interruption.] No, it is good! I was going to come on to the company’s treatment of volunteer drivers. Not only has it said that it will not pay them for mileage unless a patient is in the vehicle, but at three months’ notice it told them that if their vehicles were more than five years old, they could no longer be volunteer drivers. Despite that having been its policy for a considerable time, a company cannot give volunteers three months’ notice like that—say, effectively, “Change your vehicle or give up on the service.” Through its own actions, the company has made an already struggling service much worse. It has absolutely brought the situation on itself.

I have dealt with the issue of volunteer drivers, and I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) for raising it. I want to give a couple of examples from my constituency to demonstrate how poor the service has been. One of my constituents in Brigg was given short notice that their transport was to be cancelled because there were no ambulances. That meant that this person, who suffers from mobility issues, had to cancel an important scan. It is impossible for them to get in or out of vehicles unless they have been specially arranged.

The mother of another constituent from Crowle on the Isle of Axholme is 87 years old; she suffers from dementia, is partially sighted and has been repeatedly left stranded following appointments arranged way in advance. My constituent has completely lost trust in the service and family members have had to take time off work to ensure that the lady gets to hospital. The service is there to ensure that that does not have to happen. The situation is completely unacceptable.

Another constituent from the Isle of Axholme has repeatedly been left stranded and unable to book an ambulance. They have been forced to use expensive taxis, which meant that the trip doubled in length. On one occasion the service failed to fulfil a pick-up arranged in advance, and that again required them to use a taxi. The service is totally unacceptable.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

rose—

[Andrew Percy]

I give way to my north Lincolnshire colleague.

[Martin Vickers]

Like the Opposition Members and my hon. Friend, I have a long list of complaints from constituents, but I want to highlight a particularly bad case. On two occasions—once at Scunthorpe Hospital and once at Grimsby Hospital—a 91-year-old gentleman in Barton-upon-Humber had to wait for four hours before transport was provided to get him home. On one occasion, he did not get home until past midnight. The situation is extremely serious.

[Andrew Percy]

Absolutely. As my hon. Friend has highlighted again in this debate, we are not talking about one or two cases: Members of Parliament across our area have multiple cases. I want to highlight another one. Another constituent of mine, this time from Burton-upon-Stather, has to attend Castle Hill Hospital for chemotherapy every single day. His experience is of ambulances frequently being late, of other patients missing their appointments and of late collection for following treatment. As he has pointed out, receiving chemotherapy means that he is already very ill and weakened, but not just once but regularly he has had to wait up to three hours for an ambulance to collect him. He has also had issues with the booking system and trying to get a place at all.

My final example is of another constituent living just outside Burton-upon-Stather: 82 years old, suffering from Alzheimer’s, in a wheelchair and with very poor mobility, he is totally dependent on the assistance of others to get to and from hospital. Again, his experience is of frequently waiting for the service to collect him from Scunthorpe Hospital. Not so long ago, during snowy, freezing weather, he was left for over three hours in a hospital doorway, waiting for a lift. In the end, hospital staff intervened and brought him inside to warm up, but yet again the experience of the complaints process was that Thames Ambulance Service was wholly unresponsive in dealing with complaints.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Percy]

It is incredible that what is judged to be a failing trust has a failing transport patient service that is making it even more difficult for it to get out of special measures. That is another reason I brought this matter to the House today.

Following on from the intervention of the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), one of my requests is to the Department for Transport—so not directly in the gift of the Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care—which is currently undertaking a transport accessibility consultation. It might be sensible if the issue of patient transport were to be wound up as part of that. That is one of my asks. I know that the Minister cannot respond, as it is not her Department, but it would be useful if she could pursue it interdepartmentally.



I want to give the Minister enough time to respond, so I will not say much more, but the concerns that I have described are shared by the clinical commissioning group, which has raised these issues with North Lincolnshire Council’s health scrutiny panel on a number of occasions and has told the panel that there will be further sanctions if the service does not improve. Sadly, that was said at the end of October, and, as other Members’ interventions have made clear, there has been no turnaround since then.

[Martin Vickers]

I agree with my hon. Friend that action needs to be taken. Does he agree that the service has had long enough to get its act together, and that the Minister ought to be consulting the local health trust and the CCG with a view to terminating the contract?

[Andrew Percy]

I think that that is absolutely true. The chairman of the scrutiny panel, Holly Mumby-Croft, who is a councillor for the Broughton and Appleby ward in my constituency, has said that the “volume of people” who have contacted the panel directly is “very unusual”. It is for people to go directly to a scrutiny panel; not many are aware of the position of the council. That alone suggests that the problem cannot be solved through the usual channels. After the most recent appearance of Thames Ambulance Service before the panel, the chairman said:

“I have seen actually no improvement. None at all. It is worse.”

There is something seriously failing here, and it is putting the performance of our local hospitals at risk. More important, it is having a huge impact on our constituents.

I realise that the Government did not commission the service, and that it was commissioned by the CCG, which is responsible for the performance of the contract. However, I have some asks of the Minister.

Could the whole issue of patient transport be considered as part of the consultation that is currently being undertaken by the Department for Transport? Will the Minister and the Department look at the performance of Thames Ambulance Service in north Lincolnshire, and perhaps also in Hull, to see whether anything can be done directly by the Department to improve its performance? Will they, if necessary, look into what powers are available to establish whether or not this is a business that should be operating within the health service at all? If it is routinely leaving people with three and a half to four hours to get home, surely we need to ask, whether through NHS England or locally, whether this organisation should be allowed to provide transport services.

I accept that responsibility lies directly with the commissioners. I therefore urge the Minister to engage with the north Lincolnshire CCG and put maximum pressure on it to ensure that the powers made available in the contract tender to impose fines or even terminate the contract are used if there are not serious improvements very quickly. I have no confidence that the service will improve. I think it is time that the contract was terminated, and that either the local authority or the local ambulance service has another opportunity to tender. All of us in our area want the same thing. We want a patient transport service that does what it is meant to do: take people to hospital and get them home in a timely manner.

I look forward to the Minister’s response.