Hospital Services (West London)

Mary Macleod Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and a pleasure to see so many colleagues from west London, of various parties, here for an important debate that concerns us all. It is a particular pleasure to see the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), relieved of the cares and constraints of office and therefore able to speak. I am slightly surprised that she chose to be pushed over House of Lords reform rather than this issue, the third and fourth runways at Heathrow airport or the cuts to Sure Start, pensions and other things that are going into the next manifesto, but we all find our path to salvation. I also welcome the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), who already adorns the Back Benches. I hope that we can see others, including the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), joining the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton soon in order to fight the appalling changes to our health service.

Members of Parliament for the north-west London NHS area represent 2 million Londoners, and I know that all of them, whether they can be here or not, are very concerned by the proposals in the consultation document, “Shaping a healthier future”, published on 2 July. I will primarily deal with that document today. I intend to confine my comments, as the debate’s title suggests, to the effect on the major hospitals in north-west London of the proposed changes. Given the time constraints and the fact that hon. Members with more knowledge of hospitals in their own constituencies are here to speak, I will deal principally with the risks to Charing Cross and Hammersmith hospitals, but I will try to put those in the wider context of what can only be called a crisis in the NHS in north-west London. That is in the light of the further decision last week to put the future of Royal Brompton hospital at risk by the closure of children’s cardiac services there and the failure by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust to manage waiting lists and GP referrals.

The Minister will have seen the letter that I sent last week to the Secretary of State, asking for independent intervention to rescue the health service in west London before matters get more out of hand. I will expand on that and hope that the Minister can respond positively.

The other point that I will make in opening the debate is that the consultation should not be a Dutch auction. I do not think that any hon. Member will have come here to say, “Don’t close my hospital; close his or hers.” Every hon. Member and, indeed, every member of the public I have spoken to in the past few weeks wants to challenge not the detail or options that we are offered, such as they are, but the premise that such a major downgrading of the health service is sustainable, safe or sensible. If any hon. Member here felt a moment’s relief when they saw the schedule of closures—in particular, of accident and emergency departments—and realised that their local hospital was not on it, that relief was short-lived. The question immediately arose: how will the five remaining A and Es cope with the consequence of closing four busy departments and the consequent downgrading of other hospital services?

I am pleased to see here hon. Members representing, I think, all the north-west London hospitals, not only those under threat. Neither I nor my constituents are resistant to change in the NHS or unaware of the cost pressures that it faces. Indeed, it is the Government, not us, who need to be candid about both their failure to fund the NHS and the underlying financial motivation for these proposals.

The medical director for north-west London has been admirably frank. In approving the consultation two weeks ago, he stated that the local NHS would

“literally run out of money”

if the closures did not go ahead.

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he agree that whatever the shortfall in funding in London that he talks about, more funding has gone into the NHS from the current Government than ever before?

[Mr Slaughter]

Apart from the bit of fun that I had at the beginning of the debate, I am going to stay off party politics. I think the hon. Lady knows that the NHS was rescued under a Labour Government, and knows about the increase in funding then. She will also know from articles in the press this week and last that in fact, the promise made by the Prime Minister before the election to increase funding for the health service is not being kept. [Interruption.] I therefore think that that was a bad point to make. [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) on securing this important debate. He is right to extend its scope to hospital services across west London because the proposed imminent reorganisation of services—the “Shaping a healthier future” programme, led by NHS North West London—will affect all hospital users in the area. It is a hugely ambitious and, I am sure, well-intentioned programme, but none the less it presents perhaps more questions than it answers. It raises serious concerns, especially for my constituents in Ealing and Acton.

[Mary Macleod]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. My constituents use the West Middlesex university hospital and Charing Cross hospital, and I was glad to see that the aim is to retain the West Middlesex as a major acute hospital with A and E and its award-winning maternity provision. Does my hon. Friend agree that the ultimate aim of what is happening, whatever decision is made—any constituent would find the closure of any part of a hospital a difficult thing—is better clinical outcomes, and the key issue is whether they are achieved?

[Angie Bray]

Of course, we all want better clinical outcomes for all our constituents. The question is how to get to that result, and how to provide services for residents. An unfortunate aspect of the way things have been done is the pitching of one hospital against another, with everyone being asked to decide on one or another. That has been a divisive process.

My constituents face the real possibility of Ealing, Central Middlesex, Hammersmith and Charing Cross hospitals all having their A and E departments downgraded —a result that would surely be disproportionately negative for them and that threatens to destabilise health care provision across my constituency. In making its three key recommendations for the current consultation, NHS North West London seems to have completely overlooked their needs. While the consultation document does at least mention the full list of eight possible options, the pressure on people to support one of its three main recommendations leaves the impression that minds have already been made up. Minds should not be made up when my constituents in Acton—a place with a rapidly expanding population—look set to be left without any local emergency cover.

The consultation and pre-consultation business case documents make bold predictions when calculating travel times to justify recommendations. One document even states that the

“geographic distribution is proposed to apply to the remaining sites to minimise the impact of changes on local residents”.

Tell that to the people of Acton, as they battle their way through traffic to Chelsea and Westminster hospital, or the people on the western edge of my patch doing the same to get to Hillingdon hospital, in the event of downgraded services at Ealing hospital. With London’s transport infrastructure as it is, I remain unconvinced that those bold predictions stack up.

The current recommendations take all my constituents further away from access to emergency health. That is why I am encouraging all constituents who get in touch with me on this issue to contribute to the ongoing consultation, regardless of my concerns. That seems to be the best way forward. After all, we all know that, for many people, their local hospital is more than just a physical structure. Attachments to hospitals are often incredibly emotional. Quite naturally, people want to know, when or if they or their loved ones fall ill, that they can access the care that they need in good time. It is all very well presenting a case for change based on facts, figures and statistics in a hefty document, but it is clearly important that local people—the people who use these hospitals—are given a proper chance to have a proper say on their future.