North Tees Hospital

Matt Vickers Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to the House for the opportunity to hold this important and urgent debate, and to the Minister for his attention this evening. After much time spent securing the debate, I am delighted to have the chance to make the case for much-needed and urgent improvements to North Tees Hospital.

I pay tribute to all the amazing healthcare workers—the doctors, nurses, technicians, cleaners, and anyone who had a hand in making sure that our hospitals, including North Tees, stayed afloat during the pandemic. While many retreated to the safety of their own homes, they got on with the job, putting themselves at risk, to help keep us safe. We owe them all a huge debt of gratitude. I was recently fortunate enough to undertake a shift alongside the doctors, nurses and surgeons at North Tees Hospital, and I saw for myself the challenges that they are facing and the sheer scale of the elective surgery backlog created by the pandemic. Doctors and surgeons are being forced to make decisions on who gets their treatment first: the elderly lady who needs a hip replacement to deal with her arthritis or the youngster who needs surgery after a sporting accident.

Dealing with this backlog involves us all making the difficult decisions that are required to get our NHS back to full health. While none of us on the Conservative Benches wanted to increase national insurance or create the health and social care levy, having seen the waiting lists, and seen the work our surgeons are doing, I am confident it was the right thing to do. This funding is what our constituents need and what our hospitals so desperately need. Of course, this money comes on top of the record investment that the Conservative Government are placing in the NHS, with 50,000 more nurses, 50 million more GP appointments a year, and, as announced yesterday, an additional £5.9 billion, taking the total investment to date to £176.5 billion—a 27% increase since the Conservatives came into government in 2010. In the past year, we have welcomed £6.5 million invested in North Tees, including huge improvements to our now award-winning urgent care centre.

Seeing the hard work and commitment of all the people who work and volunteer at North Tees Hospital is inspirational, and the people there really are award-winning. Dr Iain Loughran, one of the physiotherapy consultants, won an award at the chief allied health professions officer awards for creating an app for physiotherapists who were deployed during the pandemic; nursing associate Lisa Tomlinson was shortlisted for the rising star award for her work as an ambassador for cervical cancer after beating the illness herself; and volunteer Stephen Pratt was awarded the British Empire Medal as part of the Queen’s new year honours. These incredible people deserve the facilities and resources they need to go about their great work.

Built in 1968, the hospital serves a population of 400,000 people—a population with some of the highest health inequalities and highest rates of deprivation in the country. It is a heartbreaking and outrageous fact that, according to Public Health England, Stockton has the nation’s biggest gaps in life expectancy. In central Stockton, male life expectancy is just 64 years, while just a few miles up the road a man can expect to live to 85. This cannot go on; it has to change. When it comes to levelling up, people’s life expectancy must surely be a priority, and delivering good health services is the key to that.

Unfortunately, the North Tees Hospital building does not live up to the standard fit for the great people who work there and the patients treated there. During my shift, I got to see the challenges of the estate and the staff’s frustrations. The building was constructed in the 1960s. It is a concrete building constructed at a time when medical needs and processes were very different, and the architects had no foresight when it came to design. As a result, the hospital is in a state of poor repair and is pulling resources from frontline services to address its issues. Structural and engineering elements of the major buildings are now well beyond their life expectancy. The NHS workers in my patch, who have worked with determination and perseverance to make the best of the facilities they have, have said that this is putting the trust’s ability to provide good care at risk.

It is time to replace this hospital, which is far past its sell-by date. The fact that the hospital is comprised of two towers, which host both wards and theatres, means that piecemeal improvement or ongoing gradual investments will struggle to ever make the change needed. It is not practical and barely possible to extend a ward or theatre above the ground floor. The building has a flat roof, and as a result the building suffers hugely during adverse weather conditions. Nobody should be greeted by buckets catching water from leaky roofs when sat in A&E, in a ward or when in theatre or losing a loved one. At those tough times, we need to do better than that.

The hospital is no longer fit for purpose. By national health building note standards, our wards are way too small, with too many shared rooms. HNB guidance suggests that 85% of rooms should be single occupancy. In our trust, the proportion of single rooms is just 16%. Our theatres are also far too small. HNB standards suggest that theatres should be 55 square metres, while some theatres at North Tees are just 28 square metres. That has a huge impact on what can be done in them. There is not the space for modern technology and robotics. Not being able to have that equipment means that some patients must go elsewhere for certain surgery. Moreover, it results in some surgery taking longer to perform and it extends recovery times, so longer surgery slots are filled more quickly and more time is spent in hospital beds.

Improving isolation facilities on wards, improving clinical adjacencies and increasing the number of single-bed rooms are all options that would improve health outcomes in Stockton South, but they can only be achieved if we invest now. No amount of paint slapped on the hospital and no amount of plastering over the cracks could hide the fact that it is no longer fit for purpose. A six-facet survey was recently conducted, and it concluded that demolition and replacement was by far the best option. The costs are only one of the factors that justify that approach.

The trust continues to invest significant capital in maintaining the facilities in a safe and operational condition, but the six-facet survey indicates a steep increase in the backlog, with more than £250 million-worth of maintenance to be undertaken in the next 10 years as a “do minimum” option. On the other hand, the consolidation of services on to a new hospital site would have estimated savings of between £5 million and £6 million a year. My trust does not want to spend millions each year maintaining a crumbling building; it wants to spend the money on doctors and nurses and improving health outcomes.

By far the most important justification for this proposal is the improved care it would provide for my constituents and others. A new modernised estate could support a health management programme that would address some of the health inequalities that exist in communities such as mine, because, sadly, we are still more likely to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or heart conditions or die earlier than the average citizen. Those problems are set only to get worse as our population ages.

Aside from that investment, there are so many other opportunities up for grabs that could revolutionise healthcare in North Tees. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the future of retail, I am a huge advocate of the “Health on the High Street” initiative, which I have been championing locally. By decentralising NHS estates and putting diagnostic centres in empty buildings on our high streets, we can bring healthcare closer to people’s doorsteps and bring some desperately needed footfall to our town centres. During the last year, I have taken that idea to my local NHS trust, and there is now a strong possibility of developing a hospital with diagnostic facilities in our town centres, but it all costs money, and we need cash in Stockton.

If there is one other thing we can do that would make the NHS fit for the future, it is getting rid of Labour’s crippling private finance initiative deals. The James Cook University Hospital, which is not in my patch, but serves many of my constituents, has a PFI scheme that costs £57 million a year. That is more than £1 million every single week and £18 million more than an equivalent hospital trust would ever have to pay. It is ridiculous. That £18 million could pay for 530 nurses in our hospitals.

I was delighted that the Conservative Chancellor announced in 2018 that those dodgy debt-loading schemes would no longer be used, but if we want to put the NHS on a surer footing, we need to get rid of the schemes that remain and hold it back. I ask the Minister to look again at what can be done to end Labour’s debt legacy on the James Cook University Hospital, so that that money can be spent on nurses, doctors and improving the health outcomes of people from our part of the world.

I will return to my main ask before I finish. To eradicate the risks associated with an ageing estate that is no longer up to the job, a new 21st-century hospital for Stockton is a must do. Now is not the time for sticking plaster. We cannot go on throwing good money after bad to maintain a building that is just not fit for purpose.

I hope that Ministers will back the bid that has been put forward by North Tees, so that we can build a new North Tees that is fit for the future, fit for patients, and fit for staff. I know that the Government are committed to modernising the NHS and have announced a massive investment that will fund healthcare across the region. The Minister is probably sick of hearing from me on the issue, but I will not give up until the amazing doctors, nurses and staff have the modern facilities and resources that they deserve.

In the light of that, I invite the Minister to the hospital to see the challenges and the improvements that must be made. If his diary does not allow that, however, North Tees will happily take a nice big cheque instead.