Patient Transport Services: Northern Lincolnshire

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

It is saddening that the same experiences are happening just across the river in the city of Hull as well. This appears to be a consistent theme wherever this company provides ambulance transport services. Unfortunately, the hon. Lady describes an experience that many of my constituents have shared.

In fairness to the north Lincolnshire clinical commissioning group, it has, through the scrutiny processes at North Lincolnshire Council, effectively put the company on notice and informed it that the service is not good enough. Despite that, the improvements have not happened.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. It is fair to say that all our constituents have suffered for reasons that Thames Ambulance Service Ltd has brought on itself to some extent. It has decided not to pay volunteer drivers, who have been the backbone of the service for some time, to travel to and from where patients must be collected. That means that it has lost 40 of those volunteer drivers. Should it not be rewarding the people who have been the backbone of the service rather than treating them that shoddily?

[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.

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[Andrew Percy]

That is absolutely right. There is an argument for saying that those who provide the emergency services—East Midlands Ambulance Service in the case of Scunthorpe—are better able to provide the patient transport services, just as in Goole we would want Yorkshire Ambulance Service to provide the patient transport. There seems to be some sense in that, unless it is a very strong local community transport organisation that we know we can trust. Yes, there are always examples of failure, but we did not have this recurrent theme of failure under the previous system.

[Melanie Onn]

rose—

[Andrew Percy]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, but then I want to give the Minister enough time to respond.

[Melanie Onn]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous this evening. Following on from the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), our local hospital trust is already in special measures—it has gone into special measures for the second time—and senior board members are raising Thames as a potential difficulty and challenge in their efforts to meet their key performance indicators and get out of special measures. This is something the Government need to take really seriously.

[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.

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[Caroline Dinenage]

Of course, we have devolved this matter locally and it is up to the local CCG to take action. I know that a recovery plan is in place and the delivery of the plan is now being monitored weekly, but the hon. Gentleman is right, and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, he has kept on articulating this issue and asking these questions on behalf of his constituents, to try to find out when they will see a visible difference to the service, because it is currently not good enough.

Patient transport providers are also required to be registered and inspected by the Care Quality Commission, the independent regulator of health services. This Government have given the CQC more powers, and it is now able to rate independent healthcare transport providers in the same way as NHS ambulance services. We fully support the CQC in its work to ensure that users of patient transport services are protected, and where services are not good enough and the necessary improvements have not been made, it can take further action, including issuing fines, service restrictions, and ultimately the cancellation of a provider’s registration.

Additionally, we are very supportive of the Department for Transport-led total transport initiative, which I think was what my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole was referring to, and which is currently piloting the joint commissioning of public sector-funded transport in order to reduce the risk of services overlapping, improve efficiency, and provide a better overall service to passengers.

From the local work carried out so far, it has become clear there are a range of potential benefits for the NHS, including helping to avoid bed blocking—where patients sometimes cannot go home because non-emergency patient transport is not available—and improving access to NHS services by reducing missed appointments due to late or unavailable transport. We have asked NHS England to ensure that CCGs are all engaging in this important work.

[Melanie Onn]

I welcome the Minister to her new role and wish her the best of luck, but from what she is saying I am not entirely clear how the Government will follow up and pressure will be brought to bear on the CCGs in the delivery of the contract. I had a 97-year-old lady, whom the new chief executive of the Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital and the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust met. She had had to wait for eight hours in the emergency care centre for transport to go home. There needs to be a little more urgency in the Minister’s response.

[Caroline Dinenage]

I completely understand why the hon. Lady is articulating that; every one of these incidents is absolutely unacceptable and in many cases very distressing. The issue with devolving such clinical decisions to local areas, however, is that we have to allow the CCG to take the necessary steps to ensure the service is put back on to a better footing.