Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

Paul Farrelly Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Crausby, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Given the interest of several colleagues from the Staffordshire area, with your permission I will take a number of interventions in the course of making my remarks.

On 18 December, the administrators of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust published their final report. It recommended the dissolution of the trust as soon as possible and the absorption of Stafford and Cannock hospitals into the University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust and the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust respectively. It also set out proposals for the services that would continue to be offered at both Stafford and Cannock. The total cost over three years would be £220 million, of which £63 million is revenue and £157 million capital.

Let me first address the proposal to dissolve MSFT. I believe that is the right thing to do. It will enable both Stafford and Cannock hospitals to work much more closely with larger specialist teaching hospital trusts. They will both then be able more easily to recruit clinical staff who see greater opportunities for skills development within a larger organisation working across two or more sites and overhead costs will also be reduced.

However, the administrators’ proposals do not go far enough in ensuring that the interests of those who currently use MSFT are fully taken into account. Monitor and the Secretary of State clearly need to state that the expanded trusts should immediately recruit suitable non-executive directors from the areas served by MSFT, such as Stafford, Cannock, Penkridge, Rugeley, Stone, Brewood and so on, to ensure that those areas are properly represented.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

Under the proposals, the University hospital of North Staffordshire will take over Stafford hospital. North Staffordshire hospital has a deficit at the moment, caused by reopening beds to cope with blockages in A and E and in admissions. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in taking over Stafford hospital, it is very important and in the interests of everybody—everybody in Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stafford—that the University hospital of North Staffordshire has the prospect of attaining financial stability?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I entirely agree with him. I would see the situation more as two hospitals coming together, but it is vital that the financial difficulties that UHNS is facing are sorted out. I particularly urge the Government to look at the private finance initiative cost, which is too great for that particular trust.