Corby Urgent Care Centre

Peter Bone Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) and my hon. Friend the Minister for allowing me briefly to speak in the debate. We have an excellent Minister who has shown a great deal of interest in the concerns of north Northamptonshire NHS.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Corby both on initiating the debate and on his campaigning across his constituency on many issues, but particularly on Corby urgent care centre. His listening campaign has galvanised support from all over the town and the surrounding areas, and it is the surroundings areas that I want to mention, because people from Wellingborough go to Corby urgent care centre. Wellingborough is one of those towns that does not have an urgent care centre or a hospital, so if someone unfortunately has an emergency, they have to travel to Kettering and, on occasion, to Northampton, which is not a good situation. The urgent care centre allows people to be seen more quickly, and the system really works. I saw one of my constituents who had fallen ill, could not see the doctor that day in Wellingborough, went to Corby urgent care centre and was then referred on to Kettering, so the system works. I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) for being here, because they represent the two constituencies with the two major hospitals. The problem is that if we get rid of Corby urgent care centre, we will finish up with more and more people going to Kettering A&E and to Northampton General Hospital.

For a long time now—since before my hon. Friend the Member for Corby was even elected—there has been a campaign for a hub at Kettering. That would be a national leader and is something that the Department has supported. We would have the urgent care centre in Corby, which we already have; we could have an urgent care centre at Kettering General; and we would have an urgent care centre at the Isebrook Hospital in Wellingborough. That is my plea to the commissioning groups, because I have been round the site where they are going to put the urgent care centre in Wellingborough, but I am afraid the commissioning groups have let us down. I have introduced in this Parliament a Bill, which you may be aware of, Mr Chope, to merge the two commissioning groups, the Northamptonshire Clinical Commissioning Groups (Merger) Bill, because having a Corby commissioning group—the smallest in the country—is hopeless. I am not much more impressed by the Nene group, so let us put them together and see whether we can get something better. I have also introduced a Bill that would bring the hub system to Northamptonshire —the North Northamptonshire (Urgent Care Facilities) Bill.

I am really grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Corby for letting me speak in the debate. He is doing an absolutely terrific job in Corby. He said right at the beginning of his speech that these debates should be used only for really important occasions. The first time I was in Westminster Hall, the aim was to keep open Rushden fire station, using a listening campaign, and we achieved that, so I hope that as a result of this debate we will ensure that Corby urgent care centre stays open.