Urgent and Emergency Care Review

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The number of hospital nurses has gone up since the election, and as a result of the changes in the Francis report—the hon. Gentleman’s party refused to have a public inquiry many, many times—I hope that the NHS will recruit many more nurses.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

The three Members for north Northamptonshire— the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford), my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and I—have come together on a cross-party basis, and are working with local clinical commissioning groups and Kettering general hospital to try to attract more investment to our local A and E because of the increase in the local population. May I share with the Secretary of State the fact that all agree that up to a third of attendees at A and E could be better treated closer to home, particularly in excellent urgent care centres such as that in Corby?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend speaks extremely wisely. He invited me to visit Kettering hospital, and I saw for myself that it was a very, very busy hospital. In the end, if we just stick with the current model we will reach bursting point, which is why we need to look at new models. That is why tomorrow’s review is important, and part of that—in fact, the bulk of the work in tomorrow’s review—is about how we transform out-of-hospital care, which is the big strategic change that we need to make in our NHS, and on which I am afraid the previous Government made so little progress.