Business of the House

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I can tell my hon. Friend that the Lord Privy Seal is very much in agreement with him. There will not be any repeat of the closure programme that we saw under the previous Government, which I experienced in my constituency and he no doubt did in his. We are committed to maintaining a network of 11,500 branches, with £1.3 billion of funding to support that during the spending review period. By 2015, at least half of those branches will have been modernised as he describes.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

There are concerns in my constituency about the mortality rates at the local hospital, which will now be investigated by the NHS Commissioning Board. Will the Leader of the House allow an urgent debate on how we can improve such hospitals?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will recall that I visited Medway hospital. It is very important that we recognise that when there is a significant deviation from the standardised mortality data and too high a level of apparent mortality is recorded that is an indicator that should be acted upon and is not in itself evidence of poor care. From the point of view of the Department and the Care Quality Commission, one of the lessons from Mid Staffs was that indicators, alarm bells, smoke alarms or whatever we might call them should never be ignored. I hope that we will see determination to act on any evidence but not to jump to any conclusions.