Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Robert Flello and Baroness Hodge of Barking

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I speak both as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and as the MP for Barking. As PAC Chair, my concerns have not been allayed by the evidence sessions that we have held on these issues. I do not want to be saying in three years’ time, “I told you so.” I urge the Government to think again before they introduce changes that have not been thought through properly, that are incredibly risky, and that could result in long-term damage.

There has been insufficient focus on the risks of the changes. The NHS chief executive said in evidence that

“the risk is higher. If you try and reorganise, the risk becomes higher. I think we’d be kidding you to say that it wasn’t”.

Making Monitor an economic regulator forces it to concentrate on competition, not quality. Its purpose will be to drive down costs, not drive up health outcomes. If the spotlight is on price, the risk is that patients will lose out. The NHS chief executive agreed in his evidence that lowering tariff prices could endanger patients. Opening the health market to any willing provider will undermine the viability of many NHS foundation hospital trusts, which face immovable fixed costs, such as their private finance initiative costs. Again, that risk has not been assessed properly.

The Government appear to be driven by an ideological mission. The NHS needs pragmatism, not dogma. I fear that there is no firm grip on the costs of reform. The NHS already faces the unprecedented challenge of finding £20 billion of savings and its record is poor. Over the past decade, despite assurances to the Treasury, NHS productivity declined, with hospital productivity declining by 1.4% annually. The NHS should therefore concentrate its efforts on the enormous financial challenge, and should not be diverted by an unprecedented organisational challenge. Quality and productivity, not reorganisation and privatisation, should be the priorities.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a good-quality speech, as usual. Surely in areas such as Stoke-on-Trent, where the cost of laying people off in the PCT will be tens or hundreds of millions of pounds, the risks that she describes already exist.

[Margaret Hodge]

Indeed, and I was going to come to that point. As I understand it, Ministers have set aside £1.7 billion to finance their reforms, but as my hon. Friend says, if the costs of redundancy are higher than planned, or if people carry on attending A and E rather than seeing their GP, the costs of reform will spiral and front-line services will have to be cut. I am not convinced that Ministers have transition costs properly under control.

Nor has anybody sorted out to our satisfaction the issue of accountability for public money. For instance, foundation trusts are supposed to be directly accountable to Parliament. With 167 trusts accountable to the PAC and the House, if there is financial failure or poor quality of care, will that accountability be good enough? In the past, Monitor could sack the board of a trust, but under the Bill it will lose that power. How can we hold the permanent secretary to account when there is a plethora of new quangos or new responsibilities for quangos? We have to know where the buck stops. I seek Ministers’ reassurances tonight that there will be clear, practical accountability that enables Parliament to hold the Executive to account.

The Government do not have effective plans to deal with failures, and there will be failures—hospitals bankrupt, GP commissioning consortia overspending. Ministers must explain how they will deal with failure, so that local services will be maintained even when trusts and consortia collapse. So far, officials have been unable to provide us with the confidence that we need to feel that the Government have got a grip.

That matter is of particular importance to my constituents. For years, our NHS trust has been in terrible trouble, and last week it was named and shamed by the Audit Commission for systematic failure on its finances. It has failed to balance its books for years, and it has a projected deficit of £29 million this year. The quality of care has deteriorated, too. In the week of the general election, 99% of people at our King George A and E and 92% at Queen’s hospital were treated within four hours. By 2 January this year, that had dropped to 83% at King George and just over 61% at Queen’s. More than 1,000 people were forced to wait for more than four hours, ambulances were queuing around the block and all but the most urgent cases were turned away. In one case, a patient died because she was sent home.

That hospital trust is not fit to become a foundation trust. Despite a stream of new chairs and chief executives, the underlying problems persist. Now, the only answer that NHS London has is to try yet again to close the A and E at King George. That is health vandalism at its worst, with patients’ needs sacrificed at the altar of financial cuts.

What would happen to my constituents under the proposed NHS reforms? King George A and E would go, forcing my neediest and poorest constituents to spend hours on three buses to get to a hospital. Queen’s hospital would become unviable, and what then? Where is the local hospital ready to meet local needs? Who would want to consider merging with a hospital trust struggling with an impossible financial burden, and even if anyone did, would they ensure that our services remained local? The current health care reforms should put the patient at the heart of the NHS, but it does not feel like that is happening in Barking. I urge the Government to think again before they act to damage the health care of the people who need it most, the people I represent here in Parliament.