NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests. My husband is a non-executive board member of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Like many Members, I have had a very large mailbag about today’s debate because so many of my constituents rely on the NHS to keep them and their families in good health, and they want the NHS to carry on providing good, appropriate services that are accessible and timely, and free at the point of entry. They want funding not only to address the deficit, but to invest in improvement of services. Those who work in the NHS care deeply about its future and want to be able to do their best for their patients.

Like the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), people in my constituency are deeply concerned about the future of Charing Cross hospital—a large general hospital with a busy A&E department in the neighbouring seat which serves many of my constituents. The hospital’s future has been uncertain for at least five years, since the north-west London NHS first proposed closing A&E there and in four other north-west London hospitals.

People are extremely worried about the travel times from Chiswick to the nearest A&E, about the inevitable downgrading of the other services on that site once A&E goes, and about the capacity of neighbouring hospitals to cope with the inevitable additional pressure. The issue has been ongoing for a while for us.

The STP comes at a time when we have a £1 billion funding gap in north-west London. It is proposed to close 500 beds and a 40% cut is proposed in face-to-face consultations. This is against a background of rising population and increased health needs and in the context of our services currently missing many targets.

Social care cuts are crucial to the argument. How can STPs have any credibility if the NHS cannot plan nationally when the other main services relevant to people’s long-term health are funded and controlled in a different place and in a different way and are being cut and cut and cut?

The north-west London STP, as I said, proposes cutting beds. We all want treatment to be less dependent on spending nights in hospital beds, and some reduction in acute beds is inevitable with changes in modern health provision, but 500 beds is a staggering number proposed to be cut in west London, where the population is rising and ageing.

I will end by responding to Members on the Government Benches about the funding gap in the NHS. The NHS would not have a funding crisis if this country matched the health funding per head of similar countries. The King’s Fund has shown that the UK public purse spends a smaller proportion of GDP on healthcare than countries such as Portugal, Japan and the Netherlands. If those countries value health in this way, surely so can the UK.