NHS in London

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Paul Scully

Thursday 24th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, and he is absolutely correct. It is why we need some degree of certainty. For many years now, we have had such things as “Better Healthcare Closer to Home” and “Better Services Better Value”—an alphabet soup of NHS changes, with no degree of certainty for residents or staff in that hospital. A lot of the BSBV review was clinician-led, but it was based on the premise that they wanted to concentrate consultants in certain places—in my case, at St George’s hospital in Tooting—because they did not have enough consultants in each of the different hospitals seeing enough of the more unusual cases; they wanted to concentrate expertise.

Imagine a whole load of politicians in Sutton telling residents time and again that the hospital is about to close, as my hon. Friend just said. Where would a newly qualified consultant want to go and practise? Would they want to go to a hospital that they are being told is about to close down, or would they go just up the road to one that receives all the plaudits and which has all the concentration of expertise? I know what I would do. If people talk down their local hospital and healthcare, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They may be in danger of getting a result that is exactly the opposite of what they seek.

[Ruth Cadbury]

The hon. Gentleman is making a point, but some services have moved or closed without political problems because the people who used them and valued them realised that change was necessary. I suggest that the change in stroke and trauma services in recent years was right—fewer, larger, better. I also suggest that the opposition to changes the hon. Gentleman describes is caused by genuine worry that the solutions will not provide the adequate future service that we all want for London. In addition, in recent years we have seen a significant rise in population in London. We do not oppose that per se, but the health service in all its facets should be seen to be growing to accommodate that rising population.

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Lady makes some interesting points. There have been changes and closures in Sutton. The stroke service was one, and it made sense to provide immediate treatment at St George’s although it was further away, because those first few hours are crucial. Several smaller hospitals also closed over many years. However, I return to the changes and closures of A&E and maternity services to concentrate them at St George’s. Although it is only a few miles away, in rush hour traffic it takes those without the ambulance service’s blues and twos a long time to get to St George’s. If politicians were concerned, I would have thought they would do a more effective job than just trying to get tens of thousands of signatures on a petition aimed at the primary care trust. It took so long that the petition was still being presented two and a half years after PCTs were abolished in favour of CCGs. Effectively it was a data-harvesting exercise to extract a whole lot of email addresses that could be used in a political campaign and as a political football. The NHS is inherently political, but sometimes we must take the party politics out of it and focus on healthcare and what we have to do to best treat patients in a local area.

As I was saying, the St Helier building is fast becoming not fit for purpose, with 43% of the space having been deemed functionally unsuitable. That is no way to provide 21st century healthcare. The hospital predates the NHS by some time. The huge white building on a hill was used by German fighters to line up as they were coming to London on their bombing raids.

I look forward to plans being produced, using any capital funding we can attract from the Government in a cost effective way, so that it is not too onerous for the Treasury, to make use of all the component parts of the Epsom, St Helier and Sutton hospital sites. Businesses, the Royal Marsden hospital and the Institute of Cancer Research are sited there and the NHS is planning an exciting project—a London cancer hub—to attract even more world-class research. The Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden have a world-class reputation and it would be fantastic to expand it, but the Royal Marsden needs acute facilities to support treatment there. If we can use that huge space for healthcare for the borough as well specialist healthcare, that would be brilliant.

The “Save St Helier” campaign is great in theory, but there are some holes in the plans and there may be unintended consequences resulting in the opposite of what we want. With the “Better Services Better Value” campaign, the fact that St Helier sits between Kingston hospital, St George’s hospital, Croydon University hospital and Epsom hospital means it is always at threat because of the way the catchment area is designed. The trust is acutely aware of that. We want St Helier to be meshed into the London cancer hub with an integrated approach.

We have heard that the NHS can be somewhat bureaucratic. A few years back, I was at a hospital that closed—Queen Mary’s hospital for children. It was eventually sold for a secondary school and housing in Sutton, but it took two years and £1 million in legal fees for two public bodies, the local authority and the NHS to agree terms. The lawyers got the money and children were not educated there for another two years at a time when there was a shortage of school places. Cutting through that bureaucracy and making sure we get the healthcare we want without having to go through the 11 tiers to which my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) referred would be fantastic.

We have heard a little about the difficulties of getting GP appointments and how infrastructure in London does not always keep up with planning and the need for housing. Sutton is no different. Worcester Park is one of the densest wards on the border with Kingston and has two vets but no GPs. I am not sure what that tells us about Worcester Park, but there is certainly a lack of planning somewhere.

I live in Carshalton and the one Liberal Democrat MP who was here is my MP. There is a health centre and it is a good example of how we might roll things up across Sutton and other areas. Two practices have come together in a purpose-built building with a shared practice, so it is slightly easier to get an appointment, although it may be not with one’s named doctor, but with one of their colleagues. People can wait to see their named doctor, or they can get a reasonably quick appointment if it is an emergency; they can have blood tests, antenatal care and vaccinations. I recently had a rabies vaccination there—for a trip to Burma, not because of the prospect of facing hostile Opposition Members. The range of facilities helps to keep people away from A&E.

I have visited several pharmacies in my local area. They are concerned about closures, but the Minister has talked about putting in extra funding and integrating the pharmacy service as an alternative first port of call.

NHS Bursary

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Paul Scully

Monday 11th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully]

It is beholden on us to explain the system to mature students, because I see no reason why they should be discouraged.

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

The hon. Gentleman says that he sees no reason for mature students to be discouraged, which perhaps demonstrates that the Department has not done a full impact assessment. What impact assessment did the Department do before the Chancellor made these proposals in the autumn statement?

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Lady is asking the wrong person. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that question a little later.

The idea of placements came out of our discussion prior to the debate with the student nurses, who have taken time out to come to London today from as far as Liverpool and elsewhere. We talked about bursaries, and it would be a more honest description to call them a salary because these people are working hours in what are supposed to be supernumerary positions but are often not. There are student nurses sitting in the Public Gallery, and we have one person here from Brighton who explained how he was saving children’s lives prior to Christmas—it is not a supernumerary position when someone is working with babies. We have other people in critical roles who are working with patients on a range of issues, so we need to be straight about the pressures on nurses and how we reward them.