South London Healthcare NHS Trust

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that any change such as this has to be done extremely carefully, and we are investing an extra £36 million to expand the capacity of neighbouring consultant-led maternity services to make sure that they can cope with the extra demand, but may I urge the hon. Lady to understand the clinical rationale behind what is happening? London has halved its stroke mortality rate, because it reduced the number of hospitals treating people with strokes from 32 to eight. As a result, her constituents in Lewisham now go for their stroke treatment to the Princess Royal and King’s. That has led to fewer deaths in Lewisham and many other places. We need to do the same for high-risk pregnancies, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has established that women with high-risk pregnancies would prefer to travel a little further if that means they will get better clinical outcomes, which is what this is all about.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I appreciate the thoughtful way in which the Secretary of State has tried to deal with a problem that is absolutely not of his making, and I appreciate the fact that he has changed key recommendations and that there will be a continuing A and E service at Lewisham, dealing with up to 75% of the work. However, like other colleagues, I do not therefore understand why there cannot be continuing maternity care there as well, because the key point is that there should be intensive care provision on the site and maternity care services should be provided. I also say to him honestly that I have not heard of any evidence that the key fourth test—support from GP commissioners—has been passed, and I ask him to give me an assurance that no plans will go ahead until and unless the GP commissioning body in Lewisham agrees.

[Mr Hunt]

Let me take those two points in reverse order. First, on GP commissioners, all six local commissioning groups support the principles upon which these proposals were developed. To meet the London-wide clinical quality standards, which are not being met in south-east London at present, it is necessary to centralise the provision of more complex services in the same way that we have already successfully done for heart attacks and strokes. That principle applies as much to complex births and complex pregnancies as it does to strokes and heart attacks, and it will now apply for the people of Lewisham to conditions including pneumonia, meningitis and if someone breaks a hip. People will get better clinical care as a result of these changes. That is the most difficult project in all the work of the trust special administrator. The project has been to try to resolve an unsustainable financial situation while improving clinical care for the people of south-east London, and I think that, in the end, we have got a set of proposals that does that.