Health

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Today I would like to add my voice to those of all who have expressed disappointment and surprise that the Queen’s Speech contained not one word about the NHS. Last month’s local elections in Mitcham and Morden, and in large parts of London, were dominated by the issue of health. The verdict was overwhelming: overnight, Merton went from no overall control to Labour control, with the people of Mitcham and Morden electing 30 Labour councillors out of 30 for the first time in history. In large parts of Merton one issue stood out: the future of my local general hospital, St Helier. Anyone driving through Morden will see hundreds of signs in front gardens and windows—yellow signs with a red heart in the middle, all saying “Save St Helier.”

The Government should have used the Queen’s Speech to listen to the people. Labour would introduce an NHS Bill; the Government included not a word about the NHS. During the local election campaign, Merton’s Conservatives said that, no ifs, no buts, St Helier was safe. Their leader proclaimed that

“St Helier Hospital has been saved”,

but St Helier has been under attack for years under this Government. In 2011, the local NHS said the Government had told it to

“deliver £370 million savings each year...around 24% in their costs.”

A new body called Better Services Better Value was set up. It announced it would close A and E and maternity units across south-west London and Surrey, and St Helier would also lose its intensive care unit, paediatric centre, renal unit and 390 in-patient beds. A save St Helier campaign was launched, and the petition has now been signed by more than 13,000 of my constituents. Three local campaigners—Sally Kenny, Stan Anderson and Mary Curtin—decided the issue was so important that they should stand in the local elections in Lower Morden as residents whose primary aim was to save St Helier. Given the backing they had from Councillor Stephen Alambritis, the Labour leader of Merton council, they stood for Labour. Just before the election, doctors in Surrey, where Epsom hospital was also threatened, vetoed the plans. BSBV was wound down in ignominy. It seemed we had won a reprieve, but when the huge banner covering the front of St Helier hospital that said

“Coming soon—We’re spending £219m on a major development”

was taken down, residents realised that victory was only temporary.

The best any of us could hope for was a few years’ peace and quiet. As it happened, the reprieve lasted until only five days after the election, when the local NHS published a new five-year plan that it says will

“change the way we deliver health services”.

Far from listening to the people, who voted in unprecedented numbers to save St Helier, it ignored the verdict of the people. The plan describes the

“likely need to reconfigure maternity and neonatal services”.

Of course, “reconfigure” is just a euphemism for closures, and it suggests that A and E units will be downgraded by 2018, with what it describes as the introduction of two levels of emergency departments—major emergency centres and emergency centres. The plans do not say which maternity units will be “reconfigured” or which A and Es will be downgraded to emergency centres, rather than full-blown A and Es, but, after years at risk, nobody thinks St Helier’s future is secure.

The leader of Merton council, who won an overwhelming mandate just weeks ago, is so angry that he has told the chair of Merton’s clinical commissioning group, who has headed the local NHS throughout BSBV, that the people had spoken and his job was no longer tenable. Councillor Alambritis said:

“BSBV has been a fiasco and the voters of Merton delivered a devastating verdict...Ultimately, responsibility lies with the Chair, and he has to go…Merton’s residents have demanded change, and the Chair needs to respond to that”—

and so should the Government. They have spent the last four years undermining, rather than strengthening, our NHS.

In 2010, the Conservative party manifesto said it would stop the centrally dictated

“closure of A&E and maternity wards, so that people have better access to local services, and give mothers real choice over where to have their baby”.

The people of Merton remembered that quote, and it is no wonder they voted the way they did a fortnight ago.

This is a democracy. The Government should respect the ballot box. My constituents do not want a Queen’s Speech that has not got a single word to say about the NHS. They want a Queen’s Speech to save St Helier, and save our NHS.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I have reflected on the comments of the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and I really must tackle head-on the belief that because there is no Bill on the NHS, that is a weakness. The reality is that the NHS does not need more legislation. What it needs is good leadership and good performance management so that it delivers what we want it to deliver for our constituents. We will not improve the care of patients by sitting on these Benches and pontificating and giving the benefit of our experience. What we need to do is empower real practitioners to actually deliver change.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

May I inform the hon. Lady that many of my constituents in Mitcham and Morden believe the withdrawal of clause 119 from the Care Bill would have done a lot for their NHS?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I cannot agree with the hon. Lady. The important thing is that Government Members make it clear to the NHS that we expect it to put the interests of patients at its heart. I want again to draw attention to what has happened in Basildon and Thurrock university hospitals trust because it is perhaps the best example of the profound change we have had in NHS culture over the last five years. We now have a Government, and leaders within the NHS, who are finally prepared to face up to what is going wrong and to deal with it, rather than to cover up, be complacent and say, “We’re no worse than anyone else.”

I have to say that it has been a turbulent journey for those of us involved in Basildon hospital over those five years. The shadow Health Secretary, who is not in his place, will recall coming to this House in 2009, at the same time as he spoke about Mid Staffordshire, to highlight exactly what was going wrong at Basildon. Since then I have had a number of conversations with senior managers in which I was told, “Well, we’re no worse than anyone else. You’ll find this everywhere.” That was not good enough, but after two and a half years of not making any progress at all, Members of this House had very robust discussions with Monitor and said, “This needs proper intervention.” That led to a complete change in the leadership. A new board was appointed that was more inclined to give challenge where it was due. We had a leadership team that put stronger emphasis on good clinical leadership, and a chief executive was appointed who was determined to make sure that Basildon hospital delivered the standards of care that all patients deserve. What we have had is cultural change, and cultural change comes from leadership; it does not come from legislation. As I have said in many contexts, any organisation is a creature of the person at its top, so when we get good leadership in individual hospitals we get a step change in performance.

I also wish to pay tribute to the Secretary of State for the continued emphasis he places on patients, because when the head of the NHS—the person operationally responsible here in Parliament for performance—is articulating that, it will spread the cultural change which will deliver the real change in performance. I pay tribute to Clare Panniker, Basildon hospital’s current chief executive, who has delivered this significant change in the 18 months she has been in post. She has taken Basildon from being one of the worst performing hospitals to a position where it is coming out of special measures. She has been ably supported by the chairman of the trust, who has also been prepared to give a robust challenge and to stand behind her when she was doing so. Most of all, I wish to pay tribute to all the staff at Basildon. It has not been easy for them—it has not been good for their morale to see in the newspapers regular reports of the latest horror story of poor care within the trust—but they have reacted to the cultural change that Clare Panniker has brought. They have bought into it and given good, honest feedback, and I no longer get whistleblowing letters from staff about the latest incident. They have procedures to act on things and the management then implement that change. It says a lot about the commitment of the staff in that hospital that they have bought into that process and delivered us to where we are now. We all need to learn that sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant. It is not good enough to pretend that there is not a problem when there so clearly is, and it is important that we continue to put patients at the heart of the NHS. Only by doing that will we be able to ensure that the incidents witnessed at Mid Staffs and Basildon will become a thing of the past.

I wish to turn my attention to another issue that was not mentioned in the Queen’s Speech but which is on the Government’s legislative timetable for the coming year: the plan to introduce standardised packaging for tobacco products. I have to say to the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) that it is a very bad idea. I fully support the policy objectives of tackling tobacco consumption and, in particular, of dissuading and preventing children from ever taking up smoking, but I have worries that this tool is not effective and that its unintended consequences may bring about worse health outcomes than doing nothing at all. Sir Cyril Chantler is said to have examined that as part of his review, but I am not persuaded of the evidence. In particular, I believe that introducing standardised packaging will worsen the public health outcomes if unregulated illicit tobacco products replace the regulated ones. We all know how toxic regulated cigarettes are, but when unregulated products enter the market the health outcomes will be very much worse.

Sir Cyril Chantler has concluded that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has been very effective in tackling contraband and illicit tobacco, and he has cited figures going back to 2001. Although they show an improvement, the nature of the problem has changed over that period. European Union enlargement took place during that time and there was an immediate rise in the amount of illicit tobacco, but that has been tackled, mainly through co-operation with tobacco manufacturers. That illicit tobacco was also a legal product, whereas the illicit tobacco coming into this country today is not from Europe and it is not from regulated markets; it tends to be made in places such as China and Indonesia. Some of these products are extremely nasty, with tobacco rolled with whatever is available and containing high levels of tar. I commend The Sun for the exposé it ran last week in which an illicit producer from Indonesia explained just how toxic some of his products are and how standardised packaging will help him make money by reducing the costs of production.