Health

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Commons Chamber

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

In south-west London, the NHS has just proposed to close the A and E, maternity unit and various other services at my local hospital, St Helier. It will take 200,000 people longer to get to hospital in an emergency. On its website, outlining why it is doing this, NHS South West London states that providers

“will have to deliver £370 million savings each year…a reduction of around 24% in their costs.”

Yet thanks to birth rates, an ageing population and poor health due to poverty, A and E visits will go up 20% in five years and births will increase by 10%. The area’s four hospitals are overcrowded now, so let us try cramming the same number of patients into just three.

What is worse is that there is no extra funding for the hospitals that remain. In no way do I support the hospital closures in north London, but at least that area gets an extra £138 million for “out of hospital” care to cope with the closures. Down in south-west London, we will get nothing. If St Helier loses its A and E, visits to the remaining three hospitals will rise by a third. Many will have to be admitted, but, with no extra funding, where can they go? Will they go on to the corridors, as in the 1990s?

It is claimed that 50% of A and E patients will go to GPs or community services instead, but even the report by the watchdog, the national clinical advisory team, does not believe that they could cope. That is a key paper and no cuts should take place without the public knowing what the watchdog thinks, so it should be published immediately. NCAT is right to be sceptical about whether GPs can halve the numbers going to A and E. Clinical commissioning obviously makes that very attractive for GPs, but for most people in my constituency it is easier to go to a walk-in centre or A and E than to a GP, so A and E visits have continued to rise year after year. The fact that GPs, who are making all the financial decisions, will get more funding if there are fewer A and E visits, does not mean that people will stop going. Apparently, some GPs now realise that those plans are looking very dodgy. A poll of Sutton’s GPs has shown a majority against the closure and a similar poll is taking place of Merton’s GPs that will, I am sure, show the same.

It is not just St Helier’s A and E that is under threat—so is its maternity unit. However, of the four hospitals, St Helier has the only maternity unit that meets clinical standards. If we lose St Helier, the other three hospitals will need to deliver a third more babies than they do now. It is widely accepted that maternity units delivering more than 6,000 births a year are a bad thing. It is far better, and far safer, to have slightly smaller units with good midwife cover, but not in south-west London, it seems.

We will lose our children’s unit and other services, such as intensive care. The “Better Services Better Value” review states that, to compensate, GPs will force patients from all around south-west London to go to St Helier for minor, planned treatments, but who would want an operation, even a routine one, in a hospital as depleted as St Helier? What is more, making people in St Helier drive across the suburbs for A and E and maternity and making people drive to St Helier for routine operations will add literally millions of miles of journeys to our already congested roads. No, the impact of that is not considered.

The other obvious questions have not been asked. Why would a patient from Kingston want to drive the best part of an hour to St Helier for a treatment they can currently get in Kingston? The other three hospitals do not like the idea either, as they cannot afford to lose the income from those planned treatments.

These plans are all over the place; they are a total shambles. Next Thursday, NHS South West London was due to rubber-stamp St Helier’s closures. It booked a big theatre in Croydon in readiness, but now it has put the decision off. Good, but this is obviously not the end. St Helier has been under threat before, but now it is under threat again from a combination of cuts and GP commissioning. The demands on our four hospitals are growing, not shrinking. I hope the Minister will reassure me, and my constituents, that that disaster will not happen on his watch.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Burns]

I think I can assure my hon. Friend that the IRP will have available to it all the evidence, in all shapes and forms, to help it to form its final opinion of the complaint referred to it. I hope that that reassures him. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough and the hon. Member for Leicester South that the same can apply with regard to the decision about ECMO. I have no doubt that Leicester city council will give consideration to that.

I shall briefly respond to the remaining issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) made several extremely interesting suggestions. Some of them might not be in line with current Government thinking, but I shall certainly refer her ideas and views to the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), who deals with our alcohol strategy. Similarly, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) raised an important issue, and again I will refer it to the Under-Secretary of State.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) mentioned the potential reconfiguration at St Helier hospital. As she will know, the proposals are still being worked on. There has not yet been a consultation process, but the decisions have been taken locally by the local NHS. I trust that, if and when there is a consultation process, she will get involved.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Absolutely.

[Mr Burns]

I thought she would say that. That is very good. After the consultation, the due processes of reconfiguration can move forward.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) asked about Avastin. A study is being done into its effects. We are following that closely, and when we find out more we will consider the matter and potentially reach a judgment, but I cannot give him any commitments at the moment.

Finally, I turn to my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). I am sorry to hear about the problems that she highlighted on behalf of her constituents. I do not want to disappoint her, because she is my neighbour and I have to live with her on a weekly basis, but given the background to the case, I think it is a matter for the GP practice as the employer of the GP whom she mentioned. I encourage her to engage with Mid Essex PCT, even though it has no direct powers or role in this matter, and the clinical commissioning group in the mid-Essex area, because they are best placed to address the concerns about the provision of services for her constituents, which I know she is fearless in defending, protecting and promoting.