Maternity Services (Hastings)

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) for giving me an opportunity to speak in her Adjournment debate. I concur with everything that she said. I will take a limited time, because we want to listen to the Minister, but I wish to focus on a couple of separate matters. I add that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) expressed specific concerns to me this morning, because many of his constituents in Polegate and Seaford use the district general hospital in Eastbourne.

I feel as though I have walked about 150 miles over the past few years for the “Save the DGH” campaign. It was an enormous, cross-party campaign with cross-community support, led in Eastbourne by a splendid lady, Liz Walke, and in Hastings by Margaret Williams. They are two fantastic, community-focused individuals who did a superb job in rallying their towns and all the political parties.

I shall quickly make a couple of points. I have never been a conspiracy theorist, but there is an exception to every rule. Just because I do not believe that there are conspiracies everywhere does not mean that they cannot sometimes exist. I have some good contacts in the district general hospital and I spent eight and a half years working in Eastbourne before gratifyingly winning the seat in the general election last year. I have developed some good contacts in the trust and, sadly, I must tell the Minister that I believe that the single-siters who originally wanted to move to one consultant-led maternity service have not gone away, despite being turned down by the Independent Reconfiguration Panel. I am afraid that they have used the pretext of the Care Quality Commission report to begin the process of moving to a single site.

As soon as we heard that, we were very active and we blitzed the media for 10 days solid. I believe that that led the trust’s chief executive to say that there were currently no plans to close one of the maternity wards even temporarily. The blunt reality is that there were such plans.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye mentioned middle grade doctors. Around the country, more than 30 different trusts with maternity wards deliver an outstanding quality of service without eight middle grade doctors. The issue is a smokescreen, I think that it has been seen as such and I will not tolerate it. I ask the Minister to speak to the trust board, expressly remind its members of the content of the IRP report and tell them to consider seriously options other than middle grade doctors. I think that this last option suits some of the consultants rather than the patients.

I am terribly keen to hear the Minister’s comments, so I will finish with a quote. I wrote to the IRP within 24 hours of the issue blowing up again two weeks ago. The other day, I got a response. For Hansard, I shall quote from it. It states:

“Dear Mr Lloyd…

As you note, in July 2008, the IRP completed a full review of the proposals to close the Eastbourne obstetrics service and advised that the case to do so had not been made. The IRP also made recommendations about what further action should be taken, all of which were accepted by the then Secretary of State for Health in making his decision.”

I urge the Minister to assist my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye and me to keep an eye on the trust over the next few months and years because we, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes, and thousands of residents in Eastbourne and Hastings are not prepared to countenance in any way, shape or form the closure of either of the consultant-led maternity wards in Eastbourne.