Health Care (London)

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I entirely associate myself with the earlier comments about the quality of my hon. Friend’s address so far. She talks about trying to have a logical and sensible planning process. Is she aware that London boroughs such as Ealing, ably led by Councillor Julian Bell, have had to divert intense amounts of resources to oppose something that is the antithesis of good planning? That is an additional double whammy against responsible local authorities, which have to divert scarce resources and face up to a desperately uncertain future.

[Ms Buck]

I totally agree. Local authorities are on the front line of delivering the social care made necessary by some of the planned hospital changes and they are under pressure. The councils have expertise and knowledge and they are, as my hon. Friend says, sensibly involved in planning services, so they are making thoughtful objections when they see that services cannot be delivered as we want. Indeed, they have to divert resources to make the case on behalf of their populations.

In conclusion, London’s NHS continues to save lives and to provide the same quality of care it currently provides. That is a tribute to tens of thousands of men and women on the front line, whether in the NHS or employed directly by local authorities, but it owes absolutely nothing to a Government who have let us down with a change process that we should have been able to work through. They have done that by the way they have treated local authorities and by the way that, through this unnecessary reorganisation, they have diverted attention and resources from the leadership that could ensure that London’s health care is delivered in line with the wishes of Londoners. The Government have let down London’s patients and the men and women who deliver health care to them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing this important debate. I will keep my comments brief because I want to be fair to other Members who want to speak, not because I do not care deeply about this subject. Previous speakers have talked ably about a lot of the statistics, so I do not need to go over them.

I was actually born in a London hospital, across the river in St Thomas’. I was pleased to go there again recently to visit my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood)—I hasten to add that I was visiting the maternity ward because his wife had given birth to their new son, Oscar. It was lovely to be back at St Thomas’, albeit after so many decades.

Some important issues have been raised in the debate. Health care is critical to all of us—it touches each and every one of us, our loved ones and our constituents. It is crucially important and we must get it right. In London, there are specific problems, as has been said.

I was pleased that in 2010 the Government made £2.7 billion extra available in real terms in the NHS budget across the UK. That has allowed us to have 440,000 more clinical staff, and we also have 23,000 fewer administrative staff, including 7,700 fewer managers. That was absolutely the right approach and what the NHS needed.

The average stay in hospital is shorter than in 2010, although that puts pressure on community care, so we must make sure that that is dealt with. The cancer drugs fund is also critical to the debate, and we have helped more than 38,000 patients through it.

The debate is about London and the issues specific to this great city. In my constituency, in west London, the key health care issues tend to be focused on tuberculosis, obesity—including in children—diabetes and alcohol-related harm. As Members might expect, we have above average problems with healthy eating, given the issues with obesity. Other issues include smoking during pregnancy, smoking deaths and skin cancer. There are therefore specific issues in west London, and I will focus on them.

In my constituency, we have one main hospital—the West Middlesex university hospital, where two thirds of my constituents go when they need to. My Chiswick residents—about a third of my constituents—tend to go to Charing Cross hospital. I want to reiterate what previous speakers have said: we have some excellent patient care and services across our London hospitals, but there are, absolutely, also areas we should focus on.

The West Middlesex has outstanding maternity and midwifery services. One of the best parts of our job as Members of Parliament is rewarding people who have done incredible work in the health service, whether they are clinicians or support staff, and I recently handed out awards at the West Middlesex, which is ably led by Dame Jacqueline Docherty.

I also want to pay tribute to London’s air ambulance service. During the Christmas period, there was a fire and a massive explosion in Chiswick, and the air ambulance was called. The service deserves as much support as possible, because it serves 10 million residents in London, and it has only one helicopter. It is world class, providing high-trauma, acute care. Everywhere else around the country has one helicopter for 1.5 million people, but the figure in London is 10 million, so there is an absolute need for another helicopter. I would push everyone to support the London air ambulance service, which has its 25th anniversary tomorrow.

[Stephen Pound]

I entirely agree, and I think most of us would associate ourselves with the hon. Lady’s comments on the London air ambulance, but does she not agree that it might be better if it were run by the state, instead of relying so much on charity?

[Mary Macleod]

The London air ambulance service is an amazing organisation, so I would not change its structure. It rightly gets some funding from the NHS, but it also derives funding from many other sources, and it is important that we support that. The service does an incredible job, so if the hon. Gentleman knows anyone who can give it a spare helicopter, it would really appreciate that.

My local CCG is chaired by Dr Nicola Burbidge. It started early, it has been absolutely focused on patients and it has been very responsive to any issues I have raised with it.

On reconfiguration, I was recently thankful when, after a lot of campaigning by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) and others, the Secretary of State announced that the A and E at Charing Cross hospital would not be closed, thus helping residents in my part of London. Saving lives and improving patient care is paramount.