Children’s Cardiac Surgery (Glenfield)

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure once again to take part in a debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I join other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) on securing the debate.

I feel like something of an intruder, coming from the remote parts of Lincolnshire to this east midlands event. I rise to speak because many of my constituents’ children and grandchildren have received treatment at Glenfield and Leeds, and I have campaigned with my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) for the retention of the Leeds unit. We have centres of excellence and we want to retain them. My constituency is at the end of the line and somewhat remote, so the geography of where people receive life-or-death treatment is of particular concern. We joined the campaign for the Leeds unit and heard from parents how the distance to the life-saving unit has made a big difference. Cleethorpes is 80 miles from Leeds and 90 miles from Leicester.

The alternatives suggested to my constituents—in Newcastle—have been a significant factor in the opposition to the proposed changes. We already feel remote and out of it. I do not want to be frivolous, but if, for example, some of my constituents were involved in an accident, Humberside police would attend and summon an ambulance from the east midlands, which would then take them to Grimsby hospital, which is administered by the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. All these factors give people a sense of unease, and a sense that they are at the end of the line and do not matter. It is essential that we ensure that services are as close as possible to the people.

Parents will go to the ends of the earth to take their children to emergency treatment, but as a national health service we have to ensure that services are, wherever possible, as close as possible to the centres of population. We need to bear in mind the need to have centres of excellence, which, as the clinicians constantly tell us, means more and more concentration, but remoteness will mean that these proposals are unlikely to be achieved.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. The Safe and Sustainable review found, from its own independent advice, that patients in his constituency would not travel to the units that would be kept open under the proposals.

[Martin Vickers]

My hon. Friend is right. I think it was proposed that the likely number of operations taking place in Newcastle would be 403. That will not be achieved, because people in Cleethorpes and northern Lincolnshire will not travel to Newcastle; they will look for alternatives. With doubts being cast on the centre at Birmingham, inevitably, if Leeds and Glenfield closed, people would gravitate south rather than towards Newcastle.

We have heard expressions of concern about the process of consultation, and there is no doubt that the view that the consultation was flawed is widespread. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey drew attention to that in an Adjournment debate a few weeks ago. I appreciate that the Minister said, in an intervention, that the review was by clinicians. The problem is that clinicians always tend to want to gather together in more and bigger centres of excellence, and our constituents want as local a service as possible.

I hope that when the Minister and the Secretary of State make their decision they will consider other aspects. The expertise of the professionals is important, but access to services is also important. The last thing that people want is a decision that comes from a review by people they do not know and about whom they are doubtful—expert opinion—at the best of times. They want the Secretary of State to weigh up all the factors, not just the expertise. Parents and grandparents of children who have received treatment from these units know, from personal experience, the care and attention that they provide, and they fear being shunted away.

We have centres of excellence. Please, Minister, do not rubber stamp a review that wants to close them. Consider, first of all, the children who are treated by these centres.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) on securing the debate and other Members on all the contributions that we have heard. I pay tribute to all Members who have attended today, as well as those who have spoken. My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) attended the debate but, unusually perhaps, has not made a speech, although we have not been discussing the hospital for which he has campaigned so hard.

I pay tribute to all Members who have spoken in numerous debates in the House, written letters to Ministers, met and conferred with local groups and experts and spoken at length to their ordinary constituents. As a result, we have heard a moving story from the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) about the services offered at Glenfield, and there are many more stories to be told about children’s heart services centres throughout England. All such Members have campaigned locally to have decisions overturned or reviewed in some way, or to ensure that the right decisions have been made on the right basis. They have brought such arguments and their campaigns to the House, as they should do, because each of them is doing their job as a first-class, local constituency MP by bringing important issues to this place.

I also pay tribute to great cross-party work, which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough mentioned, both in Parliament and locally. Forgive me for speaking not only as a Minister but with my other cap on as the Member of Parliament for Broxtowe. On my local television service, I have seen and witnessed such cross-party work, which is to be commended; such issues are not party political and certainly nothing to do with any alleged cuts. This is about how we ensure that our children and babies get the very best heart surgery services that we can give them.

I must pick out my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and the hon. Member for Leicester West, who together have spearheaded the campaign, but I also pay tribute to all the work and effort of the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), who joined them at the meetings. Everyone involved in the process up to the decision of the joint committee of primary care trusts has been motivated by the very highest of intentions to ensure that our children and babies receive the very finest heart surgery services that we can provide, and that those services are sustainable.

I will deal with as many of the points that have been raised today as I can. As I said at the outset, hon. Members should make and have made their points so that they can be recorded—not just so that their constituents can see how they have advanced the argument, but so that those who, in turn, must look at the decisions that have been made and consider the arguments can see how important these matters are, because they have been raised in Parliament by local Members.

I turn to what has happened today and what is, in some respects, the nub of the debate, which has been very good. As many hon. Members know, councils have a right to challenge the JCPCT’s decision, and today the Secretary of State has agreed that the Independent Reconfiguration Panel should conduct a full review. I will come to what that means in a moment. He has asked the panel to report back by the end of February—my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) was worried about the time factor—or, and this may concern my hon. Friend, after conclusion of the legal proceedings brought by a Leeds-based charity, which may delay things, although I hope not.

The review will consider whether the proposals for change under the Safe and Sustainable review of children’s congenital heart services will enable the provision of safe, sustainable and accessible services, and if not, why not. The panel’s review will also be able to consider how the JCPCT made its decisions and—hon. Members may think that this is the most important point—the implications of those decisions for other services.

The Independent Reconfiguration Panel today received instruction from the Secretary of State and will now begin to consider how to constitute its review. It is, of course, a matter for the panel to decide how to conduct that review. It is an independent body, but I make it clear that it will look at all the decisions and—for many hon. Members this is most important—at the implications of those decisions, which includes the implications for the unit at Glenfield.

[Stuart Andrew]

rose—

[Liz Kendall]

rose—

[Anna Soubry]

I shall give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey, then to the hon. Member for Leicester West.

[Stuart Andrew]

I thank my hon. Friend for the promotion. I am grateful that there has also been cross-party support in the campaign to keep the unit in Leeds open. I want absolute clarification on the IRP. Will she assure me that it will consider the whole decision-making process, including the initial assessments and all the data that were submitted? That is where many of us believe there to be inaccuracies, which have brought about the wrong decision.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It will be for the IRP to decide the full extent of its review of all the decisions that have been made, but the points that he has made here and in various letters will no doubt be put to it for consideration. I am told that, so far, it has not had a formal request from Leeds city council’s overview and scrutiny committee, and perhaps he can prevail on the committee to make that submission as a matter of urgency, so that we can all be absolutely sure that the review will be concluded by the end of February, and that there will be as few delays as possible.