Maternity Services (Morecambe Bay)

Debate between Tim Farron and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I do not know the answer to the last question because we have received the report only very recently, but we will do this work as soon as possible. Indeed, if we have cross-party support, it may be that we can expedite the process. The hon. Gentleman worked very closely with James Titcombe and is absolutely right to talk about the seriousness of what happened. As with the Francis report, however, I would caution against the idea that this problem will be solved if a few more nurses are struck off. We need accountability—that is incredibly important—and where there is wrongdoing, people must be fully held to account. The big lesson is the lack of openness, transparency and trust. It is quite possible that the reason some people did not speak out about poor care is that they were frightened of the consequences of doing so. They thought they would not be listened to. Other industries, such as the nuclear industry in which James Titcombe worked or the airline industry, have managed to create a culture of trust where people on the front line who make mistakes feel able to speak out and be supported if they do so. That is the most important lesson we need to learn from today’s report.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I, too, want to the thank the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State for their entirely appropriate contributions, both the statement and the response, on this immensely sensitive and deeply personally upsetting series of circumstances. I want especially to pay tribute to the families who lost loved ones as a result of what Dr Kirkup referred to as

“serious failures of clinical care”.

He refers to the report as a damning indictment.

The dignity and determination of parents such as James Titcombe and Carl Hendrickson have led to this awful truth being laid bare today. Those parents are an inspiration to me, and they should be to all of us. I want to pick up on one point in particular that was raised during the Secretary of State’s statement. Dr Kirkup expresses disquiet that the NHS and the parliamentary ombudsman chose not even to investigate what has now been shown to be the needless deaths of at least 11 babies and at least one mother. May I press the Secretary of State to go further than he has in his statement and do everything in his power to ensure that the watchdog for patients is not a lapdog for senior managers? Patients need a powerful, effective independent investigator who listens to those who grieve, like the Morecambe Bay families, and not one who dismisses them without even an investigation.

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There were, clearly, very serious flaws in the way the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman operated, particularly in the case of Joshua Titcombe. My hon. Friend will know that the PHSO is accountable to this House through the Public Administration Committee, and not through the Government and the Department of Health. The Public Administration Committee is considering this issue in a great deal of detail to see what lessons need to be learned. I think one of the issues is the level of expertise within the PHSO and, with the greatest of respect, a certain lack of confidence in its ability to understand when there has been a clinical failure. I think everyone agrees that one of the things we need to do is to ensure that it can draw on medical expertise. It needs to make sure that its culture is as open and transparent as the culture it would like to see inside the NHS.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Farron and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Let me tell the hon. Lady what we are doing—[Interruption.] This is what I think is so shocking: Labour Members are not actually interested in what is happening to avoid precisely the kind of things that the hon. Lady mentioned. We are putting £4.6 million of extra support into the North West ambulance service this winter, and that money is being used to employ more paramedics, to train people so that they can see and treat patients on the spot, and to help more people on the phone so that they do not need an ambulance. The hon. Lady should perhaps have listened to the earlier question, because where Labour is running the ambulance services, results are even worse.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the rules for commissioning ambulance services need to be looked at again to ensure that ambulances serving rural areas such as South Lakeland which do not have an acute centre of their own and therefore export their ambulances further afield need to be compensated with additional ambulances to take account of the fact that so many of our vehicles are out of county most of the time?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the way targets are set up. It is possible for ambulance services to hit their targets while not delivering a satisfactory service to the most rural areas, and we have discussed that issue a number of times. Because we are in the middle of a challenging winter, we do not think that now is the right time to review the issue, but he should rest assured that we are keeping it under review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Farron and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I am very happy to pay tribute to Eilish Hoole, to the many cancer campaigners and to the many people who have survived cancer and put their lives back together again. There is still a huge job to do in getting earlier diagnosis. I think there is agreement across the House about the need for much earlier cancer diagnosis, particularly for ovarian cancer, which makes a huge difference. I know that we would all like to pay tribute to her work.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

NHS England has identified south Cumbria as one of just three places in England where travel times to receive radiotherapy are unacceptably and debilitatingly long. Will the Secretary of State meet me and NHS England to talk about how Kendal hospital can be the place for a new radiotherapy centre this autumn?

Health Services (North-West)

Debate between Tim Farron and Jeremy Hunt

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

There is a strong clinical case for the concentration of vascular services in Cumbria and Lancashire at three sites, but is it not ludicrous that the three that have been chosen are so geographically located that one is virtually on the Scottish border, then there is a gap of almost 100 miles, and then there are two that are nine miles apart? Does not that leave south Cumbria and north Lancashire dangerously under-provided for? Given the current difficulties, shall we say, at Morecambe Bay, does not robbing Morecambe Bay of those skills and that expertise make a difficult situation potentially even worse?

[Mr Hunt]

I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned, rightly, to represent the concerns of his constituents about the extra travel that they will have to undertake. I would like to reassure him that we considered that issue very carefully. The Independent Reconfiguration Panel recognises that travel is a consideration, but also believes that for his constituents, even for the people who have to travel further, there will be better clinical outcomes for specialist vascular surgery. We are not talking about routine surgery, diagnosis or rehabilitation work but about conditions such as aneurysms and carotid artery disease which require specialist care. Patients can get much better help if that is concentrated in specialist centres.

As to why those particular centres were chosen, it was a genuinely difficult decision. There is a bigger concentration of population in the south of the region and there is also more social deprivation and more unmet need. I know it was a difficult decision, but it was decided that that would be best for the 2.8 million people in the area and also better for my hon. Friend’s constituents.

Care Quality Commission (Morecambe Bay Hospitals)

Debate between Tim Farron and Jeremy Hunt

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

First, may I say I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says, and commend him on his work with his constituents and local families who have suffered so terribly from what happened? He is absolutely right to say we have created a system that is a nightmare for families who identify problems, and the real problem is a lack of clarity as to where the buck stops: where the buck stops in terms of the decision to say that a hospital is safe or not safe, and where the buck stops in terms of sorting out a problem when it is identified. Those are the areas where we are putting through big changes this year, as a result of the Francis report.

I completely understand why the issue of whether there is a continuing cover-up is a concern. All I can say is that I have total confidence in the new leadership of the CQC. They are on the side of the public. They understand that the CQC’s job is to be the nation’s whistleblower-in-chief. They absolutely get that, but changing the culture in the broader NHS takes more than the appointment of two new individuals at the CQC; it takes a complete change in the leadership so that people on the front line always feel supported if they want to raise safety concerns. That is a much bigger job. I do not want to pretend that we are going to be able to solve it overnight, but that is the big change we have to make.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

My constituents can be forgiven for wondering whether, when the watchdog chooses to muzzle itself, it is time to put it to sleep. The report shows that the CQC discovered the truth about the deaths of babies at Furness General, but chose to suppress the truth, and to seek to subvert the Freedom of Information Act—and this morning I have asked the police to investigate that point.

Grieving families like the Titcombes deserve to know who made these decisions, so will the Secretary of State agree to ensure the removal of anonymity for those guilty of putting institutional convenience ahead of the lives of mothers and babies?

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend about backing those on the front line, but we have a culpable ex-chief executive of the trust on a £200,000 payout while the excellent nurses and doctors in the trust are struggling under immense pressure, so will he agree to work with me and all colleagues across Morecambe Bay to help the trust recover, which includes agreeing not to now demand that the trust make £25 million-worth of savings by March, as that would further threaten the pursuit of patient safety?

[Mr Hunt]

I agree with much of what my hon. Friend says. He is absolutely right that accountability for what went wrong is crucial in this. I know that the CQC wanted to publish the report in full today, including the names of the individuals involved, but was given legal advice that it would be against the law to do so. However, the CQC is keen to have maximum transparency as soon as possible and is looking into how it can make sure that happens. There should be no anonymity, no hiding place, no opportunity to get off scot-free for anyone at all who was responsible for this. This is the problem we have to address in the NHS: all too often, people are not held accountable for what went wrong. However, the system also bears responsibility. This is not just about bad apples and how we root them out more quickly; it is also about creating a system that brings out the best in people—that plays to the decent instincts that got people to join the NHS in the first place, rather than making them think that targets at any cost matter more than the care and dignity of the patients in their trust.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Farron and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We believe in the clinical networks, including the network for cardiovascular disease. We have increased the funding for those networks by 27%. However, we want them to include mental health and maternity services. We think that it would be wrong to do what the Labour party wants, which is to concentrate that funding on cardiovascular disease and cancer, and deprive of the clear benefits of such networks the 700,000 women who give birth on the NHS every year and the nearly 1 million people who will be diagnosed with dementia.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Given that the majority of vascular interventions are acute in nature, following trauma or cardiac episodes, is it not reckless for NHS Lancashire and NHS Cumbria to be talking about moving vascular services away from the Morecambe bay area, meaning that people from the south lakes and north Cumbria will have to travel as far as Preston, Blackburn or Carlisle to receive treatment? Will the Secretary of State meet me, other local MPs and local consultants to discuss how we can put the matter right for local people?

[Mr Hunt]

We are very keen to ensure that all reconfigurations of services have strong local, clinical support. We are making good progress in this area. There is always a trade-off between access, which I recognise is extremely important in a rural constituency such as the hon. Gentleman’s, and the centralisation of services, which sometimes leads to better clinical outcomes. I am happy to arrange for him to meet me or one of my colleagues to discuss his concerns in more detail.