Community Hospitals (North-East)

Debate between Tom Blenkinsop and Graham Stuart

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

In December 2011, the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) told me:

“Local community hospitals provide a vital community resource to support patients in need of rehabilitation, recuperation and respite care”,

and that they support

“a rapid return to independence and good health.”—[Official Report, 12 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 560W.]

It was a pleasant surprise to find myself agreeing with him. Unfortunately, community hospitals, especially those in my constituency and in the north-east, are facing ever more challenges.

Hospitals such as East Cleveland hospital and Guisborough hospital play an essential role in the communities that they serve. My constituents prefer and would ordinarily choose to receive care near their home and their family, whether it be palliative, minor injuries or maternity care. That is also the case elsewhere in the north-east and north Yorkshire, where my colleagues and local residents have been speaking out to protect and extend the services in their local community hospitals and district general hospitals, which are increasingly under threat.

Demographic change means that we are increasingly dealing with social care. Given that community hospitals tend to be truly local and cherished, and the need for health and social care to be seamlessly integrated, it should be painfully obvious that local community hospitals are able to provide effective liaison between NHS staff and local adult social services, especially when discussing arrangements for the discharge of elderly patients and their continued need for community-based care facilities and services. The Government are, at least nominally, following the previous Labour Government’s good example of recognising the importance of patient choice.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is giving a powerful speech that rightly highlights the importance of community hospitals. Does he, like me, regret the fact that more than 3,000 beds in community hospitals were closed by the last Labour Government? Does he recognise that only a huge campaign across this House made them see the error of their ways and reverse their savage cuts to this most vital of local assets?

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Any intervention in this debate must be put in the context of the fact that more than £600 million from my region is going to be relocated to the south-east. I know that, as a Yorkshire MP, the hon. Gentleman will be concerned about the news of the cuts to Yorkshire’s health care services that came out only today in The Northern Echo. We can talk about the whys and wherefores of that, but there is certainly a kernel of truth in it. Community hospitals and secondary hospitals, such as James Cook university hospital on the border of my constituency, are having to consolidate and centralise their services far more than has been the case before.