NHS 10-Year Plan

Will Quince Excerpts

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

Colchester Hospital has always been a good hospital, with caring compassionate staff. It has not been without its difficulties—it was in special measures from 2013 to 2017—but I am pleased to report that our hospital has turned a corner. It took hard work, determination and passion to get Colchester Hospital out of special measures, and I must pay tribute to all those who made it happen: the doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants, porters, cleaners, administrators and managers. In particular, I would like to praise Nick Hulme, the chief executive, who displayed incredible leadership in helping to change the culture of the organisation, moving the emphasis away from getting out of special measures and instead simply concentrating on improving care.

The future of our hospital looks really bright. We have a merger with Ipswich Hospital creating resilience in the organisation, a world-class radiotherapy centre and a new imaging centre—the first of its kind in the country. It is now one of the best-performing hospitals for delivering the A&E four-hour standards. It is one of the best in the east of England for ambulance handovers and we have one of the lowest nurse vacancies for years. Staff want to come and work in Colchester, and that is fantastic.

As for the future, a new cancer centre is being built. I would like to thank all the kind donors and members of the public in Colchester and beyond who are helping to fund it. We still have about £200,000 to go, so I encourage people to support CoHoC, the Colchester Hospitals charity. The merger with Ipswich will create economies of scale and the potential for specialism and resilience. It will make our hospital trust more attractive to current staff as well as for recruitment. I thank the Minister for the £35 million of capital investment, the largest and most significant investment in decades. That will see an open, modern spacious entrance, and additional space in our A&E and urgent care centre. The key to the future of Colchester hospital is investment in primary care. We want fewer people having to go to our hospitals. Instead, we want them to be treated locally at super GP practices.

Finally, we want to see real and demonstrable improvements in primary care, not just richer GPs. We want to make sure that we are not taking staff from our hospitals and ambulance service, but bringing new people into our NHS. Otherwise, that will be counterproductive.