Hospital Provision: Tees Valley

Will Quince Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) on securing this important debate about hospital provision in the Tees Valley. I know the issue is important to her and that she works tirelessly for the people of Hartlepool on not just healthcare but many other issues. As she knows, responsibility for the new hospital programme sits not with me but with Lord Markham, a fellow Minister at the Department of Health and Social Care. I am, however, hugely grateful to her for giving me the opportunity to update the House about the ongoing work in this area.

[Jill Mortimer]

I have been trying to meet Lord Markham for many weeks. Will my hon. Friend commit to helping me secure a meeting as soon as possible?

[Will Quince]

I absolutely guarantee and assure my hon. Friend that I will get that meeting with Lord Markham arranged as soon as is practically possible, but certainly in the next few days.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to highlight how the Government are prioritising capital spend in our NHS in order to transform and improve healthcare outcomes for people and put healthcare financing on a sustainable footing. She understandably and rightly focused on the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, her local trust, and of course the University Hospital of North Tees in Stockton, which serves many of her constituents. I will, of course, turn to that, but before I do I will briefly reference our capital funding plans more broadly, because the context is important.

We have already provided record sums to upgrade NHS buildings and facilities so that trusts up and down the country can continue to provide the best possible quality of care. Currently, the Department’s capital budget is set to reach upwards of £36 billion for 2022-23 through to 2024-25—a record capital settlement—and we are using that level of investment to address current care delays.

My hon. Friend made a strong case for why new hospitals are important. As important as they are, the broader health economy is, of course, about far more than that. It is about surgical hubs; it is about community diagnostic centres such as the one in Stockton, as she rightly pointed out; it is about ambulance hubs, and it is about discharge lounges. It is about all those value-adding capital projects too. As part of our urgent and emergency care recovery plans, the 5,000 extra beds that are being added to existing NHS hospitals ahead of next winter are also hugely important.

As I said, new hospitals are, of course, important, and we are aware of the need for further investment in the NHS estate. We are investing an extra £1.7 billion to 2025 for more than 70 hospital upgrades. As my hon. Friend alluded to, the Government have committed to building 40 new hospitals, backed by an initial £3.7 billion for the first four years of the new hospital programme.

[Matt Vickers]

We are incredibly grateful for the £40 million invested recently in the North Tees and James Cook hospitals, and for Stockton’s new diagnostic hospital and mental health crisis hub, but the incredible, committed, dedicated, grade-A workforce at North Tees deserve grade-A facilities. Will the Minister ensure that North Tees’s bid to rebuild and upgrade the hospital is given the fullest attention?

[Will Quince]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I know from his persistence in campaigning for the community diagnostic centre that his continued persistence in campaigning for a new hospital and upgrades will not have been missed by the relevant Minister, Lord Markham. I will come on to talk about the new hospital programme and the selection of the next eight hospitals.

As I said, the Government are committed to building 40 hospitals, backed by an initial £3.7 billion. Two schemes are already complete and five are currently under construction. The programme is delivering facilities that are at the very cutting edge of modern technology. Critically, it is engaging with clinical staff to ensure that we provide a better working environment for them. We know that enables increased efficiency; importantly, it also promotes staff wellbeing and improves retention.

[Alex Cunningham]

First, I apologise to the Minister—he was not, in fact, the Minister who turned down the funding for the centre of excellence in Hartlepool. I pay tribute to Julie Gillon, with whom I have worked for 16 years; she is a tremendous officer and I am sorry she is moving on. I very much welcome the diagnostic centre in Stockton, which is the result of many years of work between the local authority and the health trusts. We heard a tale of woe from the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer), who spoke of a lack of capacity, difficult buildings, buildings falling down—all manner of problems after 13 years of Conservative rule. Does the Minister agree that we should work together to secure what we need: new hospital facilities to serve our communities on Teesside?

[Will Quince]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to invest in new facilities up and down the country. From spending time in Hartlepool speaking to residents, certainly during the by-election, I know how frustrated they are with public services more generally—or certainly they were, because they did not feel like they had a champion at the heart of Government making their case. However, they now have that champion in my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool, whose dogged persistence in campaigning for not just better health infrastructure locally, but broader investment in Hartlepool, is critical. My hon. Friend is making that case today, and I know she will continue to do so. On his point, the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) is absolutely right that we need to work together to deliver better services for people.

Turning specifically to my hon. Friend’s constituency, I am pleased to say that we have received an expression of interest from the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust for the University Hospital of North Tees in Stockton to be one of the next eight hospitals to be included in the new hospital programme. I can confirm that we have assessed the expressions of interest we have received, and the Government aim to make an announcement in due course.

I am sure my hon. Friend will understand, because we have had many such conversations in the run-up to the debate, that I cannot comment on individual bids while the selection is ongoing. However, she has made her case very articulately and eloquently, and certainly very strongly, and she has put it firmly on the record. I will ensure that her representations are brought to the attention of both the Secretary of State and Lord Markham, and that she secures the meeting for which she has been waiting too long.

If my hon. Friend will permit me to digress for a moment, I will take a couple of minutes to highlight some of the significant funding that North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust has been allocated recently, largely down to her campaigning efforts. The funding includes £23.9 million for a community diagnostic centre in Stockton-on-Tees—I note the nods from my hon. Friends the Members for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and for Darlington (Peter Gibson); they too have been champions of that centre—£3.9 million as part of the targeted investment fund for elective recovery, which is really important because too many of our constituents are on waiting lists for surgery and out-patient appointments; £8.4 million from our community diagnostic fund; £6.5 million as part of the critical infrastructure risk fund to address some of the backlog maintenance issues in our hospitals; and £3 million from our A&E upgrades fund.

In addition, the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust has been allocated £3.4 million from the mental health crisis fund to improve urgent and emergency care facilities for mental health, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool. That is really important for taking the pressure off our accident and emergency departments. I know that my hon. Friend will agree that this investment has been invaluable in updating outdated infrastructure and ensuring that modern and sustainable facilities are available for both staff and patients.

Once again, I want to put on the record my sincere thanks to my hon. Friend for all the work that she is rightly doing to support her hospital and, more broadly, hospital and health provision in Tees Valley. She is absolutely right to champion the needs of her constituents and to hold me, Lord Markham and the Department to account on this important issue. Let me take this opportunity to reassure her that the Government are committed to delivering our improvement programmes and upgrades to hospitals and, importantly, to our NHS estate across the country. We very much look forward to delivering the step change in the quality and efficiency of care that we have promised.

Question put and agreed to.