A&E Services

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wright]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. On the additional resources, the north-east region has not been provided with anything, despite the level of health inequalities and the additional pressure on resources.

Lynne Hodgson, the director of finance at the trust, has said:

“The whole system is stretched financially.”

The situation is so bad that the trust has recently taken out a £2 million loan. That is not for investment in health services—it is not helping to pump prime the return of A&E to Hartlepool—but for paying the wage bills of current staff. When an organisation has to borrow to meet obligations for something as fundamental as its staff’s monthly pay packets, something is fundamentally wrong with the system.

I am arguing for the services to be returned to the town, but given the precarious finances of the trust I am fearful that most services will move further away or simply cease to operate, putting further pressures on the local health economy, such as James Cook hospital, and other parts of health and social care. What will the Government do to ensure that the finances of the North Tees and Hartlepool trust are put on a more secure footing while at the same time allowing such essential services to return to the town?

I fully accept that clinical safety for A&E services is paramount—I will never argue against that—but I have to question the model of acute accident and emergency services in my area. Over the past two decades or so, there has been a tendency to centralise services at North Tees, to the detriment of patients from Hartlepool and those slightly further away in south-east Durham. The momentum programme was going to centralise services on to a single site, culminating in a new hospital at Wynyard that would serve the populations of Hartlepool, Stockton, Easington and Sedgefield. The Government have made it perfectly obvious through their actions that Wynyard will not go ahead, which, together with NHS England’s “Five Year Forward View”, shows that smaller hospitals can thrive. Indeed, we have seen that across the region and the country. Darlington, whose population is only slightly larger than mine and which comes under the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, is able to maintain an A&E. Hexham has a population not of 92,000 like Hartlepool, but of 13,000, and it is able to maintain an A&E at Hexham general hospital. Clearly, centralisation is not the answer everywhere. Different clinical models and reconfigurations are available to allow smaller towns to retain their A&Es.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there needs to be more transitional care, with step up, step down facilities, and that we need to address the skill mix of different clinicians in those facilities?

[Mr Wright]

That is an incredibly important point. I started with staffing and I will end on it.

I want to make a vital point. The Minister spoke of local solutions, and the people of Hartlepool, Hartlepool Borough Council and I, as the MP for Hartlepool, want that to be the approach, but we are not being heard. I understand that there are always tensions between the wishes of the public with regard to where health services are located and the essential requirements of clinical safety, but, as shown by the examples I have given, there are other ways. The local trust is simply not listening. Given that I, the people of Hartlepool and the local authority—regardless of its political complexion—want this, what will the Government do to ensure that, in the shaping of local accident and emergency services, the voices of local people and their democratically elected representatives are genuinely heard?

As I said, I started by addressing staffing and I want to finish on that, too. I hope I have made it clear that I want A&E to return to Hartlepool, but it is clear that the pressure on acute services would be reduced if there was more access to primary care. The GP per head of population ratio is low in Hartlepool, with 63 GPs per 100,000. That is significantly lower than the north-east regional average—only Stockton has a lower ratio—and it is lower than the average in England. Greater access to GPs and better integration of all health and social care services has to be the way forward, but that also includes giving the people of Hartlepool what they want, which, put simply, is a fully functioning hospital in the town and an accident and emergency department at its very heart.

Health and Social Care

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me in today’s debate. I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches on this crucial issue of health and care, which is so important to my constituents across York Central. I thank those constituents for putting their trust in me to speak on this and many other matters.

Health and care are about the essence of life; they are about our families and our communities. As we have seen over the past five years, passions have been stirred, as Members of this House, with no evidence, took to taking our NHS and putting it on the open market, inviting the profiteers of the sick to run our health service instead of the state. This is the NHS that we built, we paid for, we work in, and we depend on, and we, as Labour, are so proud that we created it.

In 2015, we know that the vision for the NHS of the late Member for Ebbw Vale is not being met, as growing social and financial inequalities manifest themselves in health inequality, and access to vital services is delayed and even denied as a direct result of the £3 billion structural reorganisation that the previous Government introduced. It is that crisis that I want to address in my maiden speech.

First, however, I must pay tribute to the NHS staff whom I have represented as Unite’s head of health. They are dedicated, professional, selfless, compassionate, innovative, caring and loving in all they do 24/7. I must also declare an interest: I have worked in the NHS for 20 years and am the first ever physiotherapist to become an MP. Although our reputation goes before us—I trust that that has been positive and not too painful—I can assure Members that I will not be using my position to massage facts or manipulate statistics. Instead, I will exercise my voice to benefit those whom I represent in my constituency of York Central.

My predecessor, Sir Hugh Bayley, entered this House with a keen interest in health and many will recall that he played an active role on the Health Select Committee, although he was latterly more involved in leading the parliamentary assembly at NATO. I am sure that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to him for the contributions that he made to this place, which were always executed with integrity, honesty and decency.

York is an amazing city and needs no introduction. Our National Rail Museum is emblematic of the once thriving rail industry, which had to shed so many good quality jobs as a direct result of rail privatisation. It left behind the legacy of asbestosis. Our Minster represents our vibrant faith communities. It also serves our city’s food banks, which are ever in demand as the cost of living crisis squeezes families beyond their limits.

Let us turn now to our Viking settlement and our 14th century Shambles. They not only make us look back to how we once lived, but urge us to plan ahead and to build much-needed affordable and social housing. Beyond the medieval city walls are the amazing people whom I have the privilege to serve. They want to see a safe NHS.

There are many points that I could raise about York’s NHS: the failing funding formula, which gives York £117 less per patient; the A&E crisis, which is not unique to York; the crisis in the recruitment of staff, which is due to the pay freezes—15% lost over the past five years—and the depleted public health services. Again, public health is key to our future health. But there is something more urgent, which is mental health. York is in the midst of a mental health breakdown.

Nationally, under the previous Government, we saw mental health services cut by 8.25%, which took its toll in York. I am talking about services to the most vulnerable children and adults in our society. It was therefore deeply regrettable that mental health was absent from the Queen’s Speech. Clearly, it will be the Labour Opposition who will fight for those who experience mental health challenges.

In the heart of our city sits Bootham Park, which hosts our major mental health facility. Not far away is Lime Trees, our child and adolescent mental health services unit. Both units have recently failed a Care Quality Commission inspection. Bootham Park is the oldest mental health hospital in the country. Conceived in 1772 and built 240 years ago, and I quote:

“for the reception and relief of the insane”,

this period building, placed in acres of parkland, speaks more of a stately home than an acute mental health facility. But here need cannot be met, as the quadrangle-shaped wards provide no line of sight for nurses to see patients. Limits on the building mean that we have mixed-sex wards, and we need anti-barricade doors to be fitted and all the ligature points to be removed to prevent suicide risks. Tragically, we lost a member of our community in that way last year. I will not stay silent when the acute needs of my constituents are at such high risk. I have already written and spoken to the relevant Minister and asked for assurances in this debate that this will be given the most urgent attention. Bootham is not fit for purpose and the CQC concurs.

Services have also been criticised by the CQC. In the past 16 months, £2.1 million has been spent on sending mental health patients across the country due to local overcapacity. On another occasion a constituent waited more than a year to start much-needed treatment for depression, anxiety and an eating disorder and the wait brought added complications. Our NHS is in a dangerous state. It is simple: this cannot go on. I am asking for a new state-of-the-art mental health facility for York. I want to tell Ministers that it is simple: lives are at risk until they deliver.

My constituents deserve better and I am totally committed to ensuring that people across York get the right health service in the right place at the right time, that we build on Labour’s desire to integrate health—physical and mental—with social care and that we stop at nothing to ensure that my community has the best services to protect their health. I bring a weighty plea in my maiden speech today, but I assure this House that my constituents deserve the very best and I will stop at nothing to ensure that they get it.