Bedford Hospital

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure and an honour to have secured this debate to talk about the future of Bedford hospital and, in doing so, to praise the efforts and work of the clinicians, nurses, porters, cleaners, caterers and management at our hospital. It is also an opportunity for me to talk about some of the experiences that have affected the hospital over the six years I have been a Member of Parliament. In that time, the most significant impacts have come as a result of actions taken by those within the senior NHS structures.

On the basis of my six years’ grassroots experience, I want to talk about the impacts of some of those processes on my local hospital. In doing so, I am joined in spirit by the Minister for Community and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who, because of his ministerial responsibilities, cannot speak today. As a Health Minister—although not the Minister responsible for hospitals—he is somewhat constrained in what he may say publicly, but he has provided tremendous support to me and the hospital as it has traversed difficult times in recent years, so I want to put on the record my thanks to him.

Right at the start of my time as an MP, when we were considering the future of hospitals and possible reorganisations, my right hon. Friend, who has been a Member of Parliament, whether for Bedfordshire and for Bury, for 20 or 30 years—so he has a long perspective on this—made an observation to me that the Minister might want to reflect on. He said that in his time organisational fads had come and gone. At one time, the fad might be to centralise, but wait long enough and the fad will be to decentralise services, and that affects not just the health service but many other aspects of public service management.

I want to talk about Bedford hospital and its performance. I am personally extremely grateful to the hospital. I was born there and went there when sick with pneumonia—as the House can see, I made as full a recovery as I could have wished. I am grateful to the hospital for being there at important times in my life, and I know that many of my constituents feel likewise. It is not a big hospital in the grand scale of things, but neither is it a small hospital; it is one of those that many of our constituents would recognise as that local district general hospital that is such a feature of many towns across the United Kingdom.

In my time as an MP, there has been one dramatic moment, where, because of poor guidance, the deanery removed junior paediatric doctors from the hospital. In the past when that happened, the deanery never put junior doctors back, but for the first time in its history it did, because it recognised the level of support and the need for paediatric services in Bedford. The turnaround was a signal achievement by the hospital and came within six months of its positive review by the Care Quality Commission.

A few years later—in fact, earlier this year—the CQC came back to do its overall report for Bedford hospital. It provides a grid, Madam Deputy Speaker, and you may have seen them at your hospital area reviews, when lots of different services and functions are described and coloured yellow, green, red and blue. Blue is best, as of course it always is, and then we go down through green and yellow to red. Bedford hospital had no reds—not even one of 30 or 40 measurements taken by the CQC. Everything and every aspect of the organisation of our local hospital was working at a level that may have required some improvement, but that provided a level of care in which we in the Bedford community could have trust. Overall, the hospital achieved the same ranking as three quarters of our hospitals do—“requires improvement”—but Bedford hospital was right in the upper quartile of those quality ratings.

The hospital has shown itself able to recover from its problems and it has demonstrated that it delivers good care outcomes. What it has also demonstrated is its ability to start to meet some of the financial challenges that many hospitals in the country have. Two years ago, the hospital had a very substantial deficit, and I shall come on later to a nearby hospital that had an even more significant one.

In the financial year ending in April this year, Bedford hospital met its target of losing only £18 million and it is now on target to achieve its next benchmark of reducing the losses to £10 million. I would, of course, like the hospital to be in surplus, but the direction of travel and rate of progress being made are something from which we can take some comfort. I hope that the Minister will be able to talk about the experience of other hospitals across the country in reducing their deficits and say whether Bedford is moving at the right pace and in the right direction in comparison with many other hospitals.

It is interesting to note that between 2013 and 2015-16 the number of A&E admissions in Bedford went up from 13,600 to 19,300—a very significant increase. As the Minister knows, it is often the case with hospitals that the more A&E admissions they have, the bigger the strain on their finances. The improvement in Bedford hospital’s finances is coming at a time when more and more A&E work is being carried out. Interestingly, the A&E performance of Bedford hospital last winter was in the top 10% of hospitals in the country as a whole.

My final point of praise for Bedford hospital is about the level of connection and support it has in the community. We have a vibrant Friends of Bedford Hospital, as well as a strong charity that raises considerable sums—millions of pounds—for the hospital, including money to support the development of a cancer unit. This is not public money provided by the NHS, but money provided through the strength of charitable giving in Bedford, Kempston and across Bedfordshire by people who know and love their hospital. It is perhaps not unique in the country, but the level of charitable support in place for the hospital is certainly something of note.

If the hospital had been left on its own and the doctors had been left to work out their clinical pathways and to meet the challenges of ever-increasing demands for better care quality as well as the financial challenges of achieving a surplus, I think it would have done very well indeed. There is no resistance to change. The other feature of my six years as an MP, as it affects our hospital, however, has been an ongoing, going-nowhere review that started off as a review of five hospitals back in 2011 and has now been reduced to a review of two hospitals—at Bedford and Milton Keynes.

The five hospital review was rather ambitiously called “Healthier Together”, but after the Corby by-election, it got relabelled as “Healthier Together; Happier Apart” because of the strength of feeling of local people about the performance of the review of hospitals in Northamptonshire. The review of Bedford and Milton Keynes has gone on essentially for a significant number of years, but with very little progress indeed. This has come at a considerable cost. The costs of the “Healthier Together” five-hospital review were anticipated to be £2.2 million. The subsequent review, just between Bedford and Milton Keynes, cost £3.2 million in its first phase and is expected to cost a further £1.3 million this year. In the context of a hospital that is trying to reduce its costs —whether or not this money is funded out of the hospital, the CQC, Monitor or NHS England does not matter—these are considerable sums that have been spent on reviews that have not delivered.

I want to talk about why they have not delivered. The first reason is that despite, perhaps, the best efforts of people on the ground, the original structuring of the Bedford and Milton Keynes review never had any public support. Many people in Bedford understand that their loved ones will go to other hospitals if they need extra care: if you get a heart attack in Bedford, you go straight past Bedford hospital to Papworth; if your child is very sick, they may go to Great Ormond street; if you are pregnant and have a very difficult pregnancy, you may well find that the last stage of your pregnancy and birth take place at Luton and Dunstable. But in very few regards do the people of Bedford look for their health care towards Milton Keynes.

So the original structuring of this review failed to understand where public support might naturally come from, which is why in the general election—I know the Minister, my friend, is aware of this—I was strongly of the view that it made sense for people in Bedford and Bedford hospital to look for ties with Addenbrooke’s, a well-regarded hospital which many in Bedford understand. Many people think it delivers the quality of care they need at the high end and believe it would form the core of a much stronger and better and more appropriate alliance than a forced-together merger with Milton Keynes.

That would not have been the only clinical partner, but it could have been the core partner if those in charge of the review had so permitted. I also think that not only did the review lack public support, but this pushing together of Bedford and Milton Keynes importantly also lacked clinician support—support from the doctors and the consultants, who are the ones we would look to to say, “What is the right way for us to achieve those higher quality standards in care?” Their eyes would also have looked elsewhere than this review of Bedford and Milton Keynes. These issues did not arise at the last minute. They arose and were known about for many, many years, and I want to talk in a little while about why on earth the review continued with that lack of support from both the public and clinicians in Bedford.

It is fair to say that when the initial numbers came out and people looked at the financial models for these reviews, there was a series of errors, so much so that they had to go back and redo all their analysis, further undermining public confidence in this review. Some of the options presented were quite scary: “Should we close A&E in one hospital and move it to another?” or “Should we drop maternity services and paediatrics in one hospital?” These are scary options that those doing a full analysis will of course want to be able to model, but at the slightest change of certain assumptions, they would flip completely from saying, “Yes, we should keep maternity and paediatrics” to “No, we shouldn’t.” The sensitivities in some of these important decisions suggest too heavy a reliance on financial modelling, rather than on the instincts of the clinicians and the local public about how they feel care quality targets can be set. Yes, that will be within a financial envelope, but this over-reliance on financial modelling was another error in this review, and perhaps one that carries on into other reviews across the country.

This review has been going on since June 2011, with all these weaknesses in errors, sensitivities, lack of clinician support and lack of public support. One would have hoped the message had got through, but unfortunately has not. The review was essentially, as I have called it a number of times, a “zombie” review; no matter how much people would say, “This has no future prospects”, and however much it would be knocked back, the “zombie” review would rise up and continue to walk forward.



The problem with that was that it created such an enormous amount of doubt and uncertainty. I think that our hospital in Bedford could do with a restructuring of its A&E department, so that patient flows work even better than they do now. Less stress would be placed on our doctors and nurses who work in A&E, because it would be easier to move patients through the hospital. Such an investment would be very worthwhile. It would not cost the Treasury a significant amount, and it would pay its way in a few years—not even a double figure. However, it cannot be considered while a question mark may still be hanging over our hospital’s future. I pay enormous tribute to its staff, who have held together strongly and with great spirit in the face of that doubt and uncertainty.

That brings me to my more immediate reason for raising this issue with my hon. Friend the Minister. Let me begin by making a point about joint clinical commissioning groups. CCGs hold our budgets and, on our behalf, spend money on healthcare in our local communities, whether it is primary care or acute care. As we know, they must make certain decisions about where the money should go, but they are also empowered to make some structural decisions. A few years ago, we introduced a statutory instrument under which, instead of making decisions on their own and only for their areas, CCGs could create a framework that would allow them to make a decision together, rather than a decision having to be endorsed by the constituent CCGs one by one in the knowledge that it was right for their individual areas.

Of course, that sets up the potential for mischief as well as the potential for good decision making. If a strong CCG feels that it can dominate a broader group, the interests of the minority can be pushed to one side. That is why I forced that decision on to the Floor of the House. In the last Parliament, I was the only MP on the Regulatory Reform Committee to vote against the creation of joint CCGs. I did so because I could see the potential for mischief. Although I would not say that the members of the Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes joint committee have been mischievous, I do think that the process casts further doubt on the wisdom of putting that system together.

Two weeks ago, the final straw broke the camel’s back. The joint committee produced a report containing its recommendations, which was given full publicity. A very worrying headline was splashed across my local newspaper, saying that maternity services in Bedford were to close. When our local media—BBC Three Counties Radio, or another of our local papers—wanted to talk to those who had produced that very scary report, they were told, “We cannot talk to you, because of purdah.”

What goes through the minds of people who are entrusted with our healthcare, and who think that it is OK to throw a report out into the public domain and then back away and say, “We cannot say anything about it”? What logic says that publishing a report is not a breaking of purdah, but talking about it is? It seems to me that those people did not know what they were doing. I am very grateful to Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, who wrote back to me on 27 June. Referring to those two points, he said:

“With hindsight, the meeting should not have been scheduled during the purdah period and the report should not have been released.”

For me, that is the final straw. I have experienced the final straw a number of times in this regard, but I do not think that the public can possibly have confidence in a group of people who will do something that is so scary and then run away—and when the head of NHS England describes it as a great and grievous error, it is time for the joint committee to be dropped. But no! This has not ended; it has paused. How long do we have to wait for this review to reach its bitter end and to be closed?

I want to hear from the Minister today what the logic is behind continuing the Bedford and Milton Keynes healthcare review. It has no local support from the people or the local clinicians of Bedford. It has no respect for the public, given the way in which it puts out pronouncements and then runs away. It does not even fit with NHS national strategy. In those circumstances, a pause is not good enough. It is time this review was killed off—ended, kaput, no more! The people who go to our hospital want to know that they can look to and trust a single process in relation to the future of that hospital, and the people who work in that hospital want to have the confidence that they can control its future on behalf of their patients. The nonsense of the review carrying on is affecting my constituents and my local doctors. It is also disrupting the national strategy of the NHS.

The Minister will be aware of the comprehensive programme reviewing the implementation of the NHS five year forward view. It is called the sustainability and transformation plan—the STP—and it is a pretty good plan. I read the “Five Year Forward View”—as I know you did, Madam Deputy Speaker—before the election. It was an important document that we should all read, and it was a good document because it pointed in the right direction in relation to the needs of an ageing population and the importance of integrating care in the community with our acute services. The plan is the sort of plan that people, politicians and clinicians can get behind. The direction of travel was made clear, and the STP is the implementation tool that is being used to achieve that across the country. It will not satisfy everyone—indeed, I am sure that it will come up with some challenging solutions—but it is consistent with the national strategy and I believe that it is the right approach to take nationally.

In my own region, the STP involves not only Bedfordshire but Luton and Milton Keynes. Importantly for our area, it is being led by an extremely capable hospital chief executive, Pauline Philip. She is the chief executive of Luton and Dunstable University hospital. She will of course have to balance her interests as the head of a hospital that would naturally like to take more under its own control with the understanding that there is a responsibility to keep a sustainable acute services area and, most importantly, to gain the support of local authority areas.

I am reflecting on why that other review is still paused, given its inadequacies and lack of fit, so here are some observations that I hope the Minister will respond to. In my experience, in discussions about this over the past six years, there has been too much bureaucratic infighting between Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority, which seemed to think, prior to its merging into NHS Improvement, that the hospitals in its arm of the health service were the ones to protect, regardless of the consequences for hospitals in the other arm. Milton Keynes hospital, the other hospital affected by this review, was frequently seen to be being indulged, while more severe restrictions were placed on Bedford hospital. For example, while Bedford hospital was achieving a reduction in its losses, Milton Keynes hospital was being indulged for increasing its losses. Where is the fairness in that?

I also want to ask why the boundaries were selected in this way. It appears to me that the boundaries relating to Bedford and Milton Keynes were drawn in a way that was perhaps correct for locating the problem, but that they had no chance of being the right set of boundaries for finding the solution. That is fine. When we look at problems, we often set up boundaries to understand them. I understand that, but what I have observed as a Member of Parliament is intransigence in those who have been running this process to understand that although they may have the correct boundaries for the problem, they need to be creative beyond those boundaries to find a solution. Year after year, square pegs were shoved into round holes. It was not working, and yet there was an intransigence in those who managed the system just to keep on keeping on, wasting millions of pounds in the process and reducing not increasing public trust in the NHS.

I would therefore ask Simon Stevens, who I think has the right strategy, what is going on in the mid-tier of NHS management. Who is in charge? It seems that there is one plan in the STP, which is Simon Stevens’s plan, but somebody else must have a dog in the hunt as well, because that is the only explanation for why the Bedford and Milton Keynes review has not been killed but paused. It is time to hold to account those who started the review and who have kept it going at the cost of millions of pounds beyond the point of there being any confidence in it. I do not mean our local CCGs; I mean the mid-tier of NHS England. I want the Minister to say today that he will examine the matter and ask probing questions about how inertia in bureaucratic processes can go unchecked for so long, causing so much uncertainty, with so little logic. Even when it is apparent, as it is today, that it strikes against the structure of the national NHS strategy, implemented through STPs, it was paused, not cancelled.

I have seen something in the past few weeks that does have congruence with the national strategy and does have the support of local people. It is a plan that was put together by Bedford Borough Council. The mayor and I disagree on many things, but he has done a first-class job with councillors from all parties. I want to make particular mention of Councillor Louise Jackson, the Labour councillor for Harpur ward, and Councillor John Mingay, the Conservative councillor for Newnham. They put together a plan that drew in the resources of PwC, which had done a similar review of Tameside. They specified something that could happen and work for their hospital and their community, and then gave it to the STP and to the national process for evaluation. It is a plan that the people of Bedford can get behind. It is certainly a plan that carries my support and the support of all local politicians and the Minister for Community and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt).

The future of Bedford hospital is strong and positive. It wants to change and to meet the challenges set by NHS England. The most important thing that we have to look after as Members of Parliament is the health and wellbeing of our constituents. Our interests are in their wellbeing, not in any institution, and in patients’ futures. People must be able to expect the right level of quality services in A&E, paediatrics and maternity to be available in their local community in a town the size of Bedford, which is growing at a rate. The hospital has such deep connections with the community and such strong charitable support, and there has been such positive action even during this period of doubt and uncertainty. I hope that the Minister will reflect not only on the national impact, but on his ability to bring that period of doubt and uncertainty to an end.

Contaminated Blood

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman’s constituent that further inquiries will not provide him and his family with the service they require. That is why we are moving quickly to the consultation, which will be launched in the autumn. It will be a short one, and then we will move to a settlement. I want the hon. Gentleman’s constituent to feel that this Government have addressed his tragedy swiftly following the publication in March of the long-awaited report.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I commend the work of my constituency neighbour the Minister for Community and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), on this issue.

I want to draw my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary’s attention back to the question the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) asked about BPL Ltd. Can he clarify what, if any, financial interest the Government retain in BPL? If Bain Capital realises a sale, will any of the funds be used for the financial consideration that we are discussing?

[Ben Gummer]

I too commend my right hon. Friend the Minister for Community and Social Care, who has done extraordinary work on this subject in the past and brings that experience and expertise to the Department.

I cannot give my hon. Friend an immediate answer on the company he mentions, but I will make sure we write to him with full details.

Human Fertilisation and Embryology

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

I shall deal shortly with the regulatory regime that the HFEA would introduce. However, that and many other points have already been examined in great detail and responded to in great detail in parliamentary answers, to which I refer my hon. Friend.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

It is clear to many of us who have spoken to our constituents that this procedure will make a huge difference to individual families. There is, in a sense, an ethical gateway to the framework that will allow the scientists and medical experts to move forward. Can my hon. Friend tell us why there appear to be a number of people who, for ethical and religious reasons, are quite close to agreeing with the Government but have not quite agreed yet, and have asked for more time?

[Jane Ellison]

I think that those Members may speak for themselves during the debate. No one would deny that this is ground-breaking science—it is—but there have been three expert panel reviews. What I am trying to demonstrate in my speech is that we have taken all the necessary rigorous steps towards the point at which Parliament can make an informed decision. I think it important to distinguish things that are knowable and on which Parliament can make that informed decision, and things that can only be known when we take the next step, which involves making the regulations. I hope that that is helpful.

National Health Service

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

That is an absolutely vital point. It is not just about GP locums; there are also A and E locums. The Government have, throughout, cut training places, which were another victim of the reorganisation. Ever since then, the number of places commissioned for doctors—and nurses, I might say—has gone down. That leaves us with a bill for agency staff that is literally out of control—it has gone through the roof—and that means that money is now being siphoned out of the NHS at an alarming rate. That is mismanagement; that is what has happened. How must staff working in the NHS feel when they see the bill for agency staff spiralling in this way and know that they will not even get a 1% increase from this Government? They will draw their own conclusions about how this Government value them.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

The shadow Secretary of State has spent quite a large part of his speech on diagnosis, but at the beginning he asked for solutions, so in that spirit I offer a creative solution. He will be aware that East of England ambulance service has had very poor response times for a number of months—in fact, a couple of years. Would he support a merger of the Red 1 and Red 2 ambulance response services with the fire and rescue service in the east of England, because such a combined force might be in a better position to provide quicker response times? Does he agree with that idea?

[Andy Burnham]

I am prepared to look at it, but I think that the future of the ambulance service should be in integrating better with the rest of the NHS—with GP out-of-hours services and NHS 111. Greater Manchester’s health service is piloting a critical response service to support the ambulance service, and I do not have any objection to that. However, this Government have not got it right when they say that the future of the ambulance service is to merge with the police and fire services as a single 999 service. For me, the ambulance service is a clinical service that should integrate better with the rest of the NHS, and I would prefer to go in that direction.

I said a moment ago that people could not get a GP appointment, and that is also what the GP survey tells us. An extra 290,000 patients say that they have turned to A and E when they cannot get a timely GP appointment. That includes the Secretary of State, who admitted in this House that he had done exactly the same. So will he today accept that the growing problem of people being unable to get GP appointments has played a significant part in contributing to the increase of 600,000 in the number of visits to A and E?

Fourthly, I turn to social care. In my analysis, this is the root cause of the problems we are now seeing. At the start of this Parliament, I warned the Government about their public spending plans and, in particular, warned them against raiding social care to stack up a claim that they were protecting the NHS budget. Government Members should be familiar with the quote because the PM quotes it every week at Prime Minister’s questions. To be more accurate, they will be familiar with half the quote, because that is all he uses, so let me give the House the full version. I said that it would be irresponsible for the Government to increase NHS spending if the way they did it was by raiding the social care budget. I said further that if that goes ahead, they will hollow out social care to such a degree that the NHS will not be able to function, because a collapse in social care support would end up dragging down the rest of the NHS with it.

That is precisely what is unfolding before our eyes right now in the NHS. A report today from Age UK shows how

“hundreds of thousands of older people who need social care are being left high and dry.”

Contaminated Blood

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I echo the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) in describing this as a debt of honour. That, I think, sums up what the debate is all about. We caused this. We did not cause it personally, of course, but it was caused by the state and the national health service, so we are responsible.

I congratulate all Members who have spoken—particularly, of course, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who has campaigned so effectively. I also pay tribute to my late friend Jim Dobbin. As has already been mentioned, his memorial service took place yesterday, and, in paying tribute to him, the Bishop of Southwark described him as an MP of causes. I know the House of Commons and politicians are often criticised, perhaps quite rightly, but I think this debate shows the House of Commons at its best. There are many MPs, like Jim, who do not necessarily see their political life as one of holding high office but who realise we are here to try to promote causes, particularly as, because of our constituency system, when we speak here we often do so because our constituents have approached us. In other political systems Members of national Parliaments are perhaps more remote.

One national politician who is not remote is the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). We are all very grateful that he is here today given his other responsibilities, and I am working with him on another issue where people’s lives have been ruined through no fault of their own. We value his presence here today.

I have said that many of us are here today because of constituents, and I am here because of my constituent Gary Jones from Scotter, who has raised this issue with me several times. I want to share some of his thoughts with the House. First, however, may I make an apology: I am on the Panel of Chairs and quite soon I will have to go and chair a private Bill, so I may miss the winding-up speeches.

As I have said, I want to talk about the issues Gary Jones has raised and, in particular the Irish compensation scheme. Before doing so, however, I want to echo and emphasise what my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) said in an intervention as it makes the point very clearly. I have already said this once and I will say it again, and it will be said several times during this debate: let right be done.

We caused this, and we have to put it right. The state—or the establishment—is responsible. I do not know who is really responsible—probably no particular individual; no doubt everybody was trying their best—but there has been gross negligence over several decades, since perhaps as early as the 1940s when the viral risks associated with the blood products in question were known and patients were not informed. One of the greatest scandals in all this is that so many patients have been kept in the dark.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend said that this was an example of gross negligence by the state. In addition to what the Penrose inquiry will show that is specific to the contaminated blood issue, does he agree this is also an opportunity for us to set some guidelines and rules for those occasions when there are failures by the state health service on how it will deal with compensation so that we avoid a patchwork of problems similar to those that affected our constituents?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I entirely agree, and I do not think this is just a question of money. If we attack the Government just in terms of money, we might not succeed in this campaign. It is also a question of learning lessons, and what the victims want above all is some sense of involvement in future schemes. We must learn lessons, and I am sure we are doing so.

The screening of blood donors was totally inadequate, allowing those with a history of jaundice to donate. Even in response to the rise of AIDS the Government failed to implement the best technology available at the time to render blood products safe. The results of this neglect have been appalling: the infection of over 5,000 haemophiliacs with hepatitis B and C, over 1,000 of whom were also infected with HIV from NHS blood products, resulting in 2,500 deaths. Although there has been compensation in many cases, it has been inadequate—indeed, they would claim it has been miserly. For instance, although there is a one-off payment available for hepatitis stage 1, there is no ongoing payment. All this is plainly unacceptable; I think everybody who has spoken agrees with that. It is also obvious that there must be a suitable scheme for compensation to the victims—not that any monetary amount can repair the damage that has been done.

The Irish scheme has perhaps not received as much attention as it should have done in this debate so far, and again I am quoting here from the arguments given to me by my constituent. It is not, as I am afraid some of my hon. and right hon. Friends on the Front Bench have suggested, that we want to link the UK compensation payment scheme to that which exists in Ireland. It is worth repeating that campaigners have never expressed a wish to place the Government’s funding of any compensation scheme in Irish hands. For myself, I do not suggest that the compensation should be exactly the same, but the Irish scheme is worth looking at in terms of compassion: it puts compassion first; it accepts liability; and it is substantial enough for the victims to gain closure. So I encourage Ministers to look further into the compensation scheme the Republic of Ireland has established and to see what lessons might be applicable to us here in the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I stand in this House in the footsteps of giants. My predecessor Paul Goggins was a tireless campaigner on this issue, and his predecessor, Lord Morris of Manchester and former Member for Wythenshawe, was also a tireless campaigner on it, so I am humbled to stand before the House as their successor.

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for securing the debate and congratulate him on his work. There are days in this Chamber, particularly as we approach a general election with the cut and thrust of politics, when I do not know what we do here. Today is not one of those days. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) summed it up correctly: this debate shows the House of Commons at its best.

I want to relate the tale of a few constituents of mine: Fred and Eleanor Bates and Peter Mossman. I have been working with them over the few months that I have been a Member of Parliament and we have had the full support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), for which we are grateful. Eleanor is now 60 years old. She has been married to Fred for 38 years. Fred is a haemophiliac who used to have a 5% clotting factor but now has a 0.0001% clotting factor. It is believed that this reduction is a result of the contamination. Before 1982-83, he received plasma and cryoprecipitate on demand when he had a bleed. After that, he was switched to factor VIII. In 1991, he was visited by another constituent of mine, Peter Mossman of the north-west group of the Haemophilia Society, who brought Fred a leaflet about hepatitis C. Fred visited the hospital to check this out and discovered that he did indeed have the condition. In fact, the hospital had known about his condition for almost a decade. Frightened and worried, Fred and Eleanor researched the main symptoms of hepatitis C: fatigue, sclerosis of the liver, liver cancer and ultimately death. They believe that the disease is now having an impact on Fred’s short-term memory function.

Fred worked as a weigher at C. H. Johnson on Bradnor road on the Sharston industrial estate in my constituency. In 1980, he was given a choice by his consultant: he could carry on working and face possible death within a year or retire and live longer. Fred was 31 years of age when he faced that choice. The choice was made more complicated by the fact that he and Eleanor were raising two small children. His income went from a respectable £145 a week to £45 in state benefit.

With hardly any clotting agent left, Fred now receives prophylactic treatment every other day, in the form of 1,500 units of factor VIII. It is not just the victims of this injustice that suffer; it is often their carers as well. Eleanor was unable to return to work after the kids fled the nest, because hepatitis C is an unpredictable disease. Fred can be fine at 8 am but have a bleed half an hour later and have to go back to bed. Eleanor has to dress his wounds, as well as doing the cooking and cleaning. She has felt unemployable for a numbers of years because of her home care duties.

Fred and Eleanor now have to deal with the Caxton Foundation. May I make this promise to the House? If I am ever fortunate enough to stand at either of those Dispatch Boxes, I will never hide behind the fact that we have set up a third-party organisation to pass the buck to. We should accept responsibility here in this House; this is where the buck should stop. Eleanor has described the Caxton Foundation to me as a sheer and utter waste of time; she feels as though she is begging when claiming. The system does not allow a retrospective claim. She put in for a respite holiday, but it did not come through, so she missed her holiday slot. Other issues have been identified. There are no separate forms for carers to apply for their own grants, and winter fuel payments are counted as income. The stress has ruined the lives of many carers of those who suffer from this condition.

I want to talk about some of the organisers. I mentioned Peter Mossman earlier. He is 71 years old, and he has a 5% clotting factor. He was a woodcutter, a machinist and a professional driver with Goodwin’s coaches in Manchester. Like Fred, he too faced the choice between giving up work and carrying on. He gave up work when he was 42. He has searched high and low for answers on the disease. His kids have only ever known him fighting. Working with Alf Morris, he set up the Manor House support group, and I pay tribute to him and Alf for that. He lost his sister, Margaret, recently. She was an affected carrier, and she died at the age of 63, her liver ravaged.

These campaigners believe that there should be no differentiation between stages 1 and 2 when it comes to payments. As has been mentioned, we are one of the few countries not to have adequately compensated the victims. There should be a decent one-off payment with subsequent annual payments.

[Richard Fuller]

A constituent of mine has also raised this point. Does the hon. Gentleman not find it odd that, as a result of this failure by the Government, the victims have to apply for a discretionary payment and that there is no substantial up-front payment? There seems to be a complete imbalance between right and wrong.

[Mike Kane]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

Many of the victims have lost the will to fight. There should be greater anger there, but they cannot deal with that anger and fight at the same time. Fred, Eleanor and Peter tell me that they will fight until they die. They have seen their stock of affected friends die horribly, and they feel that that is all they have to look forward to. They believe that it is time to admit that we made a mistake, and to allow those people to get on with their lives. Hope is real. There is no such thing as false hope. There might be false science, and there might have been false starts, but hope is real for those people. We in this Chamber today should help them to reignite that hope.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I shall try to restrict my speech to two minutes, because I know that we want to hear the speeches from the two Front Benchers and, of course, from my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who so nobly started this constructive debate, which will be a great comfort to my constituent, whose family life was devastated when she lost her husband at a young age with a very young family.

The debate has been constructive and we have heard of a number of measures that have been taken over a number of years. We also have the constructive recommendations from the all-party parliamentary group, which have featured heavily. I do not wish to sound a discordant note in this constructive debate, but I believe that despite all that there remains a suspicion to which I want to give voice. The suspicion is that all the responses from the Department of Health over the years have had to be drawn out of it and have not been freely given. The measures are often seen as a contrivance to ensure that a full answer has never been given, and people do not know why. The compensation provided is a construction of a response, but there is a belief that beneath this lies a darkness—a darkness that breeds suspicion about the root causes of all we have talked about today and about who was responsible, and about the feeling that those people remain faceless and nameless, fearing exposure for actions that may have led to what might have been a mighty, mighty wrong, and having an absence of courage to repent of those actions.

We all have to remember that it is our NHS. It does not belong to a political party or to the Department’s officials—it belongs to the people. My request to the two Front Benchers is: will they, to the extent of their powers, shine a light on this darkness and, beyond any financial consideration, provide that comfort to the hearts and memories of the victims?

NHS (Five Year Forward View)

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The system involves Barnett consequentials. As a result of today’s announcement, extra money will go to the devolved Administrations and we hope that they will use it for health purposes, but they do have a choice. The hon. Lady has just made the case extremely elegantly for that money to be put into health. She mentioned north Wales, and I know that Members on this side of the House will be hoping that the Welsh Government will also use the extra money for the NHS, given the profound problems in the Welsh NHS.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Dementia care for our parents, grandparents and loved ones is a growing issue for my constituents, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend on putting dementia care at the centre of what he is trying to do. I also congratulate the Bedfordshire clinical commissioning group on its recent review. Will he tell us what today’s announcement will do to help to support those parts of the country that are trying to make progress on dementia care?

Regulatory Reform

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

The draft order makes important changes, so I welcome the fact that we can debate it properly on the Floor of the House. Hon. Members will forgive me if I say that the reason we are here today is to try to clear up yet another problem created by the Government’s NHS reorganisation and by the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which will go down in the annals of parliamentary history as one of the worst pieces of legislation this House has ever seen.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Liz Kendall]

No. I will make some progress. The hon. Gentleman may want to listen to what the Secretary of State for Health admitted in a letter to the chair of Healthwatch England on 11 August:

“The Health and Social Care Act, when it established CCGs, did not make provision for CCGs to form joint committees and other CCGs. PCTs previously had this provision in legislation and many formed joint committees to progress partnership work.

Health organisations, including CCGs, have expressed concerns about CCGs’ inability to form joint committees that are able to make binding decisions. This inability has brought many practical challenges in working together on issues that cut across boundaries, such as continuing healthcare, patient specific funding requests and service change”

across the country. I do not know whether the Minister wants to explain why the Health and Social Care Act removed that provision, as the Health Secretary admitted in the letter to Healthwatch England. Does he want to stand up? If not, I will make some progress.

The Minister was fortunate not to be on the Committee that looked at the Health and Social Care Bill twice, so he will not know that Opposition Members repeatedly warned during its passage that CCGs would often be too small to secure effective changes to services across wider areas. We have consistently made it clear that the only way we can get the big changes we need to be able to improve care for patients, including by specialising some services in regional centres and shifting others out of hospitals into the community and towards prevention, is by working in partnership across larger areas.

In principle, we support the need for collaboration and for CCGs to come together both with one another and with NHS England, particularly in wanting to commission good services across primary, secondary, community and specialist care. However, serious concerns have been raised about the draft order by local healthwatch organisations, Healthwatch England and some of the organisations that responded to the consultation, and my hon. Friends may want to raise real concerns. I will go through the concerns in some detail.

The Minister has talked about the fact that CCGs will remain autonomous, but many of them are concerned that that is not written into the draft order. Many CCGs feel that they are coming under increasing pressure from NHS England and some of its local offices. They are concerned that the draft order might take away their autonomy, forcing them into committees and decisions that they do not think are in the best interests of local people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

It is truly a pleasure to listen to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) and to follow him in the debate. I am a member of the Regulatory Reform Select Committee and it was my vote that enabled the House as a whole to debate this measure, which might, on paper, seem rather arcane. The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) asked why we are debating it in this way. We are doing so because the core dilemma in much health reform involves the tension between local decision making and common advance. For many people, there is a tension between the priority to localise decision making and the need, as seen by professionals such as the doctors and clinicians whom we trust, for some decisions to be made on a common basis in order to achieve overall advances in health care. It can be difficult to find the appropriate boundaries as we try to resolve that tension.

I felt that it was important to bring this matter to the House so that other hon. Members could have a chance to talk about the experience in their own localities. The issues in Greater Manchester have already been mentioned, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) has mentioned the issues in his own area. I also felt that it was important to herald one of the most important attributes of the reforms that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire introduced, which was to enable, as far as possible, decision making on these issues to take place locally and to ensure that those local decisions were led not by politicians or bureaucrats but by doctors. A concern has been expressed that this change would somehow draw us away from those reforms.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), asked some extremely pertinent questions, although she perhaps got off to a bad start by taking the political apparatchik line and suggesting that certain problems were the result of the reforms. This is actually about one of the best parts of those reforms, which allows local people to make decisions. That was reflected in the widely quoted comments made by Anna Bradley, the chair of Healthwatch England. In her note, she said that

“we are concerned that the proposed reforms could create the conditions for CCG decision-making to become disconnected from the transparency and accountability mechanisms put in place by the Government’s health reforms”.

She recognises, as do many hon. Members, the importance of the tension. She also referred to it in a press release, in which she stated:

“We understand the benefits of commissioners working collaboratively but it remains crucial that local people are involved, asked what they want and understand how decisions will affect the way services are delivered in their area.”

In my own area in Bedfordshire, we have been having a collaborative exercise between two clinical commissioning groups, and they have done an extraordinarily good job of communicating and maintaining local decision making.

[Graham Stringer]

The House owes the hon. Gentleman a debt of gratitude for bringing the order before us today. Will he tell us whether, in the example he is giving, the order would help, hinder or be neutral?

[Richard Fuller]

I am not an expert, but in that particular instance I do not think I would fear the joint committee making a different recommendation from the current committee in common, although it has yet to come back with its report. The point is that the hon. Gentleman and others have aired important questions for the Minister to answer. He has answered some of them, and that has been the purpose of the debate today.

Underpinning all this is the fact—whose importance I hope the Minister will emphasise in his response—that people want important health decisions to be taken locally. They can be persuaded of, and they can understand, the issue of common advance, but they want to know that a decision is being taken locally. I think that the Minister dealt with this in his response to the shadow Minister, but I would be grateful if he answered these points quite specifically. First, am I right in thinking that he said that decisions on the part of commissioning groups to go into joint committees were voluntary, rather than compulsory, and that it would therefore remain possible for them to continue to set up committees in common if they so wished? My second question—

[Norman Lamb]

rose—

[Richard Fuller]

I am happy to give way to the Minister iteratively, or he can wait until I have given him the full menu. Which would he prefer?

[Norman Lamb]

The answer to that question is yes, absolutely; I repeat that this is a voluntary act by any CCG. To address one of the concerns raised by the shadow Minister, let me say that there may well be circumstances in which CCGs want the rules of the game established at the start of the joint committee saying that there will be circumstances in which they can withdraw from that committee. So there are no circumstances in which any CCG needs to feel that it will be oppressed in any way by its neighbouring CCGs, NHS England or anyone else.

[Richard Fuller]

I am grateful for that clarification. My second question is on the issue of voting on the joint committees. To be effective, is it a requirement that joint committees should be based on unanimous voting only and that all CCGs would have to agree, or will joint committees be substantially based on majority voting? Is it open to CCGs to create joint committees with majority or unanimity voting depending on how they wish to set those up?

[Norman Lamb]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. May I say to the Minister that I know he is trying to be helpful, but he will soon be seeking to answer this debate? We have only one more speaker to go, so to help the flow of the debate perhaps Members could finish their speeches and then he can respond.

[Richard Fuller]

I am grateful for the direction, Madam Deputy Speaker. My third question relates to the legalities and costs, which were mentioned by the Minister and were in the justification for making this change from committees in common to joint committees. I am still a little at a loss as to what those legalities and costs are. What costs are currently incurred or are anticipated to be incurred, and why would the costs be substantially less with joint committees? I am not looking for a generic answer such as, “There are some legal costs here and legal costs there.” I am looking for something specific, because if we are to make a change, we have to demonstrate that a substantial administrative burden has been taken away.

My fourth question relates to the impact of the change on existing committees in common. I think it would be correct to say that the Healthier Together review in Manchester is proceeding as a committee in common, not as a joint committee. Would that be the case if this change is made, or would it be possible, either automatically or by choice, for existing committees in common to be transferred to joint committees with the same decision rights that joint committees would have? I am not too clear as to the position for committees that are already extant.

My fifth question relates to the Minister’s statement that committees in common somehow place a “burden”. I would be grateful for his clarification that he does not believe that the essence of localism, which was a substantial intention behind the reform introduced my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire, is the burden to which reference is being made. Sometimes one fears that there is tension between localism and common advance. If we allow the people who are on joint committees and their decision making to get further and further away from the people, the burden of having to go back to get local approval is lost. I hope that the Minister can clarify that that is not what is meant in the order’s reference material.

Finally, there has been a lot of commentary about the fact that it is up to committees to change their minds later on and to decide whether it is a joint committee or not. But the Minister can be clear that not all the consequences of what a committee will find can be known at the outset. Can he clarify whether it is possible for CCGs that are already signed up to joint decision making on joint committees by majority voting to change their rules, or are they bound by those rules once they have signed up to them? I am very grateful for the opportunity to debate these issues on the Floor of the House, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

Pancreatic Cancer

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope, and to follow the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). I am impressed by the standard of the speeches in the debate. The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) made a powerful opening speech, and the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) were moving, passionate and heartfelt.

At the moment we feel that pancreatic cancer is an unfashionable issue that is low on the agenda politically and even in the health world, but other causes have been in that position, and have risen up the agenda because of pressure from this place. Pancreatic cancer is an issue that unites people across parties, and it needs attention. I would compare it to dementia and autism, which were once unfashionable, but then were the subject of landmark legislation and rose up the political agenda. That led to some success, and a huge impact on the people affected by the conditions, and their families.

I want to thank the charity Pancreatic Cancer UK for its brilliant work to raise the issue—and particularly David Park, whom I met a few months ago for a briefing—as well as the all-party group on pancreatic cancer. Seldom do all-party groups make an impact, but that one has set an agenda with the report it produced last year. I also thank Maggie Watts, of course, for her fantastic work. Her diligent, committed efforts got the e-petition going. It would have been easy for her to step back and say, “This is not something I want to get involved in. It is Government and politics, and I will leave it to someone else.” However, her sheer passion and commitment to doing what she thought was right, to right a wrong and raise an agenda, have been utterly commendable, and I congratulate her.

As we have heard, the issue is not one that can be tackled by pressing one or two buttons. The dreadful comparisons that can be made between pancreatic cancer survival rates and those for others including breast cancer and prostate cancer have been pointed out. For example, in 1971 the survival rate for prostate cancer was 31% and it is now 81%. My view is that because pancreatic cancer is now so prevalent and such a major killer, it is no longer acceptable, as a matter of NHS governance, that it should be left solely to the discretion of clinical commissioning groups. I am not a born-again centralist, but I believe we need very strong guidance, at least, from the Department of Health and the NHS, to bring the experience of the best, such as the University Hospital Southampton priority jaundice clinic, to the rest of the country. That is enormously important.

Progress has of course been made in the past few years. NICE is improving outcomes for upper gastrointestinal cancers and of course a pancreatic cancer quality standard is in development. Those things, and the cancer outcomes strategy of 2013, are all very welcome. Of course, they are focused on the quality and efficiency of cancer services, improving patients’ experience of care, and the quality of life of patients and cancer survivors. The hon. Member for Scunthorpe made the point that it is vital for the Government to have both quantitative and qualitative data at their disposal, to make value judgments about research.

I came to this subject almost by accident. It is an often overlooked aspect of being a Member of Parliament that we may stumble on issues, and then have the capacity—the honour and privilege, through being elected—to ask awkward questions and make ourselves a bit of a pain in the backside by doing so, sometimes.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Or frequently.

[Mr Jackson]

Or frequently, in my case, as my hon. Friend says.

A good friend of mine—a non-political friend in my constituency—was utterly shocked at the premature death of the husband of a very good friend of hers. He was, I think, 48, and the father of two young children. He had visited his general practitioner several times and was told over again that he was suffering from a very bad case of back pain. By the time he had his scan it was too late; the tumour was inoperable and was wrapped round other vital organs. It was not possible to operate and the poor gentleman died, leaving a young family, a matter of weeks later. That account prompted me to think and research more. Of course, I read the moving article that my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood wrote for The Daily Telegraph about his experience and the tragic death of his partner such a short time after diagnosis, and that, too, prompted my interest.

Figures have already been given about the comparative spending on different cancers. The current figure of 1% of research spending, representing £5.2 million, is pitiful for a cancer that is so prevalent. If 8,800 people were being knocked down on the roads every year or killed on level crossings or through any other possibly preventable cause, we would demand immediate action; but it seems we are prepared to countenance little if anything being done by central Government on pancreatic cancer. That is not a party political view, obviously. The comparative data show that the USA has a 6% survival rate after five years and Australia has a rate of 5%; but in the UK it is only 3.3%. We must address that. My hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) made the point that it is shocking that people attend accident and emergency jaundiced and clearly seriously ill before it dawns on anyone that they are in the advanced stages of pancreatic cancer. I just feel that something more can be done, not least because, according to the briefing we have received, one in six people attend a general practitioner or other health care facility more than seven times, yet they do not receive the treatment they need.

Care Bill [Lords]

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

Is the Minister listening to the debate and to what I am saying? I have explained to him carefully that that was a vehicle for financial and administrative reconfiguration. Yes, a neighbouring trust might have had to come and help with a solution to carry on with the administration and the running of that trust. That is the point, and that is what he has just read out. It was never a vehicle for service change—I do not know how many times I can make that point to the Minister before he actually listens.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

I will give way one final time, and then I will complete my remarks.

[Richard Fuller]

For clarity, the shadow Secretary of State is talking about in extremis and financial failures. What policy did he put in place for in extremis care failures, and why is it not appropriate to have others help out in such circumstances?

[Andy Burnham]

I will come on to that point, but the CQC had existing powers on care failure, and powers to move more quickly than clause 119 provides for. Adequate powers were in place to deal with the point the hon. Gentleman has just made.

In truth, it is arrogance in the extreme for the Government to be coming along today—and worse, it seriously risks damaging public trust in how change in the NHS is made. That will be the real loss if the clause is accepted. It threatens to destroy any public faith in a sense of fair process governing these crucial decisions, and any prospect of cross-party consensus on a way to make changes to hospital services.

Making changes to those services is about the most difficult decision that politicians have to make, but the fact is that hospitals need to change if we are to make services safer and respond to the pressures of an ageing society. We did not shy away from that in government, and we do not say something different now. However, there is a right way and a wrong way of going about such things.

The Government’s answer—to use a brutal administration process to take decisions above the heads of local people—is a spectacularly wrong response to a very real problem, and precisely because those decisions arouse such strong emotions, we must find better ways of involving people, not shutting them out. If people suspect a stitch-up, and see solutions imposed from on high, they will understandably fight back hard. Does the spectacle of tens of thousands of people marching in Stafford or on the streets of Lewisham not give Ministers pause for thought that this new approach might seriously set back the goal of better public engagement in the NHS?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Poulter]

I thank all my hon. Friends and other hon. Members for their contributions to this important debate. I shall respond to as much of what has been said as I can in the time available.

The House is being asked to consider specific changes the Government are making to the existing trust special administrator regime, which was introduced under the previous Government. I stress at the outset that the TSA regime will not be used routinely, and will only be used when all other processes at a local level to deal with the challenges of hospitals have been exhausted. The usual approach for locally led reconfigurations will remain. TSAs are for rare and extreme cases of failure. This is not a power to be used to reconfigure services routinely—we need to get that right at the outset. This is a system of last resort, and other actions will of course be taken first to address the problems of trusts in difficulty.

[Richard Fuller]

Let me make the Minister aware of a real and live example: the decision of Bedford and Milton Keynes clinical commissioning groups to look at their hospitals in an ongoing review. Will the Minister provide me with a hand-on-heart, job-on-the-line assurance that these powers will not be used in that review?

[Dr Poulter]

I can assure my hon. Friend absolutely that these are locally driven reviews of clinical services—driven by local commissioners, clinically led and absolutely nothing to do with the TSA process which we are discussing today. Any scaremongering that is taking place locally is, frankly, outrageous and to the detriment of the hard work that local professionals are doing to design the right health care services.

As I said, the TSA system is one of last resort. It is about ensuring that local solutions are initially found for trusts in difficulty. That may include support from the NHS Trust Development Authority or Monitor, as part of a special measures process, or it may involve more rigorous inspections by the CQC. Other support may include requiring the publication of action plans to tackle quality or financial problems, buddying with other trusts, or making management changes. All other such processes will have had to be exhausted before the TSA process would be necessary.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I know that the care services Minister would have liked to be here but he is at his son’s graduation today. I will pass on the hon. Gentleman’s question and ensure that he receives a full response.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

At the end of this month, the East of England Multi-Professional Deanery will remove junior doctors in paediatric services from Bedford hospital. That will reduce paediatric services, which will obviously cause major concerns for families with children in Bedford and Kempston and north Bedfordshire. Will my right hon. Friend join me and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) in calling for an open and independent inquiry into why clinical supervisory failures continued at Bedford hospital and were not addressed, and into the terrible consequences that resulted from that?

[Dr Poulter]

I am sure my hon. Friend will be pleased that Health Education England, supported by the General Medical Council, took such rapid action to address concerns over patient safety and the supervision of junior doctors at his hospital. It is right that a rapid action plan has been brought in by local health care commissioners and Health Education England in order to support that, put in place the right supervision for medical staff, and ensure we put things right as quickly as possible.