Sir Robert Peel Hospital

Debate between Andrew Griffiths and Christopher Pincher

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

As our colleagues rush to watch the second half of the Manchester United match, I should like to raise an issue of somewhat greater importance to my constituents. Although the title of the debate is narrow and focuses on the effect on my Tamworth constituency, the wider implications for users of Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust also affect the constituents of my hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) and for Burton (Andrew Griffiths)—I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Burton is in his place.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on securing this debate and for being a doughty fighter on behalf of his constituents in the provision of health care. He will know that Queen’s hospital has a deficit of some £3.1 million. It has already saved £9.8 million but needs to save a further £10 million in 2013-14. Given that my own east Staffordshire clinical commissioning group inherited a deficit of £8 million—

[Andrew Griffiths]

I am grateful to you for that advice, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was just about to get to the crux of the matter. Given that the area is £12 million away from fairer funding, does my hon. Friend agree that the health care economy is incredibly fragile locally and that something needs to be done to help us bridge that gap in the short term?

[Christopher Pincher]

I quite agree with my hon. Friend and suggest that we find that way forward, in the first case by seeking a meeting with the Secretary of State to discuss our concerns about the trust.

In nearly four years as a Member of Parliament, this is the first Adjournment debate I have applied for in the Chamber. I hope that gives you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and those on the Treasury Bench some indication of the importance that I and my constituents attach to the subject.

The Sir Robert Peel community hospital at Mile Oak in my constituency provides services for people living in and around Tamworth including a round-the-clock minor injuries unit, an X-ray and ultrasound department, an endoscopy unit and out-patient and day surgery. It also provides award-winning rehabilitation services, care of older people and palliative care services. Indeed, the award to staff for their innovative work on rehabilitation was received only two weeks ago.

The hospital is an important and valued service in our community. Local residents are very attached to it and the medical support it offers to a growing town. They want to be a part of its future, yet as a result of a review that many feel was conducted behind closed doors, Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Peel, has decided to close its day case theatre and surgical ward and is considering withdrawing its endoscopy service. A decision on that service will be made next month. The closure of the day case theatre alone will affect about 1,400 patients each year.

Although no institution, including the NHS, can be set in aspic and although hospitals can and must be prepared to adapt to meet the changing demands of NHS users—for example, the growth in the number of elderly patient means that hospitals need to make more provision for dementia and palliative care—I am concerned that the proposals for the Robert Peel are being hurried through without the fullest consultation and certainly without the fullest involvement of the local community in Tamworth and Fazeley. Although local people are now being invited to so-called listening events, they are about the options for future service provision and not the decisions that have already been made. It appears that the Burton trust has closed its ears to concerns about its plans for day surgery.

The trust has form. A year ago, it introduced parking charges at the Peel hospital with no public consultation and with very little notice. The system it introduced was ill-conceived and badly signed, resulting in a large number of unwarranted fines being levied on some of the most vulnerable people: the old and frail, concerned relatives and the lowest paid. Many of those fines have been overturned. More than 3,000 people signed my petition calling on the trust to rethink its parking proposals and the trust, to its credit, recognised public concern and is now in the process of developing a revised parking system, yet, like the Bourbons, it seems to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from that experience.

On 5 February, staff at the Peel hospital were called to a meeting to be told that, following what was described as an “extensive review”, the surgical ward would be closed in as little as 12 weeks. They knew nothing of that review, and neither did anyone else—not me, not the local health scrutiny committee, and certainly not the wider community. The review took place between October and January behind closed doors and no one was told. The first the wider community knew was when the story was broken in the Tamworth Herald on 13 February. Yet it was not until 25 March that the trust answered detailed public questions at the Healthy Staffordshire scrutiny meeting, which took place not in Tamworth, but in Stafford. The impression left is that the trust has talked to itself, but not to anyone else.

I have met the chief executive and the operations manager at the Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and they have assured me that the Robert Peel will not close, that minor injury services will be unaffected, and indeed that new services, such as pressure ulcer clinics, may be run out of the hospital. However, I am concerned that the very thing my hon. Friend the Minister was at pains to stress during the debate on amendments to the Care Bill on 11 March—indeed, he made the point directly to me during my intervention—that proper patient and community consultation must take place before decisions are made, is just not happening at the Peel hospital. As a result, patients, staff, hospital users, local councillors and the local community feel that changes are being done to them rather than along with them after recognising their concerns and their advice.

Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust says that demand for the day case theatre has dropped by 30% in the last five years and that 40% of current capacity can be dealt with in GP surgeries. That may well be true. It may also be true that commissioning services in GP surgeries is cheaper and more convenient for my local clinical commissioning group. However, I remain concerned that if this decision is hurried through without proper consideration and consultation, the problems the hospital discovered with its car parking arrangements could be replicated on a far more serious level—that of patient care. We cannot be sure that all local GPs have the necessary equipment, experience and time to undertake all the new procedures they may be called upon to deliver. We need to be sure that Queen's hospital in Burton and the Good Hope in Birmingham have the scope to add to their already demanding schedules without affecting patient waiting times. At the very least it means some people may need to travel further, and spend more on their journey, for their scheduled minor surgery. For an operation at Queen's hospital in Burton, that means travelling some 18 miles along the A38, which, when it is blocked, tends to stay blocked.

I hope my hon. Friend will agree with me that if Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust believes that services at the Robert Peel must be adapted to meet changing needs in the community it serves, it must make those changes having first clearly and openly discussed its proposals with the wider community. A handful of local councillors, important as they undoubtedly are, simply is not good enough, and it must be careful to analyse and accept the sensible advice of the community, including the friends of the local hospital who do so much good work with it. Making its decision at the start of the consultation process, rather than at its end, does nothing to engage public confidence; indeed, it makes a mockery of any consultation.

I hope that my hon. Friend is prepared to send a clear message to Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and to others, that while they must continually monitor their services so that they remain relevant to and focused on need and so that they deliver the very best patient care, decisions made behind closed doors long before anyone is asked their view are not acceptable. The trust board must agree to the widest local consultation, must collate and publish feedback from its consultation and must be prepared to act on the considered advice of all local stakeholders. Only then will people believe that their local hospital is truly their own.

Beer Duty Escalator

Debate between Andrew Griffiths and Christopher Pincher

Thursday 1st November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is absolutely right. Some 85% of pubs across this country are small and medium-sized enterprises—small businesses that are trickling that economic impact down into our communities.

I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the statistics released today by CAMRA, which show that there is an alarming increase in the number of pub closures. We all thought that we had seen the back of the bad old days in 2010 when 26 pubs per week were closing, once the figure had fallen to 12 per week. However, the new figures released by CAMRA show that 18 pubs per week are closing. That means that since March this year some 450 pubs have closed, and since the introduction of the beer duty escalator in 2008 some 5,800 pubs have closed.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

A regrettable statistic—and I remember the days—is that one used to be able to buy six pints for a fiver. [Interruption.] I did not drink them all, I might say; I was buying a round. Since then, the cost of beer has increased and, as my hon. Friend says, the number of pubs that have gone to the wall and are going to the wall is increasing. As a result, revenue to the Exchequer is falling. Does he agree that the beer duty escalator is not simply raising money? It is losing money for the Exchequer.

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend has put his finger on the nub of the problem. I want to remind the House that when the then Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), introduced the beer duty escalator he said that,

“as incomes have risen, alcohol has become increasingly more affordable…In order to ensure that alcohol duties keep pace with rising incomes, alcohol duty rates will increase by 2 per cent above the rate of inflation”.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Andrew Griffiths and Christopher Pincher

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffiths]

That is rather like saying that someone can be a little bit pregnant. We are changing the relationship between this place and the other place fundamentally, because the other place will have democratic accountability and legitimacy with it.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that giving more power to the other place without giving it more responsibility is a bit like what Stanley Baldwin described as the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages?

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend has made a very good point, and I commend the work that he has done in opposing the Bill. He has done a fantastic job, and I pay tribute to him and to others in the House.

I also struggle with the idea of having to confront my constituents, who are being expected to deal with austerity. We are expecting people to accept the cuts that the coalition claims are necessary if we are to put the country back on its feet and deal with the mess that we inherited, but at the same time we are telling them that politicians may decide to spend £153 million on more politicians. How can I look my constituents in the eye—the workers in my local council who have been made redundant, and the public sector workers who are having to accept pay freezes and make more contributions to their pensions—and say to them, “Yes, but what is important is for us is to have elected representatives costing £153 million”?

I find it worrying that the Government have tried to persuade us that savings made in the House of Commons can be offset against the extra costs in another place. We all recognise that reducing the number of Members here represents a massive saving, but that money should not be spent on more politicians in another place. I am also worried about the 15-year term. The possibility that Members of an upper Chamber elected in 1997 with Tony Blair’s mandate and Tony Blair’s election result would have only just finished sitting strikes me as undemocratic in the extreme.