Hospital Car Parking Charges

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

First, I wish to thank the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for having secured and initiated such an important debate, which affects so many in my constituency and across our country. For many, attending a hospital is a vulnerable time, whether we are seeking treatment for ourselves or for a loved one. Our hospitals are indeed underfunded and overstretched, but it is not for sick patients, anxious relatives and already hard-pressed NHS staff to be filling the funding gaps.

We have heard that hospital car parking charges raise funds, but many hospital trusts up and down our country have increased their charges without consulting the public—the very people they are there for. Some trusts allow private contractors to manage car parking sites, which is leading to penalties and fines for patients and visitors, as we have heard in this important debate. At a time when the cost of living is increasing and those who work in the public sector have had their pay capped, the rising cost of hospital car parking only increases the financial burden on many in our constituencies.

It is not just the patients who are deterred by higher charges; families and friends might be discouraged from visiting patients at their bedside, which must surely have a negative impact on the mental wellbeing of patients and lead to increased pressure on nursing staff. From personal experience, I know that many patients rely on relatives and friends to act as interpreters or advocates. Such elements are seemingly overlooked when surveys and reports are undertaken, but patient care can be impacted where higher charges deter people from providing such crucial assistance.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

We have heard a lot about staff and patients and families. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) mentioned volunteers earlier, and the hon. Gentleman is talking about the importance of patient support. Does he agree that it is particularly short-sighted of any hospital trust to seek to charge volunteers, who give of their time, for parking?

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his excellent intervention, and I could not agree more. We have heard previously about volunteer drivers. It is just not fair. It is nonsensical to ask them to dig further into their pockets. It also places an unfair and unnecessary burden on hard-working staff who have gone for years without a decent pay rise. While some hospitals offer free or discounted parking for specific kinds of treatment or for people in receipt of specific benefits, there are significant variations in fees across trusts in the same region. Wexham Park Hospital in my constituency has some of the highest parking charges in the region: £3.30 after the first 15 minutes and an increase, in stages, to £8 over five hours. That is the situation in my constituency, but that trust is only doing what all other trusts are no doubt doing and it is within Government guidelines. I do not want older and vulnerable patients to be deterred from attending hospital. They should be able to get to their appointments in a comfortable, dignified, affordable manner and within a reasonable time.

Most NHS car parking charges have been abolished in Scotland and Wales, and I know that the Government have issued guidance to NHS trusts on the implementation of car parking charges, including the provision of discounted or free parking. These guidelines are not based in legislation and appear to have had little effect. The Labour Government in 2010 left fully costed plans to phase out charges for in-patients and their visitors, and in 2015 a private Member’s Bill on this subject gained cross-party support but was talked out. Clearly, many across the country and the House want an end to hospital car parking charges. Let us send a clear message today that there is another way forward and that this unfair stealth tax on the vulnerable must end.

Corby Urgent Care Centre

Andrew Lewer Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Tom Pursglove]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who has been unstinting in his support for the Corby urgent care centre and the local campaign. He recognises, quite rightly, the pressures that the facility relieves Kettering General Hospital of. Kettering General Hospital is obviously a very important facility in our community. I will touch on those pressures a little bit later, but I very much appreciate his support for what we are doing.

I have talked about the short-term situation. In the longer term, the CCG appears to be committed to much more thorough consultation, first with a pre-consultation, and followed by a thorough consultation on options, which I understand would run between November and January. I welcome that, but I am clear that corners must not be cut in that process. The whole community must be engaged. It is not enough to engage with a group of 700 people in a patient participation group; that is just not good enough.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. His reference to Kettering General Hospital and this fairly narrow consultation leads me to ask whether he agrees that not only Kettering General Hospital but Northampton General Hospital would be impacted by this. Have those he has been working with made references to that in the course of their discussions?

[Tom Pursglove]

I am grateful to my county colleague for his intervention. He is absolutely right. As this campaign has progressed since July, I have been receiving communication from people across the county and from outside the county who say they make use of the Corby urgent care centre rather than going to the acute hospitals in our area. I have no doubt that not only Kettering General Hospital but Northampton General Hospital would be affected. This is not just a Corby issue by any means, although it is obviously very important to Corby residents. It is also fundamental to the wider health infrastructure of north Northamptonshire.

I want Corby CCG to be very aware of and alive to the fact that I will be watching the consultation process ahead of us like a hawk, because the consultation that has gone on previously has not been good enough. I think the CCG would recognise, if it were honest, that that has not been good enough, and we need to see improvement. I will not hesitate to ask difficult questions, should they need to be asked. I will also be clear with the CCG that it ought to make no mistake that in the long term we need urgent care facilities in our town. There are a number of key reasons for that.

The first is the growth agenda. There can be no doubt that in north Northamptonshire, there will be increasing pressures on our health infrastructure more generally in the years ahead. We are taking thousands and thousands of new homes, not just in Corby but in east Northamptonshire, Kettering and Wellingborough. That inevitably brings pressures for existing health services.

I have already referred to the KGH pressures, which are very pertinent. I am pleased, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) will be, that the recent Care Quality Commission inspection saw quite considerable improvement compared with the last inspection. We welcome that, but I do not want to see all that good work undone by additional people who would previously have gone to the Corby urgent care centre turning up at A&E.

One flaw in the CCG’s argument to date has been that it has never been able to account for the number of people who currently go to the urgent care centre and who, if that were not available, would go on to Kettering General Hospital. I am very concerned about that. We must not forget that last year, 70,000 people made use of the Corby urgent care centre, and only 6% of those went on to Kettering General Hospital for further treatment. That gives us an idea of the impact here. I think we would also all recognise that Corby has significant and acute health needs, particularly on the back of the fact that we are an industrial town. Our town has been built on our industries, which inevitably leads to acute health needs among the local population.

I know that local people share my strength of feeling on this. The “Save Corby Urgent Care Centre” group has done a fantastic job, particularly online, harnessing local opinion and local support for the campaign. In fact, tomorrow night at the end of business, I shall present a petition signed by more than 2,500 local people in support of the urgent care centre. I pay tribute to Lyn Buckingham, Maria Bryan and others for the work that they have been doing on the issue.

As the local Member of Parliament, I am proud to say that the fact that we have a Labour council in Corby does not mean that we do not work together for what is best for the people of our area. Tom Beattie, the Labour leader of the council, and I have worked very closely on this issue, as we do on others, such as the steel issue, because party politics does not matter when it comes to these issues. People do not want to see politicians squabbling and arguing about petty points; they want solutions to the problems, so I am pleased that that cross-party work continues in our community. I want to say again a big thank you to my Northamptonshire colleagues for their support on this issue, because, as I said, it affects not just my constituents, but people in their areas.

The final thing giving me heart in terms of the strength of local feeling is that I launched a parliamentary postcode campaign on this issue, and although not that many have yet been delivered—that process is going on at the moment—we are seeing hundreds and hundreds returned. I look forward to the opportunity to present sacks of those cards to the commissioners in the months ahead, as part of the consultation process, to hammer home how strongly we as a community feel about the issue. They are also coming in thick and fast on email, and not just from people in Northamptonshire.

I also thank my hon. Friend the Minister for his interest. Obviously, we have just had a recess, which is not necessarily a particularly good time for challenges to occur in constituencies, but I have really appreciated the fact that he has always been willing and available to talk about this issue when concerns have been brought to my attention. That availability is appreciated. Often, politicians are accused of talking about problems, raising issues, but having no solutions. When I look at this issue, there are some things that really stand out for me that I think are just common sense. What concerns me is that when we look at the figures for same-day access in Corby, for example, we are not doing well enough. There are clearly key challenges ahead, and the CCG’s performance on that particular matter has to improve.

However, that should not be at the expense of urgent care facilities in the town, and local people should not be penalised in relation to the urgent care centre as a result of the current contract not having been handled as it should have been by the commissioners. Obviously, the expert determination speaks to that point. I do not need to say any more on that, but local people should not be penalised, in terms of the health services available to them going forward, as a result of the contract not having been handled as it should have been.

It is clear to me that if we improved GP access, the cost of the urgent care centre service would reduce, because if more of my constituents, or more of those people from the surrounding areas, could see their GP on the day that they needed an appointment, they would not have cause to go to the urgent care centre, where they have perhaps been going because the access has not been good enough to date. It should be about doing both: improving GP access at the same time as providing urgent care facilities. I argue very strongly that the cost of the urgent care facilities would be less were the GP access better.

I will continue to advance these arguments in the months ahead. I am conscious that county colleagues who are present may want to say a few words, so I shall wrap up, but I want to be very clear about the fact that losing this facility would be a betrayal of local people. The proof is in the pudding: it is making an impact. The idea of losing it is obscene when we consider that other areas look at Corby urgent care centre with envy. For example, people in Wellingborough want to see, at the Isebrook site, a very similar service replicated. Were we to lose Corby urgent care centre, that would also undermine the whole model that we have been working on, cross-party, for some years. I am talking about a hub-and-spoke model—ensuring that we have the urgent care hub on the Kettering General Hospital site, with a spoke in Wellingborough and a spoke in Corby. That makes absolute sense, and I do not want the good work that has been done on it undone, because this facility is class-leading and can demonstrate that it has made quite an impact. I say again that I am in no doubt that losing the facility would be a disaster for Kettering General Hospital. I also recognise that Corby CCG has responsibility for Kettering General Hospital as its pinned CCG.

As I said in the debate before the summer recess, my message to the CCG remains very clear: please don’t let us down.