North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust

Iain Wright Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, which is very important to a large number of hon. Members. Will he confirm that the whole driver for this reconfiguration has been a clinically led approach—led by eminent doctors and surgeons—and that the decision made by the Chief Secretary takes us back to square one, with no plan B?

[Alex Cunningham]

I certainly agree with that. I know that it is the view of clinicians and other health professionals that it will be impossible to sustain two hospitals with the full range of services and facilities needed to serve our communities. Indeed, patients in our areas have to access different services at the two different sites, which are 14 miles apart.

The new hospital was to be a vital element of wider health care reform in our region and would have delivered clinically sustainable hospital services in the single hospital while delivering a much wider range of services in the community much closer to people’s homes, including three new integrated care centres in Billingham, Hartlepool and Stockton. There is no doubt that there has been some controversy about the plan to build one “super hospital” to replace the two outdated ones, as well as unease among some in the community about the location chosen. I firmly believe, however, that the plan would have provided improved services for local people and that it is ultimately the right plan for the NHS trust to pursue.

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[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing the debate on the future of the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust and its hospitals. I join him, with the greatest pleasure, in congratulating clinicians, GPs, ancillary workers and all those who work so hard on Teesside, in the north-east and in the rest of the country to provide a first-class quality health care service for the people of this nation.

The decision to cancel the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust proposal has to be seen within the context of the wider economic climate. This year’s budget deficit of £155 billion—inherited, I gently remind Opposition Members, from the previous Government—illustrates the scale of the economic challenge facing this Government. As part of this Government’s determination to face that challenge head on, the Treasury and other Departments have reviewed every significant spending decision made between 1 January and the general election on 6 May. As the proposed new hospital scheme at the foundation trust received the previous Government’s approval only in March, the North Tees decision formed part of that review.

In these tough economic times, it is essential that all major hospital building schemes be affordable. On 17 June, as the hon. Member for Stockton North rightly said, my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury announced to this House the decisions of the Government’s review of spending commitments. The review cancelled 12 projects throughout Government and considered four major NHS capital investment schemes with a total capital value of more than £1.2 billion.

The size and funding of the schemes were considered in relation to the nature of the organisations concerned. The aim of granting foundation trust status is to give such bodies greater financial independence. As well as being able to keep any internally generated resources, foundation trusts have greater freedom to borrow from either the public or the private sectors, and, by requiring an allocation of public dividend capital from the Department of Health of more than £400 million, the proposals were not consistent with that financial independence.

[Mr Iain Wright]

What local clinical advice did the Minister and his ministerial team take prior to the decision to scrap the new hospital?

[Mr Burns]

If the hon. Gentleman waits, as I develop my argument I shall continue to explain the reasons for cancelling the scheme within the public spending review.

Treasury and Department of Health Ministers, myself included, decided that, overall, these factors—affordability within the changed economic climate and the foundation trust status—weighed more against the scheme for North Tees and Hartlepool than against the other three schemes for the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust and the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital. For those reasons, the Government withdrew their support for the scheme.

If I may, I shall just answer one question that was mentioned in an intervention on the hon. Member for Stockton North. The question was, “Why North Tees and Hartlepool and not the three other schemes?” After looking into the situation, we found that, for example, the Royal Liverpool university hospital building is not compliant with fire safety regulations, and that its mechanical and engineering services are more than 30 years old and at increasing risk of failure. Some 94% of St Helier hospital’s buildings are more than 50 years old, and the 2007-08 data show that the total maintenance backlog for the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital is £53.8 million; for Epsom and St Helier it is £23.8 million; for the Royal Liverpool it is £16.3 million; and for North Tees and Hartlepool it is £3.5 million.