Healthcare: North Staffordshire

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

At the heart of every community is a hospital, and a hospital such as north Staffordshire’s Royal Stoke is one that has many potential problems. As a result of previous occurrences, the trust has grown in size, and at the end of 2017-18, the hospital was predicted to have a deficit of £119 million. We know that the NHS is one of the things we are proudest of in our country, but we also know that it is one of the things in our country where spending squeezes have been greatest.

It was announced earlier this year that £29 million would be saved in-year by the hospital as part of the cost improvement programme. This hospital has one of the highest entry rates at accident and emergency, and it is also one of the places at which people routinely present themselves out of frustration at not being able to get a doctor’s appointment locally. The figure of £29 million in-year savings was increased in March to a target of £50 million, and further savings were projected for 2018-19 and 2019-20 of £35 million each, taking the total savings of the hospital to well in excess of £120 million.

After serious work, the hospital is now suggesting that it will be able to end the year with a deficit of £68.9 million. However, the deficit is dependent on two other funding arrangements that have yet to materialise relating to the County Hospital in the constituency of the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), and I am grateful to him for being in the Chamber. NHS England has promised £14.9 million towards the transitional fund to help Royal Stoke with the demands placed on it by the County Hospital and to help the people of Stafford to maintain the hospital that they want and so richly deserve, and a further £9.9 million was promised from the Department of Health, but that money has not materialised. That bill of about £25 million is one the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust needs and would like to have in order to secure the provision of health services for north Staffordshire.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I absolutely agree with him that the work Royal Stoke has done to bring stability to County Hospital, Stafford, has been of great benefit to my constituents and the people of the whole of my part of Staffordshire. It is therefore absolutely vital that the trust and Royal Stoke should not suffer from having undertaken this very important work.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The trust in north Staffordshire should not suffer, and nor should his constituents in Stafford, who quite rightly want to have the hospital they have with the services it is providing, including an A&E service that is vital to relieving pressure in Royal Stoke A&E at peak times.

As I have said, the cost improvement programme in-year saving was raised to £50 million in March. Having already found itself with a £25 million hole, because money had not materialised from NHS England and the Department of Health, the trust decided to up the cost improvement programme savings by a further £10 million. That means the hospital is required to find £60 million in this financial year, on top of all the savings that are being made through the capped expenditure programme.

The hospital is aware of things it can do to help to alleviate its problem. For instance, it is investing £2 million in creating 45 additional beds to alleviate waiting times in A&E by taking out excess space in corridors and smaller bathrooms to use for beds. We would all agree that we do not want them to be in such a position, but it is taking that risk and making that investment to try to improve the health service in Stoke-on-Trent and in north Staffordshire.

I pay tribute to Paula Clark, the chief executive of the trust, who has worked tirelessly with the former chair of the trust, John MacDonald, to try to overcome the problems the hospital has faced, not least the reputational issues that came with some of the incorrect information circulated under the—