Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am happy to join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the work that has been undertaken by University Hospitals Birmingham in support of Heart of England foundation trust. We do want to see strong management across the national health service. I understand there are a number of practical and financial issues still to resolve in this, and I would encourage all of those who are involved to make progress on this important matter, but I congratulate those NHS staff who have seen that improvement and worked hard to ensure that improvement takes place.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Q3. Does the Prime Minister agree that the resignation of Lord Kerslake really does put the Government on a final warning about NHS problems? Does she agree that, in my constituency, it is disgraceful that, despite us having a perfectly good hospital, people have to travel at least 15 miles to get to the nearest A&E?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that Lord Kerslake made the right decision in stepping down as chairman of King’s College Hospital. I am not surprised that the Labour party is interested in this, given, of course, that the noble Lord Kerslake is a key adviser to the Labour party. The hon. Gentleman might care to look at what NHS Improvement said about King’s College Hospital:

“The financial situation at King’s has deteriorated very seriously over recent months and we have now placed the trust in special measures to maximise the amount of scrutiny and support that it receives…It is not acceptable for individual organisations to run up such significant deficits when the majority of the sector is working extremely hard to hit their financial plans, and in many cases have made real progress.”

It called the situation

“the worst in the NHS”.

Perhaps it is no surprise that the noble Lord Kerslake, I understand, is advising the Labour party on matters of debt and deficit.