Kettering General Hospital

Peter Bone Excerpts

Friday 21st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that one of the frustrations for the people of north Northamptonshire is that the Government have a formula for how much money we should get but they do not give us that amount because they overfund elsewhere? That frustration is felt across the whole of north Northamptonshire.

[Mr Hollobone]

You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that my hon. Friend has a great way of simplifying complex issues to make them readily understandable. His intervention is just another example of that.

NHS England has told Her Majesty’s Government that it is targeting the clinical commissioning groups that are more than 5% above or below the target funding, that both Nene and Corby CCGs are underfunded, and that the cash increase of 5.2% for Nene and 9.4% for Corby in 2016-17 will bring us within that 5% zone. This suggests that we are outside it at the moment. The fact that we are more than 5% away from the target funding and that we have one of the most rapidly increasing populations in the country illustrates the stiff challenge that Kettering general hospital faces.

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[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing such an important debate and on the fact that he has consistently been a champion for Kettering’s hospital. I am grateful to the Minister for making the effort to come here today to listen to this debate. Perhaps if he is able to visit Kettering general hospital, he will stop on the way to see the Isebrook hospital at Wellingborough, which is what I briefly wish to talk about.

The Isebrook hospital is what we might call a community hospital. At the moment, it is undergoing a refurbishment to provide new X-ray equipment. Our issue is that we should have a minor accident and emergency unit there. It is part of the overall hub plan, but because that plan has got bogged down in red tape and administration, the Isebrook expansion has not taken place. That is a mistake, because if we had such a unit at the Isebrook, 40% of the people who now go to Kettering’s A&E would not need to go there, which would save an immense amount of money. By spending a little money now, we could save a lot of money, as well as make things much better for my constituents.

[Tom Pursglove]

We know that that is categorically the case, because Corby has the hugely popular and successful Corby urgent care centre, which was delivered under a Conservative Government and works incredibly well. Local people go there, rather than to Kettering general hospital. The hub-and-spoke approach is exactly the way forward, and my hon. Friend’s constituency would benefit from it in the same way as Corby has.

[Mr Bone]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is so active in Corby that it is no wonder that he has got his minor accident and emergency centre ahead of me, but we cannot have a hub-and-spoke system if one of the spokes is not there. It would not be a bad idea for the Minister to come and see physically why this unit is such a good idea.

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[Mr Dunne]

I have responsibility for the acute sector, not the community sector, so initially my visit would be focused on Kettering hospital. I will certainly do what I can, but I think that it will have to be some time next year. My hon. Friend has previously met my predecessors to discuss health services in his constituency. He has raised a number of issues today, and I will attempt to address most, if not all, of them in the time that I have.

I wish to start with my hon. Friend’s concerns about the underfunding of his local clinical commissioning groups. That was a point also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough. NHS England is working to move CCGs towards their target fair share of funding, but this has to take place at a pace that maintains stability in the system across the country at a time of significant financial challenge. I feel that quite acutely as a local Member of Parliament representing a rural constituency that has been consistently underfunded. We are taking steps, as I mentioned to the House in a debate earlier this week, to look at introducing a fairer share of funding for rural areas and addressing other issues such as social deprivation. A consequence of that has been to try to bring those CCG areas that are recognised to be underfunded closer to the target.

The point was made that Nene and Corby CCGs have been beyond 5% of the target. I am pleased to confirm the figures that were mentioned earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering: Nene and Corby CCGs received cash increases of 5.2% and 9.4% respectively in the current year. Those increases are significantly above the average for English CCGs and bring them both within 5% of their target allocation in this year. I think that 9.4% is one of the highest increases in allocation that we have seen this year across the country, so I hope that he recognises that we are moving to right that historic challenge. This year, more than £757 million will go into my hon. Friend’s local area, and allocations over the next few years should bring both Nene and Corby CCGs even closer to their funding target.

I will take a moment to touch on the national pressures that are affecting the NHS. The NHS is very busy, but hospitals are generally performing well. The latest figures for August 2016 show that more than nine out of 10 people were seen in A&E within four hours. During 2015-16, nearly 2,500 more people were seen in A&E each day within four hours compared with 2009-10.

Paramedics respond to the majority of life-threatening cases in under eight minutes. More than 567,000 emergency calls received a face-to-face response from the ambulance services across England in August 2016 alone—an average of 18,300 a day. Ambulance services are busy, which is why we are increasing paramedic training places by more than 60% in this year alone, on top of the 2,300 extra paramedics who have joined the NHS since 2010. That allows more than 200 additional ambulances to be deployed by the NHS compared with 2010.

[Mr Bone]

The Minister is making a very good point. Does he not accept that if an ambulance were to take a patient to the Isebrook hospital, it is 10 minutes’ transport, but if it has to go to Kettering, it is 45 minutes’ transport? Is that not the sort of thing that we should look at as an efficiency saving, which is worth the investment in Isebrook?

[Mr Dunne]

I would agree with my hon. Friend in the event that the hospital in Wellingborough were able to cope with the condition, but many of the most serious conditions need to go to the best place to deliver the service, even if it takes a bit longer to get there. The quality of treatment in our ambulances now, with the skills of the paramedics who are on board in almost all cases, is such that very few people die while in transit. They are kept stable, and they need to go to the best place for treatment.

Going back to the national picture, the NHS last year treated, on average, 21,000 more outpatients a day and performed more than 4,400 operations a day compared with 2010. There is substantially more activity across the NHS, which is one reason why we have recruited so many more clinicians to help cope with this activity. We now have over 8,500 more doctors and over 2,700 more nurses, paid for in part by having nearly 7,000 fewer managers. Ultimately, we want to reduce pressure on services by reforming the urgent care system and caring for people better in the community, and that is where I think some of the things being done and being planned for the Kettering area are so interesting. It is clear that the NHS in the constituency understands the scale of the challenge and is taking action to address it.