Hospital Services (South London)

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

This is an important debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) on her speech, on securing the debate and, with her colleagues in Lewisham, on co-ordinating an effective and well argued campaign.

Along with all other south London colleagues, I have long taken an interest in health service matters, including reconfiguration. I have the scars of the battle to keep Guy’s hospital open, which we managed to do, although we lost A and E. I have often joined my neighbours, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell), to ensure that King’s College hospital improved, which, thank goodness, it has. But I have a more direct interest: my constituents on the eastern edge of my constituency in the SE8 postal district and along the edge of the boundary with Lewisham often go to Lewisham hospital, rather than to King’s or to Guy’s and St Thomas’s. Of my remaining constituents who use hospital services, some go to the Royal London hospital across the river, but most go either to Guy’s and St Tommy’s or to King’s, and the report makes it clear that there would be a major impact, particularly on King’s, if the proposals go ahead.

Obviously, legislation initiated by the previous Government and passed by the previous Parliament anticipated problems in a part of the NHS. Although Labour understood that need, the legislation has not needed to be implemented until now. The legislation has been implemented—to be honest, those of us in other parts of south-east London knew this—because there was a history of bad financial management in the outer south-east London boroughs and in South London Healthcare NHS Trust. We know that to our cost because, twice to my certain knowledge, the health budgets further in—in our parts of south-east London—had to be top-sliced to fund other bits of London, even though they are more affluent and we are less affluent, because of poor management elsewhere. There was better management both in my borough and in Lewisham.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who was Secretary of State when the Health Act 2009 was passed, has made it clear that there was never any intention to use the legislation to address major reconfigurations. The legislation was meant to address a financial problem in a specific trust and not to encompass other trusts. Does the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) agree that we need to consider the NHS London-wide? That is where we must find solutions to the financial problems of one trust, quite differently from this particular case. The trust special administrator clearly could not find a solution by considering just the South London Healthcare NHS Trust, but we cannot have the inappropriate procedure that has now been adopted.

[Simon Hughes]

The right hon. Lady, who is my neighbour, raises an important issue. With the help of the Library, I have carefully examined the whole debate on the passage of the legislation, and that issue was not addressed. If she looks back at the debates and the notes on the National Health Service Act 2006, they are silent on whether a trust special administrator could or could not make recommendations that go beyond a trust. That may not have been in the mind of her colleague, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who is a former Secretary of State, but he did not say that on the parliamentary record, although I stand to be corrected. It seems to be an open question.

The current Secretary of State told us that he has had legal advice and that he will take further legal advice, but whether or not the legal advice is that the trust special administrator can go beyond the boundaries of the area affected, there is a stronger argument for the Secretary of State not following the trust special administrator’s recommendation—and that argument starts from the legacy of the last general election in terms of the parties in government and the coalition agreement on how to deal with closures of A and E, and not doing so from the top downwards.

Secondly, the Government have set up the four tests, to which the hon. Member for Lewisham East referred and which have not been met. The Secretary of State has been handed this matter on a plate; it is not of his doing and I am sure it is the last thing he would have wished for. The announcement that the trust was going into special administration was made by his predecessor, and the current Secretary of State has been given a report by someone he did not appoint but with whom he now has to work. He has no choice. He has to deal with it, but he made it clear in his answer to the urgent question from the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford that the four tests, which both he and the Prime Minister have cited, must be met.

The first test—that the proposals must be supported by GP commissioners—fails before we even get to the other three. I have no reason to believe that a single GP commissioner in Lewisham is supportive—GPs elsewhere in London might be found but they implicitly do not comment—the whole idea of the proposal seems to be that if we are handing NHS decisions from the top to the doctors, we must do things that the doctors agree are the right decisions. So the proposal falls at that first hurdle.

[Jim Dowd]

Should I catch your eye later, Dr McCrea, I will address the four principles in more detail.

The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) says that the Secretary of State’s predecessor set up the four tests, but does he not accept that one of the previous Secretary of State’s first acts just after the 2010 general election was to suspend the implementation of the “A Picture of Health” process that the South London Healthcare NHS Trust was undertaking? I am not saying that the process would necessarily have led to success, but its suspension undeniably made the trust’s task unbelievably more difficult.

[Simon Hughes]

I do not dispute that. I am not as close to the process as the hon. Gentleman. I did not follow those issues as closely, because the process did not directly affect my borough, although it directly affected his. I have taken advice from someone who has been involved over the years at Lewisham hospital and in NHS management, and the history of financial poor management in the South London Healthcare NHS Trust stretches back over 10 years. The advice I have received is that poor management should have been gripped seven or eight years ago, but the problems escalated. We are in our present position because of a legacy of poor decisions made over effectively a decade. Things might have been rescued by the Government at the beginning of this Parliament, but they clearly were not and we are left in our present position.

I have a few comments, and I do not want to take time from other colleagues who have a direct interest. I responded to the consultation to make clear the interests of my constituents. The Secretary of State invited those of us with an interest to see him, and we are grateful for that invitation, which we used, I hope, to put our case effectively. The right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham and I, and those MPs whose constituents use King’s, have written to the Secretary of State further to that meeting to make clear our concerns about the impact on King’s of any closure of Lewisham A and E, irrespective of the change in maternity services.

There is an alternative approach, which I commend to the Secretary of State. I hope he understands the benefit of going down the alternative route, rather than following the trust special administrator’s recommendations. The alternative, which we explored at our meeting and which I do not believe was adequately answered by the trust special administrator or his colleagues, is that five of the six recommendations—excluding recommendation 5 on the site configuration—leave open the option of amalgamating NHS management between Lewisham and Greenwich. NHS management could then be allowed to work out the best configuration of services across the two boroughs in consultation with, and with the confidence of, the local authorities in question, which now have direct responsibility through health and wellbeing boards under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, and in conjunction with GPs to seek GP commissioning endorsement and support. I hope there would be much more public support than for the present proposal, as is understandable.

I hope that the Secretary of State will find that to be an appropriate solution. It may have a small financial disadvantage over the present proposals but, as the hon. Member for Lewisham East said in her speech and as she and her colleagues from Lewisham have made clear in their letters to the Secretary of State, the TSA’s figures show a financial gap of only £1.7 million from a break-even position if recommendation 5 were not to be followed, compared with a financial gap of £75.6 million if the recommendations were followed. There are knock-on effects, but we seem to be talking about a sufficiently small amount of money, with little risk of any other financially adverse impact, and if people are motivated to reach a conclusion quickly, that must be a much more satisfactory way of proceeding and much more in line with the four tests set out.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I wanted to give the right hon. Gentleman those figures, so I am glad he has put them on the record, because they are significant. Furthermore, there is real willingness in Lewisham, from the hospital, the GPs, the consultants and all the staff, to work for some kind of merger or co-operation with Woolwich that would reduce costs. Everyone is willing and happy to explore that, but in the right circumstances, in the right time frame and with appropriate consultation, which is what has been missing from the process.

[Simon Hughes]

I have no reason to disbelieve what the right hon. Lady says, but even more important is returning the decision to the people in the health service who are now meant to be leading it—the GP commissioners and others. That is what all of us, in different ways, believe needs to be done. She made an argument for the issue being London-wide, and that of course is the context, but the practicalities of travel and transport, whether buses, cabs, cars and trains, are such that south-east London works as a segment for health service use in a way that does not really cross over into other parts of London, other than to King’s. The only knock-on bits are the small amount of crossover to the London hospitals for specialist reasons, and some to King’s because it is so near—technically, it is south-east London, but it is in Lambeth.

Secondly, the precedent would be a bad one to set for those parts of the NHS that have been financially well managed, compared with parts that have been badly managed. Lewisham has been relatively well managed, being very nearly in balance. We rely on trusts to do their job locally and on people to manage local trusts, so we have to support those who do that job well and responsibly.

My last point is probably the most important. I have been to Lewisham A and E and visited patients there privately. It and the maternity services have developed a reputation for good clinical care of all who attend it. That was not the case some years ago, but it has been worked on, and not only physically. It has become a university teaching hospital, as well as being a local general hospital, and it has good community links—the point made by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford in her intervention. It has also built up a good reputation for integrating acute care, hospital-centred care, with community provision.

The Secretary of State could take the clinically easy decision to follow the trust administrator’s recommendation, saying, “This is what has been recommended, therefore I am following what I have been told”, but I hope that he realises the greater benefits to the local community and to the wider health economy and service of south-east London, as well as to the Government if they are seen to be listening to the people and to the GPs more than to the trust special administrator. I understand why the trust special administrator takes a hard line, because he is a health economist and his interest is finance. The Health Secretary, however, has a different job, which is to be responsible for the NHS in England, and that means making responsible decisions to secure a good NHS in all parts of south London and elsewhere.

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

I will be commencing the winding-up speeches at 10.40 am at the latest. Three Members are seeking to catch my eye, so I ask them please to be conscious of that in their contributions, because I would like to get as many Members in as possible.