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Department of Health

I totally disagree with the hon. Gentleman, given my personal experience. While the failed previous chief executive has escaped to a plumb nursing job in the Department of Health, is it right that patients and staff should suffer cuts as a result of poor past management? Valuable and committed staff are being sacrificed to recoup the losses generated by past poor management. There is scope for greater efficiency. For instance, a hip replacement normally means a five-day hospital stay, and if in North Staffordshire that involves an 11-day stay, it does not take rocket science to recognise that the hospital is bound to make a loss. Unless such stays are reduced to the average for other trusts, the hospital is bound to get itself into difficulties. Improvements can and will be made by examining the use of theatres and out-patient services, rationalising the split site arrangements, using new technologies and reviewing back-office functions, but the impression remains that existing staff are paying the price for management failures that were not of their making. I have received numerous letters—similar letters have appeared in the press, too—praising the friendliness and professionalism, and the caring and hard-working nature, of the staff, and I want them to be looked after. There is a plan to employ many of the people who currently occupy the 1,000 jobs in the community that are due to go, because the trend is towards community care rather than basing care on an acute hospital. I want to see a package on the scale of the Rover package to help those staff either retrain or enter other jobs in the health service. The community in north Staffordshire is very deprived, and we cannot sustain 1,000 job losses without extra help.