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NHS Deficits

That would not surprise me at all, because as I said, only 45 of those 150 redundancies were compulsory. Eight nurses were made compulsorily redundant—other nurses took voluntary redundancy. However, I do not wish to underplay the seriousness of the situation. A number of nurses who, traditionally, could expect to be employed by the local hospital, could not secure jobs. Now the local hospital is taking more nurses from Keele university, but many nurses have decided, because they have had offers, to go to Australia. That might be a fantastic experience—I am not suggesting otherwise—but the situation has led to some soul searching in the area. North Staffordshire is an area of low skills, and we cannot afford to lose that valuable skills base. However, what worries me most is that clear mismanagement at the hospital was not picked up. It is accountable to the strategic health authority, but to whom is the strategic health authority accountable? It is responsible for the performance management of trusts in its area, and it seems that it was asleep on the job. All the signs were there. The chief executive announced that he was leaving his job 13 months before he was due to go, but in all that time the hospital did not manage to find an adequate and effective replacement. The report by the Select Committee on Health found that there is no failure strategy in the NHS. There should have been a strategy that kicked in at that point, and people should have said, ““Hold on, there are alarm bells sounding here—we must take this in hand.”” When the scale of the problem was finally revealed, members of the hospital’s management board resigned en masse. A new chief executive, Antony Sumara, was brought in, who made a very good job of sorting out the mess. He made much better use of theatres and day surgery. It is a sprawling hospital on three separate sites, and he rationalised activities on different sites to ensure that it worked more efficiently. However, even he could not do everything, because the hospital buildings are up to 150 years old, so there was a big challenge. We hoped that he would stay put after his year’s contract expired, and there certainly were suggestions that he would do so. But that has not happened. He was obviously headhunted to go elsewhere. We now have an acting chief executive, who I am sure is doing all she can, but I do not know whether the management of the hospital is getting the support that it needs. Its task it not just to manage a dilapidated hospital. We are to have significant and very welcome investment in a new maternity and oncology block that is due to open in two years. It represents an investment of £71 million from the Department of Health. At the same time, the plans for building a new PFI hospital are well advanced. There are several balls in the air, and the acting chief executive may not be getting the support that she deserves. Because of past performance, I have no great faith in the strategic health authority to supply that support. A real worry for everybody, especially patients, is the fact that infection rates remain stubbornly high. I know that much work has been done to reduce infection rates and meet Government targets, but I wonder whether the failure to get those rates down is a symptom of a wider problem. I hope not. When I talk to my constituents about their experience in the NHS, particularly in that hospital, by and large I get very good reports. It is only people who have not had recent experience of the NHS who say it is a shambles. However, experience in the hospital can vary from ward to ward. When my own daughter was in that hospital, her experience varied from ward to ward. She saw quite a few different wards, sadly. The primary care trust in my area is doing much better. We merged two primary care trusts, and I am grateful to Ministers for overruling the strategic health authority and supporting local people in our fight for a local PCT. The record of that PCT has justified Ministers’ confidence in it. It is brilliantly led by the chief executive, Tony Bruce. As a result, the PCT is expected to be in balance this year, while achieving all the Government’s expectations and ambitions. It would have been in surplus if it had not been top-sliced. As Tony Bruce told me the other day, the next two years are crucial, not just because NHS finances will be tighter, but because we have to make the right investment decisions now to ensure that we improve the lives and reduce the dependency of patients.