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Access to NHS Services

I think that we have dealt with the hon. Gentleman fully. Like many other hon. Members I should like to welcome the new health ministerial team. Before today, I thought that the new Health Secretary and his Ministers would offer new hope to the Department—at least compared with their predecessors, who left NHS staff and patients both demoralised and discontented. I hope that Ministers will learn from that history and perhaps show greater humility, given the recent record, than the Secretary of State showed today. He said that the former Secretary of State carried more political nous or ability than I had in the end of my finger. That is about my assessment; I think that she has got more ability than I have in the end of my small finger. The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) said that we needed targets. She is absolutely wedded to targets. I am glad to say that the Secretary of State has taken a lesson from the consistent, hard-working and excellent Conservative Front-Bench team on the need to get rid of targets and has said that he will move away from targets. The hon. Member for Wakefield may resist that, but I am glad that there was one bright spark in the speech of the new Secretary of State. In the few minutes that I have, I want to talk about community hospitals. When I came to this place, I found that hon. Members across the House had problems with community hospitals. I see some of them here this evening on the Labour Benches. Vital services were threatened with cuts or closure, so in November 2005 I formed community hospitals acting nationally together—CHANT—a cross-party group supported by Liberal Democrat, Labour, Conservative and Independent Members and patrons from both Houses of Parliament. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford is a supporter or not. CHANT has fought to raise the issue of community hospitals in this House. We were delighted by the Government’s White Paper, which suggested that at last community hospitals were going to be saved. When CHANT was established in November 2005, about 80 community hospitals were threatened with cuts or closure. That number, according to the Community Hospitals Association, is now more than 166. Across the country, especially in rural communities, we have seen services cut. In my local area, we have seen the 24-hour minor injuries unit service at Withernsea hospital cut to day times only. We have seen constant battles by the whole community, on a cross-party basis, as my hon. Friends, who have not been seeking to make partisan points, have pointed out. Proposals were put forward at one stage to close every bed in Hornsea cottage hospital on some spurious urgency grounds. That had to be resisted by the threat of going to court, which led to the trust backing down. Then the primary care trust came forward with proposals that would have seen every NHS bed closed in my constituency—beds in Withernsea, which is a highly deprived, isolated community, Hornsea and Beverley as well as Driffield. The plan was that the only NHS beds to replace those closed beds would be in Goole and Bridlington—a four-hour round trip. Who knows how long it would take by public transport for the typically elderly patient and their spouse if they had to get to those hospitals? The community came together as one. The one benefit of the consultation was the way in which it brought the community together. They were united in opposition to the plan, as people have been in so many other parts of the country. In fact, 3,500 submissions were made to the PCT. It was overwhelmed and had to delay its response. Tens of thousands of people signed petitions. I am pleased to say that every Member of Parliament in the East Riding of Yorkshire and the leaders of the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats, the Independents and the Conservatives on East Riding of Yorkshire council jointly signed a letter to the PCT board saying that it must stop the attack on vital services. I am pleased to relate that that did have an impact, such was the opposition. The trust has recognised the need to maintain beds in Beverley, which is a major step forward, and Withernsea. It has not saved any beds in Hornsea, although I hope still that there will be an opportunity for us to keep some beds in what I believe is the largest town in England that does not have an A road to it. It has B roads, which are all too often blocked by traffic in the summer. Local people need local services in that sparsely populated rural community. They should not be judged on the same basis as a unit in the centre of a city. I congratulate the whole community, the newspapers, and the television stations. The Hull Daily Mail, the Holderness Gazette and the Beverley Guardian worked on the campaign. Political parties, voluntary groups and others came together and fought the decision, and the PCT was made to listen. However, we are losing beds in Hornsea and there is a pattern of such closures across the country. I hope that the new ministerial team will look again at the White Paper and send out messages from the centre that community hospitals will be supported. There has been chaos in the way in which the Department has responded. Fortunately, there was a major effort in the House to put pressure on Ministers in the previous Administration. There was a response last summer from the previous Secretary of State; she announced £750 million of capital funding for community hospitals. That was supposed to be a five-year programme. Perhaps I may ask the new Minister of State to investigate the programme. My PCT was told by the strategic health authority with only a few weeks’ notice that it had to pull forward and get its bids in by the end of June, now postponed to the end of July. Yet it was supposed to be a five-year programme with full consultation. I ask the Minister to look again at community hospitals and ensure that the vision laid out in the White Paper, which had support across the House, can be delivered on the ground. Too often, Government rhetoric has not been matched by the reality that local constituents have had to put up with.