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Summer Adjournment

I congratulate the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) on a common-sense speech. We all admire her independent spirit, and I hope that she gets her way on a referendum, as she has done on other matters, such as casinos, now that the new Prime Minister has taken over. I should like to raise a subject that will be of interest to the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), who spoke earlier, namely health care in south London. More particularly, I want to discuss the disturbing financial situation of the Bromley Hospitals NHS Trust. The trust has two hospitals: the Princess Royal University hospital in Farnborough, and a smaller hospital—a community hospital in effect—the Orpington hospital. The PRU, as it is known locally, is a brand-new private finance initiative hospital that opened four years ago. It was financed by land sales and a PFI scheme. When the PRU was built, part of the original plan was that the Orpington hospital would be closed down, despite it being a community hospital, and its buildings would be used to house the trust’s accounts department. With the help of a magnificent, formidable group of ladies in my constituency, who run an organisation called the Community Care Protection Group, I petitioned against the change, under the slogan ““beds before bookkeepers””, and managed to save Orpington hospital, which is one of my greatest triumphs as a Member of Parliament. I give the Government great credit for the fact that the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and something else—[Hon. Members: ““Regulatory Reform.””]—yes, reducing regulation or something, opened a new treatment centre four years ago, on which the Government spent £8 million of taxpayers’ money. I therefore have a brand-new PFI hospital and a community hospital, both of which are four years old, so we have excellent new facilities in my constituency, and I give the Government credit for that. All seemed to be going well, even over the past year, although, as we know, there is a £500 million deficit in the NHS countrywide, and 20,000 nurses and others have been laid off. There are difficulties across the country, but the fact is that in Bromley patients were very satisfied with the new facilities. The staff morale was good, and the nurses and clinicians do a terrific job. High recommendations came from the Government. The possibility of foundation status was mooted and worked towards. More and more stars were allocated, and all seemed to be going well. It was recognised that the financial situation was perhaps a little challenging, but it was understood that the operating deficit was under control, and would be eliminated this year. Imagine our horror when the new management of the trust revealed, in the past two months, that there was in fact an £87 million deficit, and that the financial situation demanded a cut of £20 million in the current financial year. That has staggered everybody in the local community, as the Deputy Leader of the House can well imagine. I have been trying to find out the exact reason for that abrupt volte-face, and as far as I can see, it is first down to a very bad PFI deal. I have looked at the appendices attached to ““A Picture of Health””—it always amazes me that the Government have jolly little titles to conceal very uncomfortable facts—and it says that the occupation costs of the PRU are very high; indeed, they are double what they would be under conventional public-sector financing. They are so high that they are worse than those for most other PFI hospitals, and I understand that that is because it was an early PFI scheme, so the hospital got a worse deal than some others did. In the circumstances, one would expect a refinancing of the debt. Indeed, that took place when the construction was completed, but it has finished, and the downside of the refinancing is that the debt arrangements will remain the same for the next 35 years. There can be no further change in the debt arrangements. The banks and so on that picked up the debt get their interest, uprated for the retail prices index every year, and there is no risk transfer whatever. Now that the hospital is in financial trouble, there is no possibility of them taking up some of the slack. They get their money anyway. It is astonishing that there has been no risk transfer in the whole of the PFI operation, as there has not been in many others. Bonds were used in the refinancing and because the bond-holders are difficult to locate, there can be no leasing out of the facilities, which would otherwise be a possibility in such a situation. The financial position is bad and it gets worse. Recognising the difficulties brought about by the hospital financing situation, the Government gave Bromley Hospitals NHS Trust an annual sum of £6 million to cover the difficulties. That has been abruptly withdrawn, and we do not know why. Will the Minister ask her colleagues in the Department of Health why that substantial sum—£6 million out of an operating deficit of possibly £20 million—has been abruptly withdrawn with no explanation? The hospital management, to whom I spoke last week, does not know why and is trying to find out. I do not know. I hope the Government know why that extraordinary action was taken. The Government have put in place a new tariff system for the recovery of health costs throughout the country. That is based on average cost. The problem is that Bromley NHS trust has above average costs. It is therefore providing many items and carrying out many clinical jobs at a loss, thereby contributing to its operating deficit. As a consequence of all this, the Government have looked at all these matters in south-east London as a whole on a cash basis and are no longer prepared to consider the sort of financial devices that carried hospital trusts in that situation from one year to another. They will no longer contemplate that, presumably because they are running out of money to finance the NHS, as a result of all the bungles that have occurred over doctors’ salaries, IT, the legacy of extra bureaucracy and so forth. There is an acute financial crisis. In addition, as London Members know, there is the plan to transfer health treatment from hospitals to community care. Lord Darzi has brought forward that scheme for London. The problem in Bromley is, first, that we have all those brand-new facilities—two new hospitals—and the Government are telling us not to use them so much and to transfer treatment to the community. Secondly, we do not have very good community care facilities. In a recent survey the GP surgeries in Bromley are rated the fourth worst in the country. They are very old fashioned. Often a Victorian house has been used for many years by a single-handed or perhaps a two or three-handed GP practice and cannot take on board all the additional facilities and treatments that the primary care trust wishes it to offer. The PCT says that it is still giving the hospitals trust the same amount of money. Indeed, it is, in theory, but it is asking for more treatments to be carried out in the community and fewer to be carried out by hospitals. In the end the hospital gets less money. That is also contributing to its cash crisis. A bad financial situation was set up, to which poor resource planning contributed, and a blueprint for health care which is inappropriate to the circumstances of Bromley has been imposed. I shall be campaigning against that so that the situation does not affect my constituents adversely, and to retain the facilities that we greatly value in Bromley and Orpington. They are much loved by local people, who have received excellent health care there over the past few years, which I wish them to continue to receive. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will tell her colleagues in the House of Commons and in the Government that that is a perfect example of bungling incompetence ruining potentially good health care facilities, and I hope that she will do something about it.