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Health Care (Sutton)

The hon. Gentleman makes some fair points about the limbo that the health service in the London borough of Sutton has experienced for some time. At long last, however, the local NHS has come up with a plan that has secured the support of the joint overview and scrutiny committee, which comprises elected members from Merton, Sutton and Surrey, and local residents and local MPs, including the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). That plan has been submitted as an outline business case to NHS London. The plan includes a brand new, state-of-the-art building that will replace Ferguson house and will house the majority of the hospital's wards and clinics. It also sees the establishment of a network of local care centres—formerly known as care hospitals—throughout Sutton and Merton. The investment at St. Helier in the new patient block is the keystone of the plan. Without it, the plans collapse, because they do not support the weight of the logic that drives them. Without that plan, my constituents will not get the 21st century health care to which they are entitled. What is urgently required now is a green light from the Government—in the first instance, from NHS London and then from the Department for Health and the Treasury—to fund the £140 million cost of the new building. I fear that further delay could be fatal to the future of our general hospital. My second point concerns the future governance arrangements for Epsom and St. Helier hospitals. The trust is consulting on a range of options, including maintaining the status quo of the current arrangements for Epsom and St. Helier, and the possibility of an amicable divorce between the two hospitals. Having seen a succession of chief executives struggle to make the trust function as a single effective entity, I am convinced that a de-merger is the right way forward. Straddling the Greater London boundary, the trust finds itself pulled in at least two directions: south to meet the needs of north Surrey and north to meet the needs of Sutton and Merton. It is constantly being pulled by two strategic health authorities with different agendas, trying to meet the different aspirations and needs of different populations. It will always find it difficult to meet those aspirations as one corporate entity. Epsom and St. Helier was created by something of a shotgun marriage in 1999. At the time, the Department of Health saw the need to try to stabilise the financial situation in both trusts—particularly, as I understand it, in the Epsom Health Care NHS Trust, as it was at the time—and drove the change to a speedy conclusion. It certainly did not benefit from as much external scrutiny as local overview and scrutiny committees would give such changes today. The legacy of that shotgun marriage has been a decade of paralysis. De-merger would allow a St. Helier NHS trust, as it would become, to focus on meeting the needs of residents in Sutton and Merton, delivering long overdue investment in services and infrastructure. My only concern, however, is that a possible de-merger could derail investment at St. Helier and the implementation of ““Better Healthcare Closer to Home””. My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington and I have sought reassurances from the Epsom and St. Helier trust that that would not be the case, and we have heard warm words of encouragement. The trust believes that it would not undermine anything within the outline business case that has been submitted. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me on that point. If we can secure the future of St. Helier and see the roll-out of ““Better Healthcare Closer to Home””, that should create the necessary space to concentrate on other deficits in local primary care and mental health services in the Sutton area. That brings me to my third point. I have for some years now been dealing with constituents in Worcester Park who have experienced serious difficulties in obtaining access to a local GP's list. Indeed, I understand that constituents moving from the Sutton part of my constituency to Worcester Park often beg their GP to let them remain on their books for that very reason. Worcester Park could be described as a GP desert. When one crosses the Kingston and Sutton boundary, one will find no GP practice until one hits the London road. I believe that it is time that Sutton and Merton, as a primary care trust, took up its responsibilities to ensure a fair distribution of GP provision across the area and actively engaged with local residents in Worcester Park to gauge the true level of local need and to meet it appropriately. The trust has continued to argue for too long now that there is no problem, despite all the anecdotal evidence, the evidence from my mailbag and the views of some GPs in the area who have identified the problem. I hope that the Minister will encourage the primary care trust to take on that challenge and to engage with the local population on the issue. My fourth point relates to mental health. Again, reorganisation of mental health services in south-west London and sometimes weak health care leadership—particularly in the past—have left mental health services in the London borough of Sutton suffering from under-investment. There has been a lack of investment in developing supported living and supported employment and in building capacity in the private and voluntary sectors to provide a more diverse and appropriate community-based set of services for people with mental health problems and learning disabilities. A consortium of south-west London primary care trusts is on the verge of consulting on plans for acute provision that might lead to the loss of beds at the Chiltern wing on the Sutton hospital site in my constituency and their possible transfer to remote locations at either Tolworth or Springfield in Tooting. I do not support the loss of acute beds in the borough. I think that that would be bad for patients and for their carers and families. I strongly believe that the opportunity should be taken to break down the stigma around mental health by co-locating mental and physical health services on the same sites. Community mental health services could be co-located with local care centres. Indeed, that is suggested in the outline business case that has been submitted. The opportunity should similarly be taken to consider the possibility of locating acute mental health beds separately but on the St. Helier site. That should not be lost sight of in the necessary drive to get an outline business case signed off for the new patient block at St. Helier. Finally, question marks remain over the future of the Sutton hospital site. If ““Better Healthcare Closer to Home”” moves from theory to practice, and we start to see its implementation, that will leave a question mark hanging over the future of the Sutton site after 2016. That seems some way away, but my constituents feel that they need to know with some certainty that there are clear undertakings and processes surrounding how that site's future will be determined. They regard NHS land as precious, as I do. Once it has been built on—particularly once houses are built on it—it is lost, which means that the huge opportunities are lost. Before it is lightly disposed of, the site's potential for future use by both the NHS and social care in my area should be actively explored. I hope that the Minister agrees that my constituents should have a chance to have their say in the future use of the site, to ensure that it meets local health care needs and addresses the running sore of spill-over parking on residential roads around the site. Sutton hospital has some prestigious neighbours: the Royal Marsden and the Institute of Cancer Research. They deliver world-class research and world-class treatment and care. The opportunity to expand science and to develop cancer services should not be missed. Already, the possibility of collaboration between the Marsden and local GPs is under discussion. The idea is to develop a new GP clinic on part of the site. Let me end where I began. Too much time, energy and money has been absorbed getting to this point, but we are here at last. Much now hangs on an early green light for the outline business case for St. Helier and for ““Better Healthcare Closer to Home””. Those proposals unlock the opportunity to deal with mental health and primary care, and I hope that the decision can be taken soon.