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Health Care in London

The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes) was doing so well until the end of his speech. This debate has to be slightly bigger than the ponderous party politics outlined by him then, and outlined earlier by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley). The notion that there is a land of milk and honey just waiting for the time when the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire takes over is palpable nonsense, and the hon. Gentleman knows it. A point made by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire went to the core of the matter. There is a dilemma between the local and the strategic in London, which has been woefully neglected since the inception of the national health service. I would say—of course I would, as a suburban Member of Parliament—that for too long everything has been sucked into the centre, courtesy of the fancy and precious London teaching hospitals, which admittedly are wonderful, and to the detriment of the suburbs. That dilemma has still not been resolved, and sadly it has not been and will not be resolved by Boris Johnson, as the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire intimated. On health as on a bunch of other things over the past two years, Johnson has done nothing of any consequence for public health or health in London. I stood here, or roughly here, in 1998, during the passage of the Bill that became the Greater London Authority Act 1999, and said that if in 10 years' time the Greater London assembly and the Mayor had not evolved enough to take a significant and direct role in the strategic health concerns of London, the Act would prove to be a failure. For all the glossy little documents that Boris Johnson has produced, he has, as I have said, done nothing of any consequence. If we are honest in a cross-party context, we must agree that the dilemma is between the strategic and the local. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate, who lamented what had happened to Chase Farm. Chase Farm matters to me as well, because it is linked with Barnet, and if Barnet health authority decides to do things at either Chase Farm or Barnet there will be consequences for Edgware hospital, which is 10 yards away on the other side of the Edgware road. Where does the local begin and where does it end? In January 1997 the Tories closed Edgware general hospital. They downgraded it, and left it with Barnet. It cannot be enough to make the local prevail over the strategic when people's health needs do not recognise borough boundaries in a nice convenient way.