Health

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:07 pm on 20 December 2012.

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Photo of Jim Dowd Jim Dowd Labour, Lewisham West and Penge 12:07, 20 December 2012

Yes, I think that is part of the TSA’s agenda. The way the Department has engineered this situation is disgraceful, dishonourable, disreputable and downright dishonest—and if we have not had enough alliteration, I could add devious, as well as underhand and fraudulent.

Hon. Members will not be surprised to learn that I am no great supporter of what the TSA has done. The Department is attempting to pervert the process because the major impact of what the administrator in the adjoining trust is doing is on Lewisham hospital. The draft report is a considerable document that has cost an awful lot of money and made an awful lot of money for a number of consultants, including McKinsey, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers—they always seem to do well out of these things. The public consultation on the draft report has closed and the Secretary of State is due to reach a decision. The final report from the TSA will be presented in early January and the Secretary of State will be making a decision in February. I appeal today for the Secretary of State to suspend the entire process, because it has been perverted in the way that I have outlined.

I do not hold the TSA personally responsible. I have met him on a few occasions and find him to be a reasonable and rational person. However, I know that the devastating impact of his report is on Lewisham hospital—the impact there is beyond anything that will happen at Queen Mary’s, the Princess Royal or the Queen Elizabeth. The report will result in the closure of the accident and emergency department, and all medical and surgical emergency care, all maternity services, all children’s services and all critical care will cease on the Lewisham hospital site.

I had an Adjournment debate on this subject a couple of weeks ago. My right hon. Friend Dame Joan Ruddock and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East

(Heidi Alexander) both raised the issue in the Opposition-day debate on health just last week. If I were to raise this matter every day in this House, I could not adequately reflect the burning resentment and anger that it has caused in the community in Lewisham, as the injustice is so severe. The Department could not appoint a special administrator to look at Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust, because it is a solvent, well-managed trust meeting all its performance and financial targets. What the Department has done is appoint an administrator next door and then, under the bogus and completely facile assumption that everything connects with everything else, focused on Lewisham hospital. That is what is completely devious about this.

At the public meetings the TSA has held on the matter, he has shown a little film setting out what he is trying to do. It included him quoting this age-old homily, “If your domestic finances are in mess, clearly you have to do something about it.” I do not dispute that the finances of the South London Healthcare NHS Trust are in a mess. At the meeting in Sydenham one of my constituents said to him, “If your domestic finances are in a mess, you may well have to do something about it, but that does not include breaking into next door’s house and nicking all their stuff.” That is precisely what is happening under this system. This procedure is being used for the first time. If it is used in that way, the Department will set a template for the rest of the country. It will then, in theory, be able to appoint a TSA anywhere and his or her remit will be such that they can look anywhere; they will not just focus on the area or trust they have been established to look into.

The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State repeatedly parrot four tests for reorganisations and reconfigurations. The first is that they should have general practitioner and clinical commissioning group support. The second is that they should have public engagement. That is a strange use of the vague term “public engagement”; they do not specify “public support”. The third is that the proposals have to be clinically sound. The fourth is that they have to increase patient choice. None of those factors exists in the recommendations for Lewisham hospital, and the TSA does not even maintain that they do. He openly admits that the proposals will reduce patient choice sharply. The clinicians, the hospital board, the CCG, and various groups of GPs across Lewisham and beyond all say that the recommendations are a threat to the standard of care that the people of Lewisham can expect and all are opposed to the TSA’s proposals. I say to the Secretary of State, via the Under-Secretary of State for Health, Dr Poulter, that he should abandon the scheme now, as the way it has been undertaken is clearly flawed, and he should protect the services that my constituents and people across south-east London have a right to expect.