Shotley Bridge Community Hospital — House of Commons, 2020-10-06
Topic: Health
Richard John Holden (Conservative, Centre-right): When I applied for this Adjournment debate, the situation was by no means as clear as it appears to be following the announcement from the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary last week. Shotley Bridge has been at the heart of the community in North West Durham since it was founded as a sanatorium for tuberculosis in 1912. Following the first world war, it was leased to the Ministry of Health to house and rehabilitate military casualties. It was transferred back to local authority control for use as a facility for mental illness before again becoming involved in the war effort in 1941, when it became an emergency hospital and the 16 now demolished huts that adorned the site were built Following the Beveridge report of the 1940s, the "A National Health Service" White Paper of 1944 by Sir Henry Willink, and finally the formal beginnings of our national health service under Aneurin Bevan, Shotley Bridge joined our NHS in 1948. It is on the same Liberal, Conservative, Labour cross-party consensus that the new plans for Shotley Bridge Hospital—or the replacement for it—are founded. I pay tribute to some of the local councillors I have met on the Shotley Bridge reference group, particularly Councillors Alex Watson, Owen Temple, Alan Shield and many others, and to the excellent staff at the clinical commissioning group and the local hospital trust who have met me on many occasions over the last few months Partly as a result of the steelworks at Consett and also due to its wartime use, Shotley Bridge became known for its plastics and burns treatments. A new out-patient block joined in 1950, and the tower built in 1969, which is still there today, was the last major investment in the site. The opening of the new University Hospital of North Durham, known locally by everyone in the area—including, I am sure, the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones)—as Dryburn, was opened in 2001, and with that, many services moved from Shotley Bridge to other parts of the county. In 2005, the majority of the old hospital buildings on the site were demolished and they have now become part of the growing Consett housing estate. In 2005, the majority of the old hospital buildings on the site were demolished and have now become part of the growing Consett housing estate However, Shotley Bridge Hospital still very much forms part of the community and is a real source of local pride. I am reliably informed that you can tell if a nurse has trained at Shotley Bridge by the way they are and their professionalism. Sir Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the NHS, himself did his early training at Shotley Bridge Hospital. Perhaps one of the reasons that Shotley is such a part of the community is the fact that anybody who lived and grew up in Consett and was able to vote at the last general election was likely to have been born there, although since 2001 the maternity services have moved Now a community hospital with an eight-bed ward, an urgent care centre and a number of out-patient treatments, Shotley Bridge is still very much at the heart of our local area. During the recent coronavirus outbreak, it particularly showed its worth, as places like Shotley Bridge were really able to step up and provide some of the facilities that were needed. Even at the height of the covid-19 outbreak, over half the floor space at the hospital was still in use—a fact that I got from the chief executive of the local hospital trust recently—although it was briefly stepped up to 24 beds. With almost all the buildings now at least 50 years old, and many much older, the cost of running repairs amounts to over £1.5 million a year. As services have slowly moved away, local people have been campaigning hard to stop the hospital closing completely. I pay huge tribute to the efforts of many local people over many years Securing the future of local hospital provision was at the core of my election campaign in North West Durham. Since being elected, I have been pressing Ministers on it remorselessly in the House—in my maiden speech, at Prime Minister’s questions, in questions and debates with Ministers from the Minister’s Department, and, indeed, with the Minister himself. In fact, even before today, Shotley Bridge Hospital had been mentioned by me seven times in the past 10 months, which is a significant uptick on the previous 10 years in which it had been mentioned just twice I was delighted to have the Secretary of State join me on a visit to Shotley Bridge last month—the first time that any member of staff could remember a Health Minister visiting the facility. I had actually initially invited my hon. Friend the Minister to come, but the Secretary of State clearly decided to steal it for himself, which is fair enough. The Secretary of State was really impressed by what he saw, particularly some of the nurse-led units, the huge integration with local GP practices near the site, and the fact that chemo services from across Durham had been moved to the hospital during the coronavirus outbreak—a sensible innovation to keep very vulnerable patients away from acute centres. That is something that has happened at Shotley Bridge that I hope will be replicated in other community hospitals across the country With Shotley Bridge now joining the list of 40 hospitals that the Government are committed to, I would like to offer my personal thanks, as well as that of many of my constituents, for the support that the Government are providing. The overall programme of over £3 billion is one of the largest capital investments for many years, and this is on top of the extra £33.9 billion a year that will be going into our NHS by 2023-24. That is helping to provide some of the excellent extra doctors and nurses we can now see starting to come through on the frontline. The announcement from the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary is obviously hugely welcome. However, I am not the sort of MP who will just go away and shut up, to borrow a phrase from a Government Minister I once worked for—although, I must add, not when I was a special adviser—so I would like to push the Minister on a few points about the announcement Last year, it was made clear that some of the moneys for the hospital had been secured, but they were well short of what would be required for a new facility, as outlined by the Secretary of State in his letter to me on 2 October. I would appreciate it if the Minister confirmed publicly the details of the Secretary of State’s letter to me, which included a new 16-bed hospital, unscheduled care services and out-patient services, including chemotherapy and X-rays.