National Health Service — House of Commons, 2015-01-21
Topic: Health
Paul Christopher Maynard (Conservative, Centre-right): It is intriguing to follow the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless). I will leave my intrigue at that point and focus on the debate rather than him It is a shame that the shadow Secretary of State has left the Chamber, as I was about to say something relatively pleasant and polite about him—he will not hear it now. When he came up to Lancaster and Fleetwood a few weeks ago he joined me in praising my local A and E department, which had seen 97% of patients within four hours, the fifth best performance in the country that week. That is a superb achievement given the complex health economy in Blackpool. It is very rare that we are at the top of a league table for the right reasons in Blackpool, whether that is for football or for health care, so I welcome that It was interesting to note a more hidden and nuanced message in what the shadow Secretary of State had to say. The medical director of Blackpool Victoria says that between April and September 2014, 36% of those arriving at A and E did not need to be there. They could have received their diagnosis or treatment somewhere else, and the cost to the hospital was calculated at £842,000. The message I draw from that is that we still have an immense amount of work to do to ensure that people know where to go for the right treatment at the right time. It is, of course, incumbent on us to ensure that those alternatives are resourced, that people know where to go and that people have confidence in the alternatives We have not spoken enough today about pharmacies. Pharmacy trade bodies and the industry put so much into lobbying Members on both sides of the House, but I think it will require another decade or so of intensive lobbying of MPs before we finally get the message that it is far better to have first recourse to the local pharmacist to see whether one needs to go further in seeking appropriate health care. I rely on regular repeat prescriptions for my epilepsy, and I have saved myself many a GP visit by asking a question at my local pharmacy. We are overlooking the most basic corner-of-our-street access point for primary health care, and we should not forget it I want to praise another Member of a different political party from mine, and he is sitting on the Government Front Bench: the Minister of State has already been praised today for his approach to mental health care. It is warmly welcomed, particularly in a town such as Blackpool. Our new 74-bed harbour unit is about to open on the edge of the town. It has been long-awaited, and is much-needed following some of the appalling standards of care at the Parkwood unit over the past decade The Minister will know that he faces great challenges. I could easily have come here today and read out a number of immensely tragic cases involving young people not getting the appropriate mental health care. He still faces a battle with the profession, because clinicians differ over their assessment of this issue. I see far too many young people with some learning disorder who are somewhere on the autistic spectrum, where the clinician refuses to accept that they can both have a learning disorder and a mental health problem. They fall into that gap and are batted backwards and forwards between different providers. There must be a battle in the medical profession over how to reconcile those two different forms of clinical diagnosis Another point I want to raise—I have far more than I will be able to get into my remaining four minutes—was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns). I was struck by the shadow Secretary of State’s sudden enthusiasm for the walk-in centre in Jarrow—his instant commitment that it would be saved were Labour ever to come to power. We then heard from my right hon. Friend that these things are sometimes trickier than that—that there is more nuance, perhaps. We in this Chamber often think we know it all—don’t we? We think we know everything there is to know and that we can learn nothing from anybody else about anything in our constituency—that we are the sole experts of what is right. Occasionally it would be nice to listen to the clinicians. There might actually be a clinical argument for why a particular unit has to open, close or reconfigure, but all too often debates on the reconfiguration of services become a political football—which is exactly what my right hon. Friend was saying A good example is the stroke unit in Blackpool. It has been a controversial addition because it was designed to serve the entire north-west. Patients were coming down the M6 from south Cumbria, past four or five other hospitals, to get higher quality treatment in Blackpool. As the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) chuntered during the Secretary of State’s speech, the important point is that it was about outcomes. People were going to have a better chance of survival if they went to the stroke unit in Blackpool rather than their local A and E. Yet when that was debated, it was very hard to tease out the medical arguments in favour of this innovation, because all too often we were more concerned about focusing on saving bricks and mortar in our own backyards rather than on what is actually best.