Ipswich Hospital: Orthopaedic Services — House of Commons, 2020-07-07
Topic: Health
Thomas Patrick Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the Minister for being here to respond to this much-needed debate. It is needed because on 14 July, the Ipswich and East Suffolk and North East Essex clinical commissioning groups will make a decision on plans to remove elective orthopaedic surgery from Ipswich Hospital and transfer it down the A12 to a new centre in Colchester, away from the people who rely on it. If the plans were to go ahead, they would represent a downgrade to Ipswich Hospital and make it the only hospital in the east of England that I am aware of not to offer a full complement of orthopaedic services. Despite that, the CCGs’ papers for the 14 July meeting will recommend that the plans be approved In many ways, it is disappointing that this debate is needed in the first place. Public opposition to the plans is overwhelming. I will come to the important reasons why later, but first I want to make the House aware of the scale of the opposition to the plans. An online petition to protect orthopaedic services at Ipswich Hospital established by the Orwell Ahead campaign group currently has more than 8,700 signatures, despite having been up for only a few days. I have already shared the petition with the Minister, but I want him to be aware of how many more people have added their names to it since we last spoke As well as the number of signatures, I am sure that the Minister and others who have studied the petition will not have failed to notice that it refers to a joint quote from me and the Labour leader of Ipswich Borough Council, Councillor David Ellesmere. Anyone who follows day-to-day politics in Ipswich will know that Councillor Ellesmere and I do not always see eye to eye, but on this issue we are united as the principal national and local representatives of our town. The quote in the petition comes from one of two joint letters about these proposals that we have sent to the chief officer of the Ipswich and East Suffolk clinical commissioning group. Combined, those letters, which detail our cross-party opposition to the plans, stretch to more than nine pages. However, that is by no means the extent of the opposition that has been expressed The 12-week consultation on the plans, which ran between February and April, found that almost two thirds of respondents were opposed to the new centre in Colchester. That is despite the fact that the consultation took on board the views of people in Colchester as well as people in Ipswich. Had the consultation taken place just in Ipswich, that number undoubtedly would have been far higher Over the last few weeks, that has been reflected in my inbox. I have received hundreds of letters, emails and other messages from constituents about this issue and not one has expressed support for the plans. They include not only former patients who have told me they would not be walking today were it not for the first-rate orthopaedic care currently provided at Ipswich Hospital, but hospital workers, and elderly and vulnerable people who are worried about the prospect of having to travel to Colchester in future. When the chief executive of the hospitals trust asked me to pass on the correspondence that I have received from constituents so he could address their concerns, I did. I sent over a dossier that was 20 pages long, yet this still only represented a fraction of the correspondence that I have received. It also excluded many people who have contacted me from further afield in Suffolk, who are among the 390,000 people who depend upon the services provided by Ipswich Hospital. Many of them share my constituents’ concerns, and some patients to the north of Ipswich face even longer and more difficult trips to Colchester than patients in Ipswich It is clear now that the only way for the concerns of my constituents and others to be addressed is for these plans to be reviewed. Of course, my overwhelming preference is for new plans to be drawn up and for the approximately £44 million that is currently earmarked for a new centre to be invested in both Ipswich and Colchester hospitals. I know that many of the people from across the political spectrum who signed the petition and who have written to me are also tuning into BBC Parliament this evening and are watching what is said here very closely I think it is only right to use this opportunity to refute the claim made jointly by the chief executive of the hospitals trust and the chief officer of the clinical commissioning group that the public’s petition is causing unnecessary concern and fear. Leaving aside the substance of those remarks for one second, I point out that this is not the first time that the chief executive of the hospitals trust and the chief officer of the CCG have written a joint letter or made closely aligned statements. Given that the chief officer of the CCG will be at the heart of the decision-making process on this issue, it is questionable why he is already so firmly in line with the trust on its plans. This adds to the widely shared sense that, for all intents and purposes, this decision has already been made, and that the decision-making process has been compromised. I hope that Ministers will consider that very carefully when looking at this issue and at how these plans are being pushed through against the wishes of my constituents I think it is clear to almost everyone, except senior NHS management locally, that it is not the public petition that is causing concerns, but the plans themselves. It is the local NHS management who have failed to make the case for these proposals. They are the ones who have failed to take the public with them on this journey. Unfortunately, these latest remarks by the chief executive and the chief officer are just more evidence of that same senior management failing to listen to the public. However, the public’s concerns deserve to be heard and that is why I will set them out very clearly now The removal of elective orthopaedic surgery would mean that patients in Ipswich have to travel further for their surgery. There must not be an assumption that everyone will have loved ones who can take them to Colchester and back or that they will be able to take public transport, especially after just having had a hip or knee replacement. Constituents have also told me that it would be harder for them to visit their loved ones who have undergone surgery in Colchester to give them crucial comfort and support.