National Health Service — House of Commons, 2015-01-21
Topic: Health
Hugh Bayley (Labour, Centre-left): NHS services in the vale of York are provided by well-qualified and hard-working staff and this year they received £367 million to provide their services. Nevertheless, services in my city of York are in crisis as a direct result of coalition Government policy The A and E service at York hospital has broken down over the past two months. In December, 71 operations were cancelled at the last minute so the beds could be freed up for emergency admissions from A and E. Between 1 and 11 January this year—11 days—84 operations were cancelled for the same reason. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) was Secretary of State for Health, he created the walk-in centre in York, which he visited with me, and it reduced pressure on A and E. He created NHS Direct, which reduced pressure on A and E. The walk-in centre was closed two or three years ago and NHS Direct has now been closed, so it is not surprising that we face these extra pressures with hundreds of thousands of extra presentations at A and E each year The pressures in A and E mean that when ambulances arrive with acutely ill patients they often have to wait a long time before they can pass the patient over to the A and E service. That inevitably has a knock-on effect on ambulance response times. A freedom of information request made last week by the trade union Unite found out that Yorkshire ambulance service failed to meet its national target of responding to 75% of emergencies within eight minutes in 11 of the 12 months leading up to October of last year The problems within mental health services are even worse. Last year, the Care Quality Commission highlighted major failings and, following an especially serious incident at Bootham Park hospital, the acute mental health hospital in York, in which a patient died, I wrote to the Secretary of State in April 2014 in support of the local clinical commissioning group and Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, the provider of mental health services in York, to press for urgent plans to replace the 250-year-old Bootham Park hospital. It is a fine grade I listed building, but because of its listed status English Heritage prevents the health trust from removing ligature points or installing anti-barricade doors and makes it impossible to provide clear lines of sight from nursing stations to the patients’ bedrooms The CQC’s concerns are not just about adult mental health services. The child and adolescent mental health unit in York, Lime Trees, was constructed more recently. It is a mixed unit for girls and boys, but it does not have sufficient bathrooms to preserve dignity with two genders within the unit. It also has inadequate space for clinical meetings, therapy sessions and family visits, and it only has limited space for the young people themselves to relax and, because of its deficiencies the more acutely ill young people have to be sent away, often to the other side of the Pennines, in order to get treatment. That does not make sense. We have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) and others today about the pressures on families when acutely mentally ill young people are moved away I got a letter back from the Minister of State saying that NHS Property Services was working with local commissioners "to look at a comprehensive estate strategy for York." That was eight months ago, and I say to the Minister—I hope his Parliamentary Private Secretary will tap him on the shoulder now—that I would like him in his response today to say what progress has been made in those eight months in providing a capital package to replace Bootham Park hospital in York. It is urgently needed and he has had a long time to consider it Just last week the CQC, in a new report, made further criticism of the Leeds and York mental health trust. Most worryingly of all, it revealed that York receives much poorer services than Leeds, despite the same trust providing services to both places. The local paper in York had a headline story describing it as "A Tale of Two Cities." The trust chief executive Chris Butler has told me that the reason for the disparity in services is simply because the CCG in Leeds is better resourced than the CCG in the Vale of York and therefore it receives more money per capita for the population served from Leeds than for that served from York. It is simply unacceptable for access to care to depend on a postcode lottery Two things have brought about this crisis. First, there has been a squeeze in funding in the NHS. As I pointed out when the Secretary of State was speaking, the NHS budget has fallen from 8.2% of our GDP in 2009-10 to 7.9% in 2013-14, and the situation is getting worse as we will see when the figures for this year are revealed. To put that fall in perspective, the difference between 8.2% and 7.9% of GDP is some £5 billion a year. That is the amount by which this coalition Government have cut the NHS budget The Government must address not only the overall level of funding, but the way the funding is split between different health authorities. Within the former North Yorkshire primary care trust area, where all patients used to get the same level of treatment, funding in the Vale of York is just £1,062 per person as against £1,270 in Scarborough and Ryedale. I went with colleagues from neighbouring constituencies to see the Secretary of State to say that parity of funding should be restored, but nothing has happened. This is a Government who talk the talk but do not walk the walk on the NHS.