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A&E waiting times and the closure of St Helier

Home / News & Views / Speeches / A&E waiting times and the closure of St Helier

06 June 2013

St Helier Speech given to the House of Commons, Wednesday 5 June:

I will be very brief, as I want all Members who wish to contribute to the debate to be able to do so.

It feels as though we are telling the public that somehow they are being irrational by attending A and E. They are being entirely rational, however, if they live in urban London.

They are being rational because they cannot get access to their GP services. Their GPs have contracted-in times and their walk-in clinics have been closed, so their only alternative is A and E.

The 111 service is also, in effect, A and E, because it is so risk-averse. Our current system is not based on what is best for the patient; it is based on what is going to cause the least legal damage to the NHS if things go wrong.

My local hospital, St Helier, is up for closure despite the fact that its A and E is the only one in south-west London that meets the targets. Its maternity unit is also to close, even though it is the most clinically safe unit in the country. It is very difficult to explain that that is a rational decision to any member of the public, including me.

On issues to do with the NHS and how consultations are carried out, we are told and implored to see things differently.

How can we see things differently when consultations do not include the public and when consultations are held over the school summer holidays rather than at a time when people and halls are available, and those of us who rely on voluntary assistance in making our arguments can get people to provide it?

Better Services Better Value in my constituency intends to start its consultation at the end of the month and run it over July and August, dismissive of the arguments of the public that they cannot meet that timetable. Better Services Better Value has meetings without announcing where they are or what time they are at, and it does not even use microphones.

I have been a publicly elected politician for more than 30 years and some of these NHS meetings I have attended have been the worst I have ever encountered during that time. If we wish to bring the public with us in difficult decisions, we have to be reasonable, fair and straightforward in our proposals.

Nobody in my constituency understands why the solution to longer A and E waits is the closure of A and Es that are effective and actually work.

Due to time restrictions, Siobhain was unable to deliver her intended speech. The full unedited speech is below:

Mister Speaker,
My local hospital, St Helier, is a successful and popular local hospital.
 
95.7% of A&E patients were treated within 4 hours.
 
While the rest of the country failed to meet targets, St Helier and Epsom hospitals have met them.
 
So what is the Government’s reaction?
 
Our A&Es are set to close.
 
Incidentally, St Helier is also the only hospital in the area whose Maternity Unit meets clinical standards.
 
And the Government want to close that too,
along with our paediatric centre, our Renal Unit, our ICU, and hundreds of patient beds.
 
It beggars belief that while the NHS is failing, the hospitals that work, and are popular, are being sacrificed.
 
This is levelling down, and my constituents know it.
 
My local NHS openly admit they “have to deliver £370 million savings each year... a reduction of around 24% in their costs.”
 
That’s why, they say, they have to sacrifice our two hospitals –  even though they also say the number of patients going to A&E will go up by 20%.
 
But if A&E attendances are rising, and the two hospitals that meet their A&E targets are closed, what will happen when patients have to travel to other hospitals instead?
 
Obviously, there will be a huge impact on the 82,000 patients who went to St Helier’s A&E last year, or the 54,000 to Epsom.
 
They will have up to half an hour further to travel in an emergency.
 
Some might not make it.
 
But patients at every other hospital in the area will also be hit.
Already creaking services will be stretched beyond breaking point.
 
How will those hospitals cope with 400 extra emergency patients a day, let alone the 100 of them who need to be admitted?
It seems inconceivable that they will meet clinical targets.
 
95% will be dreamland.
 
Yet the NHS is due to rubberstamp the proposals imminently.
 
In fact, they were due to do so today, but in the latest of a litany of delays, they have again postponed – although we’ve still not been told when or where they will meet.
 
It’s almost as if they don’t want the public involved.
 
After all, they propose a public consultation over the summer holidays.
 
If they really cared about the views of patients,
the consultation would not be taking place at a time when most people are away,
including independent experts and advisors who might be able to help,
and when the schools and halls where public meetings can take place are closed.
 
I want to place on record how appalling my experience of this process has been.
Last month the new Clinical Commissioning Group for Merton, set up as part of this Government’s top-down reorganisation of the NHS, met to discuss the future of St Helier.
 
It was one of the worst public meetings I have ever been to – and after 30 years as an MP or Councillor that’s really saying something.
 
They only let a handful of people into the public gallery, a fraction of the hundreds who came.
 
Then, once the lucky few were in, the Chair would not allow cameras or recordings, and the microphones were barely used.
 
Board members then refused to explain their personal interests, even though the biggest complaint from the public gallery was that some of them were gaining personally as hospital services were switched to primary care providers like them.
 
Unhappy about the public’s questions, the Board suddenly walked out, to shouts of “cowards”, and seems to have adjourned to a quiet staircase.
 
There, because nobody at the meeting heard them do so,
they must have agreed to take St Helier’s closure to the next stage.
It was all very shifty, especially as they later claimed that the decision was unanimous.
 
It can’t have been, because Merton Council unambiguously opposes any closure, and their representative on the Board would surely have disagreed.
 
As I say, it was one of the worst public meetings I have ever experienced.
 
Mister Speaker, if St Helier and Epsom lose emergency services, A&Es across South London will struggle, affecting millions.
 
200,000 people will face longer journeys in an emergency.
 
Official claims underpinning the closures,
that an astonishing 60% of patients would use primary care instead of A&Es,
have been ridiculed by the National Clinical Advisory Team.
 
A majority of doctors oppose the plans.
 
The process is a shambles.
 
More than 30,000 people have signed the Save St Helier petition.
Hundreds have protested at public meetings, including one last month organised by the remarkable Sally Kenny, a former headteacher who knows how to run good public services.
 
The population of South West London is rising.
 
Demand for A&E will go up.
 
Yet instead of improving the NHS,
this Government has focused on top-down reorganisation,
a 111 line that doesn’t work,
and making GPs spend more time at meetings.
 
Our A&Es are falling apart.
 
And now they want to shut the good ones.
 
They are failing our NHS and our constituents.
 
Mister Speaker, in Mitcham and Morden we demand nothing less than a moratorium on A&E closures,
because we want our hospital,
St Helier,
to continue to meet targets that the rest of the NHS now can not.
ENDS


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