NHS Services (Hertfordshire)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) on obtaining this debate and on setting the scene so well. It is no exaggeration to speak of a crisis in health care in Hertfordshire for all the reasons that he and my colleagues have given. I shall deal with just one outcome of the crisis, but that does not mean that I overlook all the other cutbacks that are taking place in sexual health services, mental health services and hospital care. There are serious cutbacks in clinical care and in the numbers of doctors and nurses, and there is also the matter of targets for the use of hospitals by patients, including patients who have already been seen by their general practitioner. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) was right to raise that subject, about which many questions could be asked. The one aspect that I wish to deal with in many ways epitomises the crisis in Hertfordshire at present. The Potters Bar community hospital is the responsibility of the Hertsmere primary care trust, which has a serious financial deficit. I have asked Ministers about it, and they say that the PCT must live within its means. However, if that is the case, some serious cutbacks at the Potters Bar community hospital will be required. The PCT is consulting on a significant reduction in the capacity of Potters Bar community hospital, which is a 45-bed community hospital that is barely 10 years old. It replaced an older hospital that was built in the 1930s but had become dilapidated. The hospital is in a new location. It is a purpose-built community hospital that provides services for all the residents of Hertsmere, including, of course, those of Potters Bar. Although the hospital now serves the whole of Hertsmere as opposed to just Potters Bar, which it used to do in the past, the PCT proposes closing 15 of its 45 beds and using the space that is freed up to relocate services already provided at other premises in Potters Bar. We must be clear about this: there is no question of providing new or additional services at Potters Bar community hospital. It is a case of merging two sites into one to provide both sets of services from the same premises. The premises that are ““freed up,”” in the words of the PCT, will be closed and sold, and the proceeds of the sale presumably used to address the financial position of the PCT. However, Potters Bar community hospital will lose one third of its beds for good under the plans. The PCT has introduced consultation and said what it proposes to do about community health care to make up for the losses, but the proposals are being driven by financial cutbacks in response to a financial crisis. Nobody can say that if the PCT or any other health service provider were planning the best way to provide health care for the residents of Hertsmere they would begin by closing a substantial number of the beds at Potters Bar community hospital. I can do no better than quote what the Government said about precisely such a situation. Their White Paper stated:"““Some community hospitals are currently under threat of closure, as PCTs consider the best configuration of services in their area. Where these closures are due to facilities that are clinically not viable or which local people do not want to use, then local reconfiguration is right. However, we are clear that community facilities should not be lost in response to short-term budgetary pressures that are not related to the viability of the community facility itself.””" That is precisely the situation with the Potters Bar hospital. Local people certainly want to use it. They value it for all the reasons that community hospitals are valued. It is particularly valued by elderly residents of Potters Bar and Hertsmere and those with chronic conditions. There is no question about the hospital’s clinical viability. It is a modern facility. I have to confess that I attended its opening, which might suggest that I have been here too long. In fact, I have not been here too long. It is a modern facility—it is almost brand-new—and the only reason that its position is under threat is because of the financial predicament of Hertsmere PCT. My right hon. Friend was right to say that there is a question of trust, given what the Government have said about community hospitals. I put it to the Minister directly that if those words mean anything at all, and if the Government are to be trusted, Ministers must step in and do something about the situation at Potters Bar, which corresponds precisely with what they said. My simple plea is that the Minister will step in and assume responsibility for the Potters Bar community hospital to avoid a permanent loss of beds and a permanent loss of a significant part of the health care that is afforded to my constituents, which will come on top of all the other problems that have been outlined. Such a permanent loss to the residents of Potters Bar and Hertsmere will do serious, irreversible damage to the fabric of the health service in my constituency. I ask the Minister to step in and do something about it.