Treasury and Work and Pensions

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne), who, as usual, made a powerful and thoughtful speech. In her most Gracious Speech to Parliament, Her Majesty stated two fundamental objectives that are extremely relevant to the people of Wellingborough. First, she said:"““At the heart of my Government’s programme will be further action to provide strong, secure and stable communities””." Secondly, she said:"““My Government will carry through the modernisation of healthcare based on the founding principles of the National Health Service.””" I agree with the Government that we cannot have a strong, secure and stable community without health care based on the founding principles of the NHS. Those founding principles are that everybody should have access to similar health provision, wherever they live in the country. I would like to speak today about how, due to lack of funding, the Government are failing to uphold the founding principles of the national health service in my area. I would like to stress at this point how grateful I am to the doctors, nurses, support staff and medical professionals who work tirelessly, often under difficult circumstances. If it were not for their hard work and dedication, the NHS would be in a much poorer state. If Wellingborough constituents need to go to hospital, they will attend either Kettering or Northampton general on most occasions. Both those hospitals can be a 45-minute journey away, which makes the trip extremely difficult for elderly and vulnerable patients. Neither hospital is in the Wellingborough constituency. I have been told several times by Ministers at the Dispatch Box how many more doctors and nurses there are in Wellingborough since Labour came to power. That always amuses me slightly because none of them is based in my constituency. Given the lack of a hospital in Wellingborough, Kettering general finds itself full to capacity, and that is set to get worse. The Wellingborough constituency consists of two urban towns and a cluster of villages. We are part of the Milton Keynes and south midland sub-regional strategy, under which 167,000 homes will be built in Northamptonshire over the next few years. Thousands of those homes will be built in Wellingborough. In fact, they are being built now. We have a lack of health care provision now. What will it be like when all those new homes are built? There is an abundance of plans and information about the development in my area, but no plans or information about the infrastructure that is needed to cope with that explosion of house building. It is no good waiting for the homes to be built before the Government start to think about health care provision. We need more of it, and we need it now. In Wellingborough, it is impossible to get an NHS dentist. New residents find it almost impossible to sign on at a GP surgery, and our nearest hospitals are being forced to make cuts left, right and centre. This is not the first time that I have brought the issue to Ministers’ attention. Since first coming to Parliament, I have consistently raised the issue of the lack of health care provision through parliamentary questions, a meeting with a Health Minister and Westminster Hall and main Chamber debates. Yet I still have to raise the issue today, and I will continue to raise it until the Government accept that my constituents and north Northamptonshire as a whole are not getting their fair share of health care compared to the rest of the country. With an excellent set of doctors, nurses and ancillary staff, an excellent set of professional managers in both the primary care trust and the hospitals and an excellent performance in efficiency by Kettering hospital, how can it be that we still have the most acute crisis in our local NHS?