Christmas Adjournment

I am grateful for this opportunity to raise a matter of huge importance to my constituents. It is probably the most important issue in my constituency, and has been for a considerable time. It is the future of Chase Farm hospital, which is in my constituency but which also serves surrounding constituencies. It has been an issue for between 15 and 20 years, so it is of long standing. It has not been helpful for the hospital; it has created huge instability. It is no exaggeration to say that there has been a significant loss of confidence in the NHS, and certainly in acute services, among local people. My commitment in 1997—the future of the hospital was an issue even back then—was that I would do everything that I could to ensure that Chase Farm hospital had a future as a fully functioning hospital. By that, I meant that the hospital would have in-patient and out-patient provision, and surgeons and physicians. Babies could be born there, and there would be accident and emergency provision. I will not look back over the whole period, because undoubtedly the 12 minutes available to me in no way allows that, but I want to go back to July 2003, when Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust announced a ““healthy hospitals”” public engagement. ““Public engagement”” was never really defined, although we have had a number of them. They have varied considerably, but did not seem to involve much effort by local NHS bureaucrats, either in the hospital trust or in the primary care trust, to engage with the maximum number of constituents across my borough and the two neighbouring boroughs effected, Haringey and Barnet. A little part of Cheshunt is also affected. Any public engagement that has taken place has been organised mainly by local Members of Parliament. At various times, members of the hospital trust or the PCT boards have attended. They have made some contribution at such meetings, but I am sorry to say that it has generally been a very unhelpful, ill-informed contribution. After the 2003 public engagement, a formal consultation document was to be produced. It was not produced—fortunately so, as the public engagement had been remarkably unsuccessful—because the sector-wide ““healthy start, healthy futures”” initiative did not proceed. There were then two failed attempts to restart the consultation process, and in October 2005 there was another public engagement. That happened and provided any engagement with the public only because the three Enfield Members of Parliament organised a series of public meetings. Otherwise, I am not sure that there would have been any event that one could have pointed to and said, ““This is a public engagement.”” We were then confronted with five options for consultation, two of which were highlighted as preferred options. Three of them were declared not viable by the medical director of the trust, who had put the options before us. That beggars belief: why put three options before us that the medical director considered not viable? That was followed by the chief executive being quoted in the local newspaper as expressing her opinion on her preferred options, and reiterating that other options were not viable. That came across to local people as a fiasco. They felt that situation was a stitch-up, that one of the options would definitely become the way forward, and that what took place was not a public engagement, and certainly not a consultation, but was just lip-service. At no point have we been told exactly what a public engagement or consultation should involve, but it is everybody's understanding that the views of the local community are supposed to be taken into account. I think that it is becoming clear why there is a significant loss of confidence. At the end of the public engagement, it was clear that what the hospital trust wanted was a hot-cold solution. Barnet and North Middlesex University hospitals would be ““hot”” hospitals, becoming major trauma centres, with all accident and emergency work going there. Chase Farm would be a ““cold”” hospital, with all elective surgery. We want elective surgery at Chase Farm hospital, but we also want some accident and emergency provision, and we want it to be possible for Enfield babies to be born there. Following the public engagement, we were to have a consultation. On 3 December 2005, 5,000 people in Enfield turned out to march on a cold, windy Saturday afternoon. That is a significant turnout for quite a small town. They linked hands around the hospital. There were numerous petitions opposing the hot-cold solution, one of which had 18,000 signatures. The local medical committee—our general practitioners—opposed that hot-cold solution, and felt that the public engagement had been completely inappropriate, and that the public's need for access to the engagement had not been met. The chief executive of North Middlesex University hospital made it clear that she had significant problems with the proposals, and that if they went ahead, they would cause real problems for the accident and emergency departments at North Middlesex University and Barnet hospitals. The proposed expansion of North Middlesex University hospital would need to be looked at all over again. It transpired that there was no feasibility study underpinning the options, so a feasibility study was started. We cannot expect the public to have any confidence in a proposal that is brought forward with no notion of its financial viability, as was the case in this instance. I am pleased to say that in January 2006, options for formal consultation were delayed. There had been a public engagement and another set of options, but again there was to be no formal consultation. I am sure that hon. Members will be aware that there is a significant cost to such public engagements or possible consultations. In January 2006, there was what was called a pause for thought. I was pleased to have that pause, which was due to the helpful intervention of my noble Friend Baroness Wall, who had become the chair of Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust; I am pleased that she did—she brought some common sense to the situation. The pause for thought was to be until May. In February and March that year, I met the Secretary of State for Health. Numerous other lobbying activities were going on, and people were trying to put forward a sensible position on Enfield heath care services. In May 2006, no document was brought forward. We then discovered the existence of something called the project board. In September 2006, the project board brought forward 10 high-level scenarios. In October, it shortlisted four. If the House is beginning to lose the thread, I am not in the least bit surprised. Hon. Members can only imagine how local people felt. Then came a report from the clinical, public and patient engagement groups. Nobody really knew what they were. It seemed to be something of an exclusive process to which most of the public had been given no access. At that point, the Healthcare Commission published a report that classified Barnet and Chase Farm hospital trust as one of only eight acute hospital trusts in the country that were weak in resources and some areas of service quality. That rating reflected the trust's weak financial management, and so it is clear that we had gone from having no feasibility study to underpin proposals to having proposals based on information obtained from mismanaged finances. Confidence was totally eroded by that stage. We had had numerous other problems at the hospital. There were clearly serious management problems; we had three chief executives in some seven years. We have since had a further formal consultation, and we have had the help of Professor Sir George Alberti, who was very helpful. He said that only over his dead body would the hospital close—closure was one option. I thought that that was rather a risky statement, given what had gone on so far. He also said that we needed some accident and emergency provision at the hospital. I sent out 30,000 letters during that consultation to help people to understand what was being proposed. We were willing to compromise. We were not saying that we wanted no change, but we said we wanted option 1, which was a hospital with all its elective surgery, some accident and emergency provision and a midwife-led birthing unit. We requested doctor-led, 24-hour local accident and emergency provision in line with what Lord Darzi recommends for a local hospital. We have just had the results, and option 1 is the approach that will be taken, but we have been given only 12 hours of local accident and emergency cover. That is not sufficient. Will the Deputy Leader of the House ask Ministers in the Department of Health and anyone else who can have any impact on that decision to look at it very carefully? The people of Enfield have made it clear that they will work with local health authorities and Government and that they will accept some change, but we will not accept no accident and emergency provision during the 12 hours of the night. No cover is not acceptable—