I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. We have already heard that the NHS in London is most definitely straining under the weight of demand for services. The problem is related to the constrained financial environment, but fundamentally it is about the increasing needs of our population. The population of London has grown
by 12% in the past decade and is likely to grow by another million in the coming decade. That is why the plans to downgrade and close desperately needed and often very successful emergency and maternity departments in London are met with such incredulity and anger.
I would like to make a few points to the Minister today. First, I ask her to consider the overall shape of maternity services in London. Much of the debate focuses on big arguments about the reconfiguration of emergency departments, but maternity services are often a victim of those reorganisations, because as soon as an intensive care unit is taken away from a hospital, it is unable to provide full maternity services. Does the Minister really want to ask women in the capital to travel even greater distances to give birth to their children, when they want to be close to home and family? Will she look at some of the sacred cows that have built up in the wisdom on maternity services?
I know there is an aspiration to provide 168 hours of consultant cover every week in maternity departments, but I understand that that currently happens at only one trust in the whole country. I ask the Minister whether it is achievable, affordable, or necessarily in the best interests of women to continue to aspire to reach that standard in all our hospitals in London.
Another point I want to make to the Minister—it has already been made—is on the crucial importance of the public being involved and having a genuine say when hospital services are being reconfigured. In Lewisham, we saw the exact opposite of that, with the unsustainable providers regime. The Government are trying to augment that process and apply it more widely, which has very serious implications for trust in politics and in our health service.
I am very conscious of time and that two other Members wish to speak. I ask the Minister to look very hard at the existing evidence on centralising all hospital services in London. I know there is a lot of evidence for creating centres of excellence for stroke, trauma, and vascular disease in big hospitals. However, I wonder whether the same evidence exists for other acute medical emergencies and whether there is evidence, for example, for centralising mental health services or maternity services.
I have one final point—I will sit down very shortly. There are currently plans at many hospitals in London to flog off hospital sites. That land should not be used to create playgrounds for the rich and the international jet set. Public land is a very precious asset in London, and if we are going to use it for anything, could we please explore the possibility of using it for housing for elderly people, providing communities of care? Provision of suitable accommodation is one of the crucial things we need to get right if we are to tackle some of the underlying problems in the NHS.