"Hands off our Huddersfield Royal Infirmary!"
Colne Valley MP Jason McCartney (Con):
"The CCG’s (Clinical Commissioning Group's) preferred option is to close Huddersfield’s A&E and keep the provision at Calderdale Royal hospital in Halifax. The background to that proposal is the ruinous PFI (Private Finance Initiative) deal negotiated in the 1990s and signed in 1998. The initial cost of Calderdale Royal Hospital was £64.6 million, but it will end up costing the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust an incredible £773.2 million when the deal expires in 2058. That scandalous PFI deal is now influencing clinical and community health decisions, with an enormously detrimental effect. That dodgy deal is set to cost lives, and we are set to lose our A&E in Huddersfield while the PFI money makers stuff their pockets."
"On Saturday, at the Huddersfield Town match, Sean Doyle, a constituent and friend of mine from Brockholes, spoke movingly on the pitch at half-time about when he had a massive heart attack in Greenhead Park in Huddersfield. He owes his life to the emergency care he received at HRI, which was just up the road, where A&E staff used a new electronically powered chest compression system. Sean says he would not have survived if he had had to go to Halifax. I have received many emails from other constituents telling me how they owe their lives to the location and proximity of HRI A&E and how the golden hour saved them."
"My constituents have been sending me Garmin and TomTom reports — other sat-navs are available — of their recent journeys from Huddersfield to Halifax. It can take up to 45 minutes and in some instances, even longer. It is an extremely congested journey. Bad weather, floods, damaged bridges, increasing housing developments in the Lindley area, and the Ainley Top roundabout see our local road system creaking at the seams. That is before we even start analysing peak travel times from, say, Hade Edge or Marsden in my constituency."
"Patient safety must come first, which means keeping our A&E, so hands off our Huddersfield Royal Infirmary!"
Batley and Spen MP Jo Cox (Lab):
"The proposed reorganisation, which would leave Huddersfield without an A&E, is being done under the rationale that there will be no change of provision in the other half of Kirklees district. However, the diminution of services at Dewsbury and District Hospital, which sits within my constituency, is a significant change — not least for the A&E, which is a key service for local constituents in neighbouring Dewsbury and elsewhere."
Dewsbury MP Paula Sherriff (Lab):
"The loss of full emergency services in Dewsbury was a bitter blow. We now hear that Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield clinical commissioning groups are planning their own hospital downgrade. The plan, as we have heard, is to close the A&E department at Huddersfield and to transfer all emergency services to Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax. Those plans will see the whole of Kirklees without any accident and emergency provision. Over 430,000 people will have to travel outside the borough for vital emergency healthcare for themselves and their loved ones. How on earth can that be acceptable? Kirklees is a vast geographical area that spans many towns and rural and semi-rural areas. Many people rely solely on public transport as a means of travel and parts of the borough are in the bottom 10% of the country’s most deprived areas, which brings about huge health issues and inequalities."
"I have received a number of emails, as I am sure have my hon. Friends, from understandably concerned constituents who have recounted extremely problematic journeys between the two sites, leading to real fear that there could be a catastrophe in a life and death situation. I recently undertook the journey between Huddersfield and Halifax after the recent rally in Huddersfield centre. I was caught in severe traffic and saw an ambulance held up. I would have hated it if a loved one or someone I knew had been in that ambulance being prevented from getting essential emergency care."
"Just yesterday evening we learnt that Calderdale Royal Hospital and Huddersfield Royal Infirmary were on black alert, which meant that they were unable to take any more patients because of a shortage of beds. The trust was said to have implemented the senior level gold command arrangements. Let us imagine the situation had that occurred when only one of the A&E services was functioning."
"A particularly worrying PFI was agreed for the Calderdale hospital in Halifax. There were two trusts in those days: the Halifax trust and the Huddersfield trust. The Huddersfield trust was always very well managed and had plenty of reserves, but when Halifax and Calderdale ran into trouble, we were pushed by the then Department to merge with the trust that was limping rather. People may remember this. We did merge, because we did believe in a good health service for all the people in our part of Kirklees and in Calderdale. That is the history; now we have to bring ourselves up to date."
"There has been a failure of management in our local CCG when it comes to a proper, rational assessment of where we are now and how we can get the best possible healthcare in our area, taking into account all the difficult pieces of information that I have mentioned, including an ageing hospital that needs investment, a newish hospital that was built under a PFI, and difficult communications. I ask the Minister to look very carefully at what has been going on in our locality and to get the whole situation appraised carefully, independently and objectively."
"At the moment, the suggestion of closing A&E in Huddersfield is not right, nor is the suggestion that Halifax is the only alternative. Personally, I think that there is a scheme by which we could keep both A&E departments open. My request to the Minister is: get that rigorous, independent, thoughtful appraisal of what the hell is going on, and get it right."
Parliamentary Under-secretary of State for Health Ben Gummer (Con):
"This is one of what I imagine will be a series of debates on reconfigurations, because throughout the NHS’s history — I am sure the hon. Member for Huddersfield will know this better than me — reconfigurations and the configuration of health services has been a feature of how the NHS works."
"I recognise that the clinical commissioning group has presented a very detailed plan — the plan is very detailed, whatever one’s arguments about its merits, or otherwise — but it has, rather classically, chosen a title, “Right Care, Right Time, Right Place,” that is so generic in its quality and so indirect in its aspiration that the CCG should first look to change the title to say what it actually proposes to do. Such generic consultation titles and bureaucratic-speak are a feature across the NHS, and it does not help anyone to get to the nub of the matter."
"Were the reconfiguration to proceed, it would be for the CCG to make the decision about how it wished to buy services on behalf of the people it serves. That is a key reform of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 but, even before then, previous Secretaries of State — Labour ones — recognised that it is wrong for Whitehall to make determinations on matters of reconfiguration because it is often influenced by politics when it should be the clinical voice that is heard first and foremost."
"The hon. Gentleman (Mr Sheerman) mentioned the former Prime Minister Harold Wilson a number of times. Harold Wilson was a well-known exponent of valuing expert opinion, and we should do that in the NHS above all, because we are dealing with people’s lives. That is why I ask people speaking in this debate more broadly to listen carefully to what clinicians are saying on both sides of the argument and to weigh up their opinions before coming to a settled point of view."
"I do not know whether I have been to Huddersfield and I told the hon. Member for Huddersfield why. I spent the first year of my life in Wakefield, as I explained to the hon. Members for Dewsbury and for Batley and Spen the other day, and so maybe my mother took me to Huddersfield. I would like to return in the near future and experience it properly as an adult, and I shall. Nevertheless, it is clear that the area we are discussing is a very complicated one to deal with. It is a hilly area, something which — being a boy from East Anglia — I do not understand very well, and it has a lot of towns of considerable population that are divided by difficult terrain, and travelling between those towns can be less simple than travelling in other parts of the country. So I take on board the points that the hon. Gentleman made."
"I will certainly take back the suggestion by the hon. Member for Batley and Spen that this issue we are debating today should be looked at in the wider context, and I undertake to ask Jim Mackey (Chief Executive of NHS Improvement) to see whether there is a co-ordination between these two plans and whether he can encourage the CCGs to adopt a more joined-up approach to what they are doing. Maybe they are already joined up — I am not prejudging the conversations that have happened — but it is important that the CCGs answer these questions."
"The hon. Member for Dewsbury raised the issue of traffic, as did other hon. Members. Again, it is for the CCG to ensure that it justifies the traffic times that it is putting in the consultation document."
"If we can have a strong, well-informed and nuanced debate, and take into consideration the surrounding area — a point well made today — local people can come to a good decision that is supported across the patch, which will mean better health services for those living in Huddersfield and Halifax and the surrounding areas, an improvement in clinical outcomes, and better life chances, especially for those who are born with the least."
Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
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