LOCAL MP CALLS FOR COURAGE FROM THE HORTON RECONFIGURATION PANEL

Tony Baldry MP reads out constituent's email to Parliament before key meeting

North Oxfordshire MP, Tony Baldry, will today meet with the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, together with MPs David Cameron and Tim Boswell, to outline the case for full maternity services at the Horton.

In a speech to the House of Commons yesterday, which coincided with a key report on the safety of maternity services, Tony Baldry read out a constituent's email expressing fears of service closures at the Horton, based on real life experiences.

Commenting, Tony Baldry MP said:

"We are seeing locally a health service that is in danger of going backwards. That a general hospital is told that it will no longer be a place of safety in the 21st century is insulting to large numbers of people living in north Oxfordshire, south Warwickshire and south Northamptonshire. It is a disgrace. I hope that tomorrow, and sooner or later, the independent reconfiguration panel will have the courage to say to the Secretary of State, “Enough is enough. A line has to be drawn on the downgrading of maternity services in the UK, which is putting at risk the lives of mothers and babies. It is simply not good enough."

The complete text delivered on 30 January is below.

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): For me, this is a timely debate because tomorrow my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) and I will be giving evidence to the independent reconfiguration panel, seeking to persuade it that proposals to downgrade the consultant-led maternity unit at Horton general hospital in Banbury to a midwife-led unit, causing large numbers of women to have to travel some 26 miles to Oxford, is a bad and dangerous idea. I am sure that the House will note that, given the concept of collective government that we have in this country, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney, part of whose constituency is covered by Horton hospital, speaks not only as the Member of Parliament for Witney but as Leader of the Opposition, and his views therefore reflect those of the official Opposition and the Conservative party. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) titters, but many communities in this country are desperately concerned at the downgrading of maternity services.

The “Keep the Horton General” campaign, which is ably led by a Labour district councillor, George Parish, evidenced the ambulance transfer times between Banbury and Oxford. These figures represent what actually happens at present. In only 5 per cent. of cases did an ambulance manage to get to Horton hospital in 10 minutes. Only in just under a quarter of cases could an ambulance get there in 30 minutes. In most instances, it took more than half an hour to get an ambulance to Horton hospital. That is before the transfer of a mother has even taken place.

When those figures were put to the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, Helen Peggs, the director of communications at the trust, stated the following in an e-mail:

“At the moment, the Horton General Hospital is classified by the Ambulance Service as a ‘place of safety’. This means that the Ambulance Service treats calls from the Horton as ‘urgent’ but not as emergencies, which require a very rapid response, and they have a very long timeframe in which they can respond.

If the proposals are accepted by the Secretary of State, this will change. The Ambulance Service will treat any calls from the Horton General Hospital for women or children who need ambulance transfers as Category A (999) emergencies.”

In other words, at present my constituents have a hospital that is a place of safety. If the changes go ahead, my constituents will no longer have such a hospital. That is disgraceful and disgusting.

Sandra Gidley (Romsey) (LD): I have another concern. Many women choose to attend midwife-led units, and another battle being fought throughout the country is to prevent the closure of such units. Is the hon. Gentleman concerned that in the longer term, if he loses this battle, which I hope he does not, he may be fighting yet another battle?

Tony Baldry: It is clear that even on the Oxford Radcliffe trust’s own best figures, a large number of women who elect to go to Horton hospital in future will have to have their babies somewhere in transit, because even the most prospectively normal deliveries can go wrong. Indeed, an e-mail from one of my constituents the other day stated:

“My newest cousin Ewan was born at the Horton at 3.19 am on Monday 14 January. It had been decided only half an hour before, that a Caesarean, unplanned and unexpected, was essential as baby, and mother, were becoming dangerously stressed. The consultant-led team of 8 delivered him safely. A 24-mile dash to the JR in such circumstances is unimaginable.”

A large number of women will be obliged to have their babies somewhere along the M40. That is simply unacceptable in the 21st century.

Time is short and I am conscious that the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) wants to speak, but I have two other points. We hear from the Government continuous rhetoric about choice and patient power. On 9 January, the Prime Minister made a speech on the NHS. Obviously it must have been cleared by the Cabinet and the Department of Health. He said that

“the NHS of the future will be one of patient power, patients engaged and taking greater control over their own health and their healthcare too.”

He talked about

“frustrations with access to services, with a service too often centred on the needs of the providers rather than those of patients”,

and said:

“That is why giving patients choices through reforms to encourage plurality of provision, create a genuine level playing field between competing local providers and allow money to follow the patient are so important”.

Frankly, my constituents and those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney and my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry think that that is complete tosh. When they are being denied choice—when choice is being taken away from them and existing services are being taken away—for the Prime Minister to have the impertinence to talk about patient power is just insulting.

We are seeing locally a health service that is in danger of going backwards. That a general hospital is told that it will no longer be a place of safety in the 21st century is insulting to large numbers of people living in north Oxfordshire, south Warwickshire and south Northamptonshire. It is a disgrace. I hope that tomorrow, and sooner or later, the independent reconfiguration panel will have the courage to say to the Secretary of State, “Enough is enough. A line has to be drawn on the downgrading of maternity services in the UK, which is putting at risk the lives of mothers and babies. It is simply not good enough.”