Speaking in the House of Commons, Charles Walker calls for an urgent care centre to be located in Cheshunt.

7.59 pm

Mr. Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con): I am grateful to be called to speak in this incredibly well attended debate.

When I heard that there was to be a debate on health I had intended to talk about my constituency, to tell the House that it is important that Cheshunt gets an urgent care centre when the PCT reports back in a couple of weeks’ time. I had planned to tell the House what a wonderful job my council has done in supporting health service infrastructure in Broxbourne—and long may that continue. However, I am not going to do that, because it has absolutely nothing to do with the Bill. It would be totally gratuitous of me to use this opportunity to get those things off my chest.

I would particularly like to focus on the work of the care quality commission. In my constituency, there is a growing loss of confidence in the NHS and in hospital care among sections of the people whom I represent. The NHS still provides high levels of service to the vast majority of patients, but over the past few years there has been an increase in hospital-borne and hospital-acquired infections. That is causing unease, and it is causing some to be fearful of being admitted to hospital. It is important to address those fears, because hospital is a place where people should go to get well. It is a place that puts people back on their feet, but if well-meaning people start to fear going to hospital, that will undermine confidence in the NHS, which will be to the detriment of us all.

Over the past few years, there have been a number of well-publicised—I will not call them disasters—very unfortunate events that have led to people dying unnecessarily. They occurred at Tameside in Manchester, and there have been problems with C. difficile at Stoke Mandeville, and most recently at Maidstone. I am trying to understand how we in this country have got to the position in which people die in hospital from diseases that are preventable. I admit that some bugs are developing resistance to antibiotics and other treatments, but the idea that people go to hospital and fall ill and die from disease is extremely worrying. I am trying to understand why the growth in the number of such illnesses has occurred over the past few years. The issue is important in the context of the care quality commission and its work in trying to identify the problem, disassemble it and then come up with solutions that actually work.

When I am canvassing in my constituency, I talk to a lot of people who work at Chase Farm hospital. As you may know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the hospital faces a fairly rocky and uncertain future and I am met on the doorstep by nurses and orderlies who are often in tears when I speak to them about what is going on in their hospital and its future. They tell me about low morale, that people do not know whether they will have a job in a year’s time and that it is difficult to recruit. They tell me about a lack of pride in the place, which is very worrying when set next to the fact that Chase Farm hospital has battled for man years against diseases such as MRSA. It is fighting bravely to remove them, but it would be much easier for the hospital to get to grips with such diseases if there was a sense of common and shared purpose among the staff. When the care quality commission considers hospital-borne infections and how standards could be improved, it cannot put to one side the fact that the morale in the hospital with which it is dealing is a contributory factor.

One example of where I think the NHS is making mistakes relates to the subject of nurse morale. I was talking to a nurse who had finished her shift for the day and was getting ready to leave. She noticed that an elderly lady in one of the wards had not been fed that evening. Being a conscientious nurse and a human being, she decided to stay on and feed her. The nurse knew that if she left, those on the incoming shift would not take it upon themselves to feed that elderly woman. The window of opportunity would have been lost, so the nurse stayed back in her own time and made sure that that elderly person had supper and nutrition. That is important, because we know that a number of elderly people in care do not receive proper nutrition. Indeed, some are starved to near death.

The nurse fed the elderly lady, got into her car and travelled 25 miles home. When she got home, she listened to her messages, including one from a hospital manager saying, “Please come back to the hospital, because you have not finished your paperwork.” The nurse knows full well that such a message would not have been left if the elderly patient had gone unfed. If the nurse had done the paperwork, not fed the patient and gone home, nobody would have cared and that telephone call would not have been made. She has now left the NHS, which is a great loss to us all.

The care quality commission must not allow people to get off the hook of accountability. Too often in these debates, a smokescreen is thrown up about who is in charge and about contract cleaners. My view is that the chief executives are in charge of their hospitals and they have to take ultimate responsibility for their being well run. I know that chief executives work under very difficult conditions. They have targets imposed on them and they have to meet benchmarks and work extremely hard to keep Whitehall happy. However, that is no excuse, and it must never be an excuse, for allowing people to lie in their own faeces, to lie in their own vomit, to go unfed and not to be cared for. That is an abrogation of responsibility on the part of those chief executives.

Chief executives are paid considerable sums of money. Some earn well over £200,000, and with large sums of money come huge levels of responsibility. Too often, I feel that chief executives think that they are running a hospital well if they are sitting in their ivory tower surveying all those they command. I am not going to compare running a hospital with running a business; the two are very different. However, I will make the following comparison. Some successful people running enormous businesses make sure that they spend at least one day a week out in the business making sure that they know what the customer experience is like and that their customers are getting what they want. We need some more of that in the NHS. We should have strong management teams in the NHS that allow chief executives to get out of their ivory tower and their offices and to spend time on the shop floor.

Sandra Gidley: That is possible under the existing regime. The new chief executive at Winchester hospital makes sure that he eats hospital food under an assumed patient name once a week. He does a lot of things to be on the wards to see what is going on and carries out cleanliness inspections. Some would say that he should not have to do that, but that approach seems to be delivering results and more could learn from that lesson.

Mr. Walker: The hon. Lady has made an important point. Some say that that should not be the case; I say that it absolutely should be the case. We need to see chief executives on the wards.

Before the hon. Lady helpfully intervened, I was about to say that I was amazed when we were shown pictures of Maidstone hospital and saw the filth and the squalor that were allowed to go unaddressed. Any serious senior manager worth their salt would have dealt with that. What we saw was disgraceful. As I have said, with responsibility comes leadership and we need leadership in the NHS.

Ideally, I hope that the care quality commission will be a passing phenomenon. I hope that we have it for five or six years, but that there will then be chief executives of sufficient quality to mean that it is accepted that hospitals are of such a uniformly high standard that we do not need to burden them with more regulation and more inspection. Until that time is reached, I very much see the need for the commission.

In my final couple of minutes, I wish to deal with the issue of obesity and the weighing and measuring of children at school. Obesity is a huge problem. Short of people just closing their mouths and not eating, it is very difficult to address. I do not mean that flippantly because, in particular, we need to address the problem of obesity in children. Obesity in childhood can have an impact on a person’s health outcomes throughout their life and place additional costs on the NHS. Perhaps the Minister can explain matters further either here or in Committee, if I am lucky enough to serve on it—that is not a hint, because I am very busy at the moment. [ Interruption. ] That was an own goal.

We weigh and measure children at school, but to what end? Is it just another form-filling exercise, or is there a strategy to utilise the information and make sure that our young people and their families get the support that they need to live healthy lifestyles and lose weight? We cannot really remove exercise from the equation. Many teachers in my primary and secondary schools give up huge amounts of their personal free time to lead sports activities in the afternoon or evening. We need to encourage more teachers to do that, and if need be, we should make it worth their while financially.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, you have indulged me on occasions this evening and I thank you very much for your patience.

8.10 pm

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