Health in the constituency

As someone who has lived in the constituency for some 20 years, our local health services are important to me. I and my family and friends rely on them as we all do. I personally would want to pay tribute to the excellent, complex and successful medical treatment which a member of my family had to undergo this past 12 months. The NHS is our most important national institution. We want the NHS to be even better than it is, saving even more lives every day and giving more patients the best chance of living well with a long-term condition. That is why the Government is protecting spending on the NHS.

However, it is not enough just to protect the NHS with increased spending today. We must also modernise it so that it is stronger for future generations. The NHS does need to change. For example, the pressures on our NHS – caused by an ageing population and more expensive treatments – are rising all the time.

One constituent wrote to me and said this: "A large proportion of your constituents are wealthy or indeed extremely wealthy. One wouldn't expect them to be remotely concerned with the organisation of the NHS other than complaining they still have to pay NI even though they rarely or never use the service."  I hope you take as much offense at this as I did. Such a bitter and ideologically warped view of this constituency and the care we show for the NHS has no part to play in civilised discussion or in fact. I am proud of any help I have been able to give to local people in Henley, Thame and Watlington for example who freely and willingly give their time to protecting and enhancing NHS facilities such as local hospitals.

Henley

Between 2004 and 2005 I was a member of the Oxfordshire Joint Health Overview & Scrutiny committee – the committee now chaired by Henley councillor, Dr. Peter Skolar. The biggest problem then was the re-provision of Chipping Norton hospital. This was the first time in the county that a major project involving an NHS community hopsital and a substantial social care facility had been put together on one site. It was a problematic and at times legally tortuous undertaking. But we got there eventually.

I was reminded of this recently at a series of one-to-one meetings I held with the PCT, the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Mental Health Trust and the County Council about Townlands. I wanted to understand why I and others felt frustrated about the project and to understand what the risks were that might prevent a successful outcome.

What was clear was that the Townlands project that was on the table when I first became MP has now changed so substantially that you can only really understand what is going on by thinking of this as a completely different project. That's important because unless we understand the new risks it is difficult to have a realistic expectation of the outcome and the time it will take. What we are now looking at is not that far different to the project at Chipping Norton six years ago.

This is no longer a project solely about 18 beds in a community hospital with the reprovision of the medical services available now. I was left in no uncertain doubt that that simple project is no longer considered financially viable. Instead, we now have a complex project involving a hospital, a developer, the county council, and a suite of social care provision from extra care housing to the re-siting of Chiltern End – all taking place in a dire financial and economic crisis.

I happen to think that if we can pull it off this is a much better project than the old one and will bring more benefit to the area. Everyone I have spoken to remains committed to making this work. But if all of us are going to be able to hold decision-makers to account and to understand the project's progress, we need to make sure that the realities of the project and the greater risks involved are not lost on us as a result of the extended partnership arrangements which will now be required to complete the project. Without this, people will not have the tools to set their own expecations appropriately and that will be the worse for the project.

Thame

In Thame, as a result of a series of parliamentary questions I have been able to keep track of the project for a £4 million re-development of the town's much loved community hospital. I've recently done that again with a question to ask what the status of the £4 million is in these difficult times and what progress is being made.

We lost the battle against the new contract for medical provision at the hospital which in its initial form allowed for only 4 hours of medical cover and the removal of the contract from the town's local GPs. Some 5,000 local people signed the petition to support this campaign.

Watlington

I was very pleased to work with Cllr Roger Belson to get the Oxfordshire Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee to suspend the decision of the county council to cease funding beds at the hospital until proper consultation had taken place. Now that that has happened the hospital is saved until at least March 2012 while a long term intermediate care plan is worked on in the county. The people of Watlington have a real interest in this hospital. After all they raised £2 million to buy the site. I am glad that the hospital has now been given a reprieve.

The NHS

The current e mail campaign against the reforms the Coalition Government is proposing for the NHS is simply wrong and at times irresponsibly alarmist. The changes we want to see are simple ones.

• first, where patients have greater choice and control over how and where to be treated;
• secondly, where the NHS is left free from political interference to focus on what really matters – i.e. that patients get the best possible care;
• thirdly, where doctors and nurses are driving improvements in patient care, and are supported by high-quality management.

The Health and Social Care Bill sets out how, in legislative terms, we will meet these aims.

We all recognise that there are concerns; change of any sort always brings concerns. But, many of these concerns are based on myth, which campaigns against the reforms reiterate and promote. I know it may be an inconvenient truth for them that the claims made about our reforms are myth; but myth they still are and all the worse that they are being peddled so indiscriminately.

Let me set out what those myths are:

Myth 1: Our reforms amount to privatisation of the NHS

There is no privatisation of the NHS being proposed and it will not be proposed by this Government. . Nothing in our plans undermines the fundamental principle of the NHS: that it delivers care free to all, funded from general taxation, and based on need and not ability to pay.

Myth 2 The Government wants to break up the NHS

It does not.

Myth 3 Doctors and nurses are against our plans.

They are not. GPs in over 6,500 practices covering 45 million people have come forward to test the new arrangements. Doctors and nurses at the frontline are already making our proposals work for patients. Today, GPs are already taking responsibility for local NHS resources, free from interference from Whitehall.

Here in Oxfordshire you may have missed the public comments from Dr Stephen Richards who will lead the county through these reforms and who has openly discounted suggestions he would be overseeing the end of the NHS in Oxfordshire. He had no doubts about the benefit of doctors being involved in key decision making: "There is general agreement that getting more clinical leadership in the health service is a good thing. But people should remember doctors will not be doing all this on their own. For two years we will have the benefit of working with PCT managers." Seventy-one of the county's 83 practices voted in the election for Dr Richards.

Myth 4 The Government is not testing the changes

It is. Proposals to put GPs at the forefront of NHS decision-making have been tried and tested over two decades, including under the Labour Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Secondly, plans to make every NHS Trust an NHS Foundation Trust were introduced by the previous Government in 2003. Thirdly proposals to allow patients to choose wherever they want to be treated have similarly been tried and tested over the last decade – and were supported by all three main parties at the last General Election.

Myth 5 Frontline care is not being protected

The Government is increasing the NHS budget by £11.5 billion. All the evidence shows that the NHS is delivering more for patients, with low waiting times. MRSA is at its lowest level since records began. More than 2,000 patients have access to new cancer drugs that would previously have been denied them. Those with symptoms of cancer now see a specialist more quickly than before. There is more transparency about hospital performance. Since the General Election there are 3,000 fewer managers and 2,500 more doctors and 90% of the country will be covered by new Health and Well-being Boards.

Of course some concerns are genuine, and the Government hears those concerns. So, now that the Health and Social Care Bill has successfully completed its first stages in the Commons, the Government is going to take the opportunity of a natural break in the legislative process to reflect on how the plans might be improved. This is a genuine listening exercise. Where there are good suggestions to improve the legislation and the implementation of these plans, changes can be made.

However, whilst I do not believe playing the numbers game is at all important, the number of constituents who have contacted me about the NHS is only around 0.15% of the constituency population. The self-proclaimed idea that there is a mass campaign against our plans is yet another myth.

I can see no reason why I would not want to urge Andrew Lansley to stick to the principles of these reforms which are in the interests of the NHS, the patient and the taxpayer.

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