Health and Social Care (Kettering)

I beg to move,

That this House has considered health and social care in Kettering constituency.

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Wilson, and I thank Mr Speaker for granting this debate. I also welcome Northamptonshire colleagues who are here: my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer). If he is released from his important role in the Government Whips Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) hopes to be able to attend. Others with a local interest are also here, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan), who I welcome to his place.

I also welcome our excellent Minister for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar). He is not only excellent in his own right, but he is super excellent because within just a few weeks of being appointed as hospitals Minister, he made a visit to Kettering General Hospital one of his very highest priorities. He did that on 7 October and met: the superb chairman of Kettering General Hospital, Alan Burns; our wonderful chief executive, Simon Weldon; the medical director, Andrew Chilton; the chief nurse, Leanne Hackshall; the chief operating officer, Joanna Fawcus; the director of strategy and transformation, Polly Grimmett; the director of finance, Nicola Briggs; the director of estates, Ian Allen; the clinical director of urgent care, Adrian Ierina; and the head of nursing in urgent care, Ali Gamby. All those magnificent people were there to meet the Minister because the hospital is absolutely determined to get the necessary funding for a new urgent care hub at the Kettering General Hospital site.

Kettering General Hospital is a much-loved local hospital. It has been on its present site for 122 years, and there cannot be many hospitals that have such a record. The problem at Kettering General Hospital is that the A&E department is full. It was constructed in 1994 to cope with 45,000 attendances each year. This year, we could well go through the 100,000 attendances mark, which is well over 150% of the department’s capacity. By 2045, 170,000 attendances are expected at the same site. The solution to that pressure is for an urgent care hub facility costing £46 million to be constructed on the site. It would be a two-storey, one-stop shop with GP services, out-of-hours care, an on-site pharmacy, a minor injuries unit, facilities for social services and mental health care, access to community care services for the frail elderly and a replacement for our A&E department. All the NHS organisations in Northamptonshire, as well as NHS Improvement regionally, agree that that is the No. 1 clinical priority for Northamptonshire. They are all saying the same thing to the Government, and I am delighted to support their campaign.

The A&E department at Kettering General Hospital was visited in 2016 by Dr Kevin Reynard of the national NHS emergency care improvement programme. He said:

“The current emergency department is the most cramped and limiting emergency department I have ever come across in the UK, USA, Australia or India. I cannot see how the team, irrespective of crowding, can deliver a safe, modern emergency medicine service within the current footprint.”

Despite some temporary modifications over recent years, including moving other patient services off the hospital site, detailed surveys show that no further opportunities remain to extend the department and that a brand-new building is required on the site. The hospital has developed a superb business case for a fit-for-purpose emergency care facility that will meet local population growth for the next 30 years. It has been developed with all the health and social care partners across the county so that patients can get a local urgent care service that meets all the Government guidance on good practice, ensuring that they get the care they need to keep them safely outside of hospital if necessary, and ensuring that if they come into hospital, they are seen by the right clinician at the right time, first time. The bid has been submitted to the Government. We have been pressing the case for the facility since 2012. It is about time that the Government listened to the concerns and responded by promising the funding.

The pressure on Kettering General Hospital is primarily being driven by very fast population growth locally. The Office for National Statistics shows that we are one of the fastest growing areas in the whole country, at almost double the national average. The borough of Corby is the fastest growing borough outside of London. The population served by the trust has grown by almost 45% since the A&E opened in 1994. The area is committed to at least 35,000 new houses over the next 10 years. That means a population rise of some 84,000, to almost 400,000 people locally. The A&E department now sees approximately 300 patients every single day in a department that is safely sized to see just 110. Every day, 87 patients are admitted into the inpatient wards from A&E, and over the next 10 years, the hospital expects the number of A&E attendances to increase by 30,000, equivalent to almost 80 extra patients every day. Bluntly, a solution is required immediately if the hospital is to have time to prepare and build for that.

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I recently visited A&E at Northampton General Hospital, which also has a space and crowding problem, particularly in paediatrics. Does he agree that investment there would assist Kettering with the problems it has and would lead to a whole Northamptonshire approach to solving some of these problems?

I am delighted to take that intervention from my hon. Friend, who is a superb representative for his constituents in Northampton and is very much in touch with the importance of local healthcare issues to our constituents. He is absolutely right.

I am delighted to welcome the Government’s commitment to include Kettering General Hospital on the list of hospitals that will be considered for health infrastructure plan 2—or HIP2—funding from 2025. That is important for Kettering, because the hospital has been there for 122 years, 70% of the buildings on the main hospital site are more than 30 years old and there is a maintenance backlog of £42 million. We need the reconstruction of many wards at the hospital. I welcome the Government’s commitment to investment in the hospital site from 2025 onwards, which could transform the whole of Kettering General Hospital. The point about the urgent care hub is that we need the money now to address the pressure on the A&E department.

The second part of the debate is about the need for us to use the opportunity of local government reorganisation in Northamptonshire to create in the county a combined health and social care pilot that will put responsibility for healthcare and social care under one organisation. Northamptonshire County Council has faced tremendous financial difficulties. The Government appointed an inspector, who concluded that it was not possible to turn around the organisation. The Government’s solution is to create two unitary councils in the county: a “north” council and a “west” council that will take over all the responsibilities of the eight different councils in the county from May 2021. We can use that once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a new organisation on a pilot basis to combine health and social care in Northamptonshire.

That is important for Kettering General Hospital because it has 531 beds; at any one time 110 of those beds—21%—are occupied by patients who should not be in hospital at all, but in a social care or other setting. In Government jargon, they are defined as super-stranded patients who have been in hospital for more than 21 days. If the hospital discharges 87 patients a day from the A&E department to the hospital, and 110 of the beds are occupied by patients who should be in a different setting, it creates huge problems for the A&E department, so finding a solution to the social care issue is also important for the A&E department.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on having led a seven-and-a-half-year campaign to get the expansion at Kettering General Hospital. It has been my great pleasure and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) to support him, but he has led this magnificent campaign and I hope that today he will succeed in his objective. Does he agree with me that the reorganisation he has talked about could possibly—hopefully—lead to an urgent care centre at the Isebrook Hospital in my constituency, which would reduce the number of people who go to Kettering A&E by 40%?

I would be delighted to support my hon. Friend’s campaign. He is a very effective champion for his constituents. He, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Corby, has been an integral part of a joint effort to campaign for the urgent care hub at Kettering. I would be delighted to reciprocate, because health investment in our local constituencies is very important for our local residents.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough will join me in welcoming any proposals that the Government introduce to create a health and social care pilot in the county. We simply have to make sure that elderly, frail residents in hospital, who need not be there and should be in a social care setting, are given the social care that they need in the right place at the right time. With social care now the responsibility of Northamptonshire County Council, I am afraid it simply is not working.

Evidence shows that the longer an elderly person stays in hospital, the more they lose critical muscle mass and strength, which affects their ability to return to their home or social care setting without appropriate support. Patients with long lengths of stay in hospital become revolving door patients. They get better and could go to a community setting of care, but they become unwell again because they wait so long for an appropriate out-of-hospital placement, so we need to get that sorted out. Financially, it does not make sense, either. If a patient stays in hospital, it costs £2,500 a week. If they are put into a social care setting, the cost to the taxpayer is £700 a week. Not only is the setting more appropriate, but it is financially beneficial for our health and social care providers.

I am pleased that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, together with the appropriate Minister in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, wrote to all Northamptonshire MPs on 24 July, encouraging Northamptonshire County Council and the local NHS providers to knock their heads together to thrash out an appropriate plan. The Secretary of State wrote:

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing this debate on health and social care in Kettering. It is testament to his strong commitment to the issue on behalf of his constituents that we hold this debate today, around six weeks after he secured a debate on his local hospital. I had the privilege, as he mentioned in his speech, of visiting his local hospital a couple of weeks ago. His constituents can be in no doubt of his tenacity and persistence in this place on their behalf—something all too familiar to numerous Ministers—and they are lucky to have him as a strong local voice fighting their corner here in Westminster.

The local context for health and social care in Northamptonshire, and in Kettering specifically, was well set out by my hon. Friend. The area has seen considerable population growth. On the basis of projections, the wider area is set to see further significant growth in population in the coming years, with circa 35,000 new homes over the next 10 years, as he set out. That will in turn see additional demand for health and social care services. The presence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) emphasises the fact that not only Kettering and Northamptonshire residents are served by the hospital, but so are many of his constituents in Rutland as well.

If we overlay on this the broader national picture of an ageing population—a positive we should be proud of as we are all living for longer, but one that brings with it the need for additional support and care for people to live independent, fulfilling lives for longer—we see a clear need for new integrated models of care, addressing the increase in demand in numerical terms; the greater number of older people requiring support; and the young families that the new development and housing will bring with them. Working towards greater integration of health and social care services in Northamptonshire is a critical part of the journey towards local government reorganisation in the county.