SOUTH OCKENDON HOSPITAL (Hansard, 14 April 1969)

§ 47. Mr. ARTHER LEWIS
To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services, whether he has considered the communication dated 1st April from the hon. Member for West Ham, North together with a constituent's representations concerning the administration of the South Ockendon Hospital and, since this is the fourth of such cases outstanding, when he expects to complete his investigations; when he will make an announcement about them; whether the results of his investigations will be made public; and if he will make a statement.

§ The Secretary of State for Social Services (Mr. Richard Crossman)
I have written to my hon. Friend in answer to his letter, and my present statement is intended also for other hon. Members who have written to me.
An officer of my Department accompanied a special sub-committee of the regional hospital board which visited the hospital last week to examine and report on the general situation at the hospital.
On the evidence of the preliminary report, there is grave overcrowding and also grave understaffing at this hospital. My officer tells me that the staff at South Ockendon, as at other hospitals for subnormals, are struggling against unfair odds. Only after a reduction in the number of patients can they hope to provide a satisfactory standard of care.
I have discussed the matter with the chairman of the regional hospital board and can tell the House that, as a first step, fresh admissions to the hospital have been suspended.
As for future remedial action, this is exactly the kind of case in which I would call on the director of the Hospital Advisory Service I am now establishing to investigate and report to me. As an emergency measure, I am asking the working party which is helping to plan this new service to send a small team into South Ockendon as soon as possible.

§ Mr. Lewis
First, I thank the Minister both for his kindness in asking your permission, Mr. Speaker, to answer this Question and for the very full letter 795 which he sent to me by hand. Will he take it that all of us with constituents who have unfortunately had to go into this hospital have nothing but the highest praise for all the staff, who have been working in very difficult conditions?
Can my right hon. Friend do something to help the staff to have, perhaps, better wages or better conditions so that more staff might come in? Possibly the greatest problem here is that new staff will not come in because wages, salaries, working conditions and other related circumstances are not adequate for the work which the staff have to undertake.

§ Mr. Crossman
I very much appreciate the tone of my hon. Friend's supplementary question, and I support every word he has said about the spirit of the staff. It is my view, as a result of our first report, that nothing less than a reduction in the number of patients at the hospital will really relieve the situation, and I am consulting with the board about the possibility of so doing. Until one has done that, as I said in my main Answer, a satisfactory standard of care is impossible at this hospital.

§ Mr. Delargy
Will my right hon. Friend take it that, during nearly 20 years as the Member of Parliament for South Ockendon, I have never received one complaint about the staff there and I have never even heard one? Will my right hon. Friend agree, further, that the suspension of admissions to the hospital was already decided about a month ago by the hospital authorities themselves?

§ Mr. Crossman
Yes, Sir; I said that the chairman had informed me that fresh admissions had been suspended.

§ Mr. Dean
Recently, the right hon. Gentleman made a grave statement on a related matter. Can he tell the House anything more about the progress which he is making following that Report and the announcement which he has made in reply to the present Question?

§ Mr. Crossman
Yes, Sir. I am preparing for the meeting with regional hospital boards which are to spend a whole day with me at the end of this month reviewing the situation region by region regarding these hospitals for the subnormal. Meanwhile, I am organis- 796 ing the working party to set up the directorate of the advisory service, and I hope to announce the names of the people I am bringing in from outside in the near future.

§ Mr. Atkinson
I associate myself with the comments which have been made about the staff at South Ockendon. Will the working party look into the whole question of nursing homes in the area which are now receiving child patients who are mentally subnormal but who cannot be admitted into South Ockendon Hospital because there is no room there? Will not the decision to suspend further admissions make matters even more difficult in finding accommodation at these other expensive private nursing homes?

§ Mr. Crossman
Yes, Sir; I agree with my hon. Friend. It will bring home the problem to the local authorities outside which bear a joint responsibility in this matter. One conclusion I have reached is that one does not solve the problem by decanting all one's difficult cases into an already overcrowded hospital. That is not fair on the staff. I can tell the House that nearly £1 million has been spent at South Ockendon on new buildings, but the result has been that new wards for 30 patients have an average occupation of 55. What is the good of spending money on brand new wards and then overcrowding them to such an extent that decent care is impossible?

§ Lord Balniel
The right hon. Gentleman has said that admissions to this hospital are being suspended. I have no doubt that that is a correct decision, but what special arrangements are being made to accommodate patients in the locality who would otherwise have gone to this hospital?

§ Mr. Crossman
Perhaps the noble Lord will put a Question down. I am now discussing with the chairman of the regional hospital board the precise arrangements to see whether we can produce at least a reduction of 100 in the numbers at South Ockendon by putting patients elsewhere.

§ Mr. Driberg
Would it be possible slightly to reduce the number of patients by removing to a more suitable place intelligent but autistic children who can receive no training at South Ockendon?

§ Mr. Crossman
The question of autistic children is a special one. There are special wards for children there but they are very overcrowded. I should have thought that the children whom we should keep in hospital were precisely the difficult cases. It is the less difficult cases we should keep out of hospital because the less difficult receive no benefit from institutionalisation and should be kept out of hospital at all costs.

§ Dame Joan Vickers
What is the right hon. Gentleman doing to encourage Leagues of Friends in order to create and maintain contact with the public and also enlist their sympathy? Also, would it not be wise to establish hostels to which many of these people could go when not necessarily needing hospital treatment?

§ Mr. Crossman
I shall be discussing the question of hostels with the local authorities. I told the chairman of the regional hospital board on Saturday that I wanted to consider the situation not only at South Ockendon but in the whole area and consider the local authority responsibility as well. Leagues of Friends are very useful, but in this particular case one problem is that South Ockendon is outside its—to use the odious term—catchment area, so that there is not the same interest in the locality in relation to patients at South Ockendon. This must be remedied, and I shall try to do my best to see that it is changed.

§ Mrs. Renée Short
In view of the concern about the care of subnormal patients which has arisen from this case and the other case recently, is it not clear that we must look at the way in which we spend money within the Health Service in order to provide much more money for adequate and up-to-date facilities for subnormal patients? This cannot be done by swapping money from one area of National Health Service expenditure to this one. What is needed is more money for the Health Service. Does not my right hon. Friend consider that we ought to look at the whole question of special hospitals, and we ought to have an opportunity to discuss them in the House?

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Supplementary questions must be reasonably brief.

§ Mr. Crossman
The question of subjects for discussion in the House is for 798 my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I think that the issue here is clear. Certainly, we want more money in the Health Service, but we want also to set the priorities in the balance of financial expenditure right. My own feeling is that this is an under-privileged area which must have relatively more spent on it than in the past.