HC Deb 24 March 1969 vol 780 cc1202-10

Motion made and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Fitch.]

11.18 p.m.

Mr. Harold Gurden (Birmingham, Selly Oak)

I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to raise the subject of the Sorrento Maternity Hospital, which is in my constituency and is, in fact, in Moseley, Birmingham. This hospital is one of very high repute because of the exceptional staff, their skill and experience. It is not a good hospital because of the buildings as seen from the outside, but rather in spite of the buildings and the conditions is it a good hospital. Were it not so, it must have failed long ago, considering the difficulties which it encounters.

I want to concentrate not on the whole of the hospital but on one part of it, because that is the crisis part—the outpatients and reception block. I am not suggesting that there are not other sections which need attention. The conditions in this block are very serious indeed. I have visited the hospital on many occasions quite recently and investigated every corner of it. I did this because of complaints from my constituents. The conditions there are so bad that no one but a Government Ministry would be permitted to use such a building for public purposes, much less for hospital patients. The conditions have to be seen to be believed. No one denies those facts, not even the Ministry, from which I have a letter which more or less confirms what I have said.

The Ministry has offered one solution to the problem, and that is the provision of a new maternity hospital unit or units, and has mentioned a new unit which is shortly to come forward at Solihull. The Ministry says that this covers the same catchment area, but I deny that it covers any substantial part of the catchment area at all.

The Ministry should bear in mind that a large amount of maternity accommodation has been closed in the centre and inner ring of the city, and that all the time the replacements tend to be provided towards the perimeter of the city or outside it. This is why I want Sorrento Hospital to be reconditioned to give it another five or ten years' life, which it will not have unless this block is attended to. I suppose that about £60,000 to £80,000 is needed at once to do this work. I think that the Ministry ought to instruct the regional hospital board to do this work, and it should ensure that the board has the money to do it.

This hospital is in an immigrant area. In fact, it is in one of the most seriously overcrowded immigrant areas in the country, and it is taking in a tremendous number of immigrant patients. The Government have said that these areas should receive special financial help. It may be that something is being done about this with the local authorities, but so far as I can see nothing is being done to help this maternity hospital. Despite that, the Government are allowing immigrant dependants to come into this area to have their babies at this hospital, very often within a few days of arriving in this country. These patients have increased the number of patients at this hospital from 160 to 200 a month.

I admit that a new maternity unit has been opened at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and we know that one is to be opened at Solihull, but long before the Queen Elizabeth was opened I contended that it would have no effect at all on the problem at Sorrento, and unfortunately this has turned out to be the case. In fact, the number of patients at Sorrento will increase rather than decrease, because mothers do not wish to go to the Queen Elizabeth which is about three miles away from the Sorrento Hospital. They want to go to the nearest hospital. Unless the Government do something to help the situation, they will be failing in their duty, and failing to keep their promise to help the immigrant areas.

In his letter the Minister admitted that the patient intake would rise from 160 to 200 cases a month. He said: This does mean however that there is a serious overcrowding in the out-patient department. The hospital management committee have already examined the ways and means of relieving the pressure here but have been unable to suggest alternatives which would both be reasonable financially and provide adequate accommodation. Somebody ought to be sacked. I do not know who it should be, but, seeing what I have seen of the hospital, it is an appalling statement. The letter also said: Any rebuilding could cause considerable inconvenience during any construction period and the result would not be wholly satisfactory. Yet in the same letter we are told that there is no other solution but to build a new unit. If the Minister has not seen the part of the hospital I am talking about, he would certainly agree if he went to see it. With a little common sense and practical application this job could be put right with money outside hospital finances normally talked about—just a few thousand pounds of the money the Government have promised areas seriously affected by their immigration policy to allow dependants to come in. There is an increasing problem, although there has been all this control of immigration, for maternity services and other services in this area because dependants come in increasingly every week.

One sees patients packed into this tiny area literally like sardines in a tin, half dressed mothers-to-be, and an excellent staff trying to do their job in most unhealthy conditions. They have to get men from outside, perhaps husbands of the patients, to help because of the language problem. This is a comparatively new situation and it is most distressing. I should like the Minister to come to see it with me. Although, perhaps, to the Ministry this may be a small point, it is a very serious one. Sorrento must go on; it cannot wait for a new unit. I hope that the Minister will help us tonight.

11.28 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Mr. David Ennals)

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) has argued with some vigour about the conditions in Sorrento Maternity Hospital. As he said, prior to this debate he has been in correspondence with my noble Friend the noble Baroness Serota. I am sorry that he read one paragraph of the letter and not the second, because his doing so put the matter in an unfortunate light and perhaps out of context.

I shall try to deal with the points the hon. Member raised. They boil down to three: first, the pressure has been caused on the hospital by immigrants; second, that the amenities are poor; and third, that the hospital is under too heavy pressure, especially in the out patient department. On the question of immigration, which I am not surprised he raised, although I wish he had not—he always does——

Mr. Gurden

It is half the patients.

Mr. Ennals

It is not half the patients, as I shall prove. Hospitals are either adequate for the population they serve or they are inadequate. The suggestion that because a certain proportion of the population happens to be of one national origin or colour does not seriously affect the issue.

I want to make some comments on the population question. The hon. Gentleman has argued—I am quoting from an article in the Birmingham Post—that the pressure should have been relieved by the new maternity unit at Queen Elizabeth Hospital but instead it has been aggravated by the increasing number of immigrants. That is what the hon. Gentleman told the Press, and he developed this line tonight. Let us examine the facts. The new £2¾ million maternity unit opened in the second week of September, 1968. Thus, it has been open now for six months. It was formally opened by the Queen Mother in November, but it has been in operation for six months. If I follow the hon. Gentleman correctly, he suggests that the population increase over this period has aggravated the position at Sorrento. I have been looking—I suggest he does—at the Registrar-General's Weekly Return for the week ending 20th September 1968. He will find that the estimated population of Birmingham at that date is there given as 1,102,000. For 28th February 1969—six months later—it is 1,075,000, a drop of 27,000. So much for that argument.

The hon. Gentleman suggested that half of those attending Sorrento were from the New Commonwealth—immigrants, he called them. Let us see whether we can get beyond subjective impressions such as these.

Mr. Gurden

Included in that there are white immigrants, including a considerable number of Irish.

Mr. Ennals

Statistics for out-patient sessions—that is, the ante-natal clinic— do not distinguish between the countries of origin of those attending. However, we have fairly hard figures for the parents of children born in the hospital. In the last two years 60 per cent. were of United Kingdom origin—it is difficult to tell how many of these were Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish—20 per cent. were Irish, and 20 per cent. were from the new Commonwealth. So far as can be established, these proportions are what would be expected from the corresponding proportions of the population of child-bearing age in the area served.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the constant admission of dependants, as if there was something wrong about wives and children being able to join husbands who are here or something wrong with dependent wives giving birth to children.

Mr. Gurden

No.

Mr. Ennals

The hon. Gentleman certainly gave this impression. He will know, as he was talking about Government policy, that over the last 12 months the number of dependants who have come to join immigrants in this country substantially declined, as I, on several occasions when I was in a former post, told the hon. Gentleman it would.

I want to look now at the effect of the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The hon. Gentleman's contention was that the additional beds at the hospital have not yet relieved the pressure at Sorrento. It is perfectly true that this has not yet happened. I can answer this by a simple analogy. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would transfer his custom from a shop he knew well and where he had had good service for many years to a new shop, which he did not know, the moment it opened. Of course he would not. The fact is that a new maternity unit takes time to become known to the general practitioners and mothers. It is entirely to be expected that a well-known hospital like Sorrento, which pioneered the use of special care baby units and which is served by an efficient and dedicated team, should continue to be in great demand until its competitor, as it is in a sense, which is a little less than three miles away, proves itself. I do not think there is much doubt that the maternity unit, which is a magnificent unit, at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital will relieve the pressure at Sorrento. It has been open for only six months. There is no doubt that it covers part of the catchment area for the patients who go to Sorrento. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but it certainly does. I will do a little analysis of the patients who go to the Queen Elizabeth and will prove that it does so.

I declare myself at one with the hon. Gentleman on one thing—that is, in paying tribute to the staff at Sorrento. They deserved the hon. Gentleman's tribute. They certainly receive my tribute for the quality of the work that they have done in this hospital.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the amenities at the hospital. It is true that the conditions leave much to be desired, but there are limits to what can be done. It is an old building. It was converted to maternity use in the 1920s. For the record, £144,000 capital has been spent on it since 1948 when the National Health Service started, or roughly £7,000 a year. Even now, the hospital is doing what it can by means of re-decoration, the provision of new bath and toilet accommodation and laying PVC floor tiles, but this cannot change the character of an old fabric like this. Clearly there are limitations imposed by the fact that this is a busy, well respected and well used unit. I do not think the hon. Gentleman suggests that one should close the hospital while the decoration work is going on. Of course, there is some inconvenience for both staff and patients during the period of decoration.

As to pressure on the out-patient department, it is true that the clinic sessions in the out-patient department are under pressure. Total attendances have increased by 7 per cent. since 1964—that is, over a five-year period. The explanation is that this old, converted building was never designed for modern maternity practice and that the out-patient department, therefore, cannot absorb the increased load as the in-patient department can by intensive use and the efficient use of bed space.

The question is: what can and should be done? In the longer term the new unit at Queen Elizabeth already open and the new maternity unit at Solihull now building and scheduled to open in 1972 should take some of the general pressure off Sorrento, and this will be reflected in the out-patient department. In addition, the board has plans for a new maternity unit at Selly Oak when the hospital there is redeveloped.

Moreover, there is an increasing trend, though modest, for general practitioners to give ante-natal care themselves, and one would expect this to have some modest effect on relieving pressure. It follows that what is needed is an interim solution, but this cannot satisfactorily be found within the present building. Accordingly, the hospital first explored the possibility that sessions might be decanted to hired accommodation a short distance away from where the hospital building is. The medical staff, however, took the view that the clinics should be in the hospital, and it is not for me to quarrel with their view. It is clear that the local people are alive to the situation as they find it.

This leaves the possibility of an extension or more accommodation. The hon. Gentleman may say that this is obvious. What is not so obvious is how this is to be done. I reiterate that this is old converted accommodation and the site has limitations. One cannot expect the hospital authorities to rush into building some Nissen huts, which may be unsatisfactory in the long term though of temporary value in the short term. They must make a site examination before deciding what to do and decide their course of action accordingly. They have already made a preliminary technical survey which is now being studied, and it would be premature for me to comment before the Regional Hospital Board has been fully into all the implications of this technical survey.

The hon. Gentleman said that we should instruct the board what to do. Of course, this is not the relationship that exists between my Department and the regional hospital boards. Regional hospital boards are autonomous bodies. They have their own authority, and they are responsible. They will often submit their conclusions to my Department, but the relationship is not one of master and servant. We do not give instructions.

In conclusion, I want to make one or two comments on what the hon. Gentleman said about the level of expenditure. In 1964 we—I am referring to the present Government—inherited a fearful backlog of under-provision of hospital buildings by the previous Administration—hospitals which were old and which, because there had been an unsatisfactory hospital building programme, had outlived their usefulness. Since we came to power there has been a remarkable increase in expenditure on the hospital building programme. In the current financial year we had a programme almost twice as big as we inherited. We are now spending five times what was spent on hospital building 10 years ago, and this is reflected in the new maternity unit at Birmingham and the developments which will take place or are taking place at Solihull and Selly Oak. So there is a considerable expansion of hospital provision and improved hospital facilities in the area concerned.

It is not easy to find a ready-made solution for Sorrento for all the reasons that I have given, but I hope the hon. Gentleman will accept that the Regional Hospital Board is aware of the problems and is certain to do what it can to relieve the pressure on a very fine hospital which has a reputation which it fully deserves because it is served by very able and dedicated staff.

The debate having been concluded, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed without Question put.

Mr. SPEAKER suspended the Sitting of the House at twenty minutes to Twelve o'clock till Ten o'clock Tomorrow, pursuant to Order.