HC Deb 16 October 1990 vol 177 c1044
5. Mr. Cousins

To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he proposes to visit the Sanderson hospital, Gosforth.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Stephen Dorrell)

I have no immediate plans to do so.

Mr. Cousins

Does the Minister accept that the Sanderson hospital is the last long-stay hospital for the elderly in Newcastle which does not face closure? It is part of a hospital group—the Royal Victoria infirmary—which is dithering over opt-out and has to make panic cuts to save £400,000 of overspending up to August. The site would make wonderful executive housing, or can the Minister assure us that there is still a place in the NHS for small kindly hospitals which care for patients who cannot easily be packaged or priced?

Mr. Dorrell

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was advocating the sale of the site for high-value executive houses, but I assure him that it is NHS policy to continue to use the Sanderson hospital for the care of the elderly, for which it currently has a distinguished record.