HC Deb 13 June 2000 vol 351 cc196-202WH 12.30 pm
Mr. Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington)

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I feel a sense of déjà vu in appearing before you an hour after I last did so.

I am grateful for the opportunity to initiate this debate on mobility issues in the London borough of Sutton and beyond. Had time allowed, I should have liked to cover many aspects of mobility—for example, access to and from trains and platforms. I am sure that that subject will be discussed during a public meeting that I have organised with my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow), at which Connex South Central and Go-Via, the two train companies that are competing for the Connex franchise, will be represented. I should also like to have talked about the Londonwide Taxicard service.

I had anticipated that the Minister with responsibility for transport in London would respond to the debate, because mobility involves transport as well as health-related issues. Nevertheless, I am pleased to see here the Minister of State, Department of Health. Most of my subject matter concerns the national health service rather than mobility transport.

I shall focus on four services in Sutton that provide services for people who are elderly or have a disability: the Shopmobility service, Banstead mobility centre, the medical engineering resource unit and the wheelchair service.

Transport and mobility are increasingly important as the population gets older and the number of people in the community with disabilities increases due to improvements in medical care. Many local facilities are dominated by much larger and more centralised services. That is especially true of the NHS, which has experienced successive mergers of trusts, such as the acute trust, the mental health service and the community trust. There is a risk that those mergers will make services less accessible to people who are not fully mobile. In Sutton, steps have been taken to create, as far as possible, a barrier-free society, including initiatives such as dropped kerbs, the freedom pass, buses that lower their platforms and developments at Sutton railway station—which will, with the exception of one platform, be accessible to people with mobility problems.

As the Minister will be aware, many people of limited mobility are unable to use public transport and therefore need an adapted car, electric wheelchair or special bus service. Generally speaking, a person with a disability should be enabled to move within a three or four mile radius of where they live, so that they can access health care, shops and other services that they need to use regularly.

The Shopmobility service can help with that. It is situated in St. Nicholas square in Sutton's shopping centre, has been established for more than 10 years, is open for six days a week and provides a free service to no fewer than 3,300 members. Members do not need to bring their wheelchair with them. They can arrive, leave their car, go shopping in the centre and return the wheelchair when they have finished.

The Shopmobility service is funded by local authority traders and voluntary donations, and would benefit from increased ministerial recognition and support to ensure financial stability. Such is the renown of the service that people from Japan have come to Sutton to learn about the way in which it is provided.

I visited the medical engineering resource unit a couple of months ago. It has engineers on site who adapt computers and wheelchairs to make them usable by people who are more disabled than is normally the case. Children with weak arms, for example, require a sensitive control to operate their wheelchair or computer. The unit offers an excellent, constituency-based service.

I shall dwell in greater detail on the Banstead mobility centre. It is one of eight units that belong to Queen Elizabeth's Foundation for Disabled People. It was established nearly 20 years ago to assist disabled people to achieve an optimum level of outdoor mobility which would enrich the quality of their working and social life. It recently received an Investors in People award and has been re-accredited with the Forum of Mobility Centres. It provides a service to people of all ages and disabilities, including, for instance—I shall not quote the full list with which I have been provided—those with strokes, multiple sclerosis, arthritis or cerebral palsy. The people who access the centre typically live within a 50-mile radius of it—it offers a valuable service to all London boroughs.

The centre has four main purposes: to provide information on mobility, assessments for relevant forms of transport, training and research. It has charitable status and is supported by Queen Elizabeth's Foundation for Disabled People and Ford. It provides free information to people with disabilities, family and friends about outdoor mobility. In a typical year, it takes about 8,000 phone calls from people who are seeking information and it receives between 300 and 400 visitors.

During the past couple of years, no fewer than 1,000 people have been to the centre for assessment as drivers, passengers or wheelchair users, and each assessment lasts for most of a day. There is a bungalow that people can use while they are taking an intensive driving course in preparation for their driving test and, critically, there is a track on site that can be used for practice and tests. The training programmes are many and varied—the centre provides training packages for people who want to pass their test and for driving instructors who want to specialise in disability work.

I draw the Minister's attention to a problem that the centre is experiencing. As tenants on the site, the centre has access to the private roadway of what was Queen Mary's children's hospital. Part of that site has subsequently been sold for residential development, which means that the road network to which the centre has access for tests has been halved. A copy of the relevant map was faxed to the Minister, and I hope that he is aware of the site's current layout.

The residential development has brought some benefits. For example, the developer created a new park—the site contains green-belt land—to ensure that the footprint of development was smaller than, or equal to, the previous development on the site. The park will bring enormous benefits. However, it will not increase the centre's access to safe roads on which people can practise driving and take their test. For that reason, the centre wants to purchase land on the site that is adjacent to the property. There is a football pitch close to the centre that has rarely, if ever, been used. It is certainly not in current use, and could be converted to create additional road space on which the drivers could practice. The Minister can see the location of that site on the map.

This point would perhaps have been more suited to the Minister with responsibility for transport in London, had he responded to the debate. However, I understand that there would not be an issue if a track were created on the site, in relation to its open land or green-belt status. The creation of a small amount of road space would not infringe any planning rules or regulations.

A further service on this site that I have not yet mentioned is the wheelchair service, which is funded by the NHS and provides a broad range of wheelchairs to more than 4,500 users a year. The Minister might be aware that this service has been quoted as an example of good practice at a recent meeting in Llandudno. The wheelchair service, the Banstead mobility service and the medical engineering resource unit are, therefore, all adjacent to one another on the same site.

I should like to emphasise to the Minister the importance of keeping together this cluster of organisations specialising in mobility issues. Their collaboration has developed in the past decade, and they share equipment and road space. It is important for people who want to access their services that all the services are located in the same place. If someone were coming not only to look at an adapted car, but to access the wheelchair service, he or she could do so in the same location, thereby reducing the amount of travel and avoiding the problems that someone with a disability might encounter if they had to access those services across a much wider area.

I also want to raise with the Minister the concern that the wheelchair service, which is now part of the larger South West London Community NHS trust—formerly the Merton and Sutton Community NHS trust—might be moved. I would discourage that, for the reasons that I have outlined.

We need to keep this cluster of organisations together: it could become a centre of excellence for the whole country, in relation to mobility services. The medical engineering resource unit, which has a website, receives requests from all over the world for the equipment and facilities that it provides. It makes this provision in a research and development capacity, rather than a production capacity. It is dependent on other organisations to develop commercially the products that it has developed in a trial environment. Another reason for keeping those services together is the fact that the wheelchair service and Banstead mobility centre provide modular courses that have received national accreditation on that site.

Finally, I should like to pose a small number of questions. I shall be quite happy if the Minister responds later in writing, particularly as some of my questions concern transport rather than health.

What assessment have the Government made of the role of the Shopmobility service in integrated transport? It is all well and good to get people to shopping centres on adapted bus services, but what can be done to integrate schemes such as Shopmobility into the transport picture? Are there any plans to extend the network of Shopmobility services throughout the United Kingdom, and what is being done to promote the scheme? I am sure that the Minister recognises the valuable work of that service in enabling housebound people to have access to shops and social activities. What is the Minister's view about keeping Banstead mobility centre, MERU and the wheelchair service together, and does he agree that that facilitates the exchange of information and ensures that the services remain accessible to users who want to make contact not just with one service, but perhaps two or three? Does he believe that the cluster of mobility services could be promoted as an example of best practice to encourage other regions to institute similar services? Will he confirm or deny whether there are plans to move the wheelchair service from Carshalton, and will he comment on allegations that managerial staff at the wheelchair service are not being consulted on plans about their future by managers in the NHS? Does he agree that the cluster is a good example of voluntary and statutory organisations working together and of joined-up mobility services?

I extend an invitation to the Minister from the Banstead mobility centre to visit the centre, as other Ministers and Members of Parliament have done, so that he can appreciate the importance of allowing those services to thrive together. With the Government's support, Carshalton could have a cluster of mobility services that is unique in the country.

12.47 pm
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr. John Denham)

I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake) for providing the opportunity to discuss the provision of mobility services. I shall try to respond to the specific issues that he raised, although, as he said, some are the responsibility of other Departments. The Minister in my Department who deals with most of the day-to-day matters is in Committee, but I shall try to respond to them.

It may be helpful if I outline what the Government are doing to secure the future of the mobility service nationally and examine some of the local issues. We are committed to effective joint working across different organisations and one of the aims of last year's White Paper, "Modernising Government", was to remove the artificial barriers between different public services to ensure effective co-operation. We want a seamless and efficient provision of services.

Mobility services require close working across many different sectors and different Departments with joined-up government and strong partnership working from all stakeholders. We have tried to achieve that by working closely with colleagues in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and other Departments. Only last Friday, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport announced three-year funding for mobility centres. We are aware of their enormously valuable contribution in enabling disabled and older people to obtain impartial professional advice on driving and vehicle choice as well as on a wide range of other aspects of personal mobility. In last week's announcement, my hon. Friend said that my Department and the DETR had agreed to contribute more than £1 million jointly to the 11 English members of the Forum of Mobility Centres. That funding, which was secured for an initial period of three years subject to annual review, will be used by mobility centres to improve and expand their services and provide a comparable level of professional advice and service at all the centres.

As I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, the recent chair of the Forum of Mobility Centres, Mrs. Morigue Cornwell, is the manager of Banstead mobility centre in his constituency. She has been leading the campaign for the funding to be secured, and I am pleased to say that Banstead mobility centre, as one of the leading centres in the country, will receive £78,000 from the fund this financial year. Indeed, Banstead mobility centre, which is a voluntary organisation and is part of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation for Disabled People, provides an excellent example of this service, and I take this opportunity to place on record our appreciation of and gratitude for the good work carried out there.

I want to relate a number of issues that the hon. Gentleman raised to his constituency interests. I am pleased to say that local stakeholders in Sutton are actively working together to plan for the future of mobility services. Indeed, I believe that Banstead mobility centre was represented at a planning seminar held last Friday for statutory and voluntary agencies involved in transport provision for older and disabled people. The seminar was held by Sutton's Disabilities Issues Group, which is part of Sutton's multi-agency planning structure, and included representatives from the South West London Community NHS trust and the local health authority, as well as the manager of London Transport's unit for disabled passengers. A wide cross-section of voluntary organisations was also represented, including South London Dial-a-Ride, Sutton Community Transport, Sutton Mencap, Sutton Volunteer Bureau, Sutton Alliance of Disabled People and Sutton People First.

The aim of the seminar was to establish key priorities in improving service provision for users. The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that it is generally recognised that, compared with some boroughs, Sutton has a well-developed range of accessible transport services. However, the seminar was about more than discussing problems: it identified a range of issues to improve service provision as well as two clear priorities for action. The first was the need to provide comprehensive information for users and service commissioners about what is available and how to obtain access to a service. The second was the need for better co-ordination of the range of services to enable the optimum use of resources, pooling them wherever possible. There was also a discussion about the way in which the transport infrastructure in Sutton can be improved to benefit those with mobility needs. Representatives will have an opportunity to give their organisation's views on the council's interim transport plan before the council finalises it in July.

We welcome the fact that an action plan will be drawn up following that meeting and that all those different organisations can work together in this way towards as common goal. It is a good example of joined-up working. The local efforts will be complemented by the work being done nationally to improve mobility services.

The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to the valuable contribution to local mobility of disabled and older people made by Shopmobility schemes. It started with three schemes in 1981, by 1987 there were 13 schemes and now more than 231 schemes are used by more than 200,000 people a year, who undertake about 1.5 million trips. The schemes vary in size and in the facilities that they offer. That is one of the reasons why there are no standard funding arrangements. Some are completely funded by local authorities, some are run by volunteers and others have a mixture of local authority and voluntary funding. The National Federation of Shopmobility, an independent registered charity that supports existing Shopmobility schemes and encourages the formation of such schemes throughout the United Kingdom, supports them.

We recognise the important role that Shopmobility schemes play in the chain of accessible local transport for disabled people. We believe that the decision to introduce such a scheme should be taken at a local level. The provision of schemes is also best dealt with at a local level, through the retail sector, as in the case of many shopping centres, or by local authorities, which are best placed to judge the needs of their areas.

It is worth noting that shopkeepers in many areas have reported a significant increase in their takings following the introduction of a Shopmobility scheme—not only because disabled people are good customers in shops to which they have access, but because their friends and families are more likely to shop in places where they can go together as a family or a group. I recognise the good reputation that has been earned by the Shopmobility scheme in Sutton, which offers services such as manual and powered wheelchairs and powered scooters, escorts, including escorts for visually impaired people, and parking for blue—formerly orange—badge holders within 40 m of the office.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Banstead mobility centre. As he will know, Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth health authority—supported by the local community NHS trust—has announced, following a process of public consultation, its intention to close Orchard Hill as a base for residential services for people with learning disabilities. That has caused concern among related users of the site, such as those to whom the hon. Gentleman referred. The proposed closure of Orchard Hill is subject to judicial review, which is due to be heard in the High Court in July. It would therefore be inappropriate for me to comment further, other than to say that I believe that the proposals for change have been made with residents' best interests at heart.

In relation to the work of Banstead mobility centre, the hon. Gentleman referred to the possible availability of the football pitch and the possible co-location of the mobility centre, the medical engineering resource unit and the wheelchair service. I shall bring him up to date on the current position. The land, along with the rest of the Orchard Hill site, is held by the NHS executive London regional office. It will take the request from Banstead mobility centre into account in determining the future use of the site, and fully assess it against all the other options. The local authority will deal with other issues, and any application will have to go through due process.

Mr. Brake

Does the Minister believe that Banstead mobility centre, which has been the tenant of the site for many years, should be given any priority in respect of the land sale?

Mr. Denham

I fully recognise the role that the centre plays, and pay tribute to its excellent work. However, it would be invidious of me to say that a group should be given priority without full knowledge of the competing priorities that might be involved. The claims and interests of Banstead mobility centre in applying for use of the land will be given appropriate consideration by the London regional office.

On a wider level, the trust has initiated a rapid review of its wheelchair services, which will deal with arrangements for the future delivery of those services, including the relationship between Sutton wheelchair services, Banstead mobility centre and the medical engineering resource unit. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the trust's review will carefully examine the issues surrounding the benefits of collocation that he discussed.

Mr. Brake

May I encourage the Minister to express a view on whether he thinks that collocation is the way forward?

Mr. Denham

Some of these issues are best dealt with by people who work at a local level with local stakeholders. It is not necessarily right for Ministers to say in Adjournment debates, "This must be the conclusion of a review which is currently under way and hasn't yet completed its work."

I want, above all, to assure the hon. Gentleman and his constituents that a process is in place to consider not only the future of wheelchair services but the strength of the arguments for collocation that he has put during today's debate. As Minister, I would not want to think that those arguments would go by default because no part of the system was charged with the responsibility of considering them. I am sure that the review will do so.

I hope that I have covered the majority of the points that the hon. Gentleman raised. If I find that any matters are outstanding, I shall write to him or draw them to the attention of my colleague at the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at One o'clock.