Frank at the demonstration against the closure of the Whittington A & E. With Jeremy Corbyn MP, Karen Jennings, Emily Thornberry MP and David Lammy MP

Frank Dobson yesterday spoke against the closure of the Whittington Accident & Emergency Unit in the House of Commons.  He welcomed a statement by the Health Minister, who said he was unconvinced of the closure of the A & E unit.

Frank has been a vocal supporter of the Whittington A & E and recently joined thousands of local people on the march against the closure.

The text of his speech to the Commons is below:

Frank Dobson (Holborn and St. Pancras) (Lab): I find it very unconvincing when I hear a Tory Front Bencher speaking in favour of reducing health inequalities. When we came to power in 1997, each part of the country was supposed to be allocated health service funds that reflected the size, nature and health of their population, but the east end of London was getting 23 per cent. less than it was entitled to, and surprise, surprise, Tory Surrey was getting 23 per cent. more than it was entitled to. That is entirely typical of what the Tories have always done.

In my constituency, investment under the Labour Government has been quite dramatic. We have the new University College hospital, which I freely admit got under way when I was Health Secretary; and we have also had big improvements at the Royal Free hospital, which serves my area, and at Great Ormond Street hospital, which serves children from across the country. We have new health centres, with two in Kentish Town and one that has just reopened in Gospel Oak; most GP premises have been improved; and the survival rates and general performance in our area have massively improved because the buildings and equipment have at long last started to match the excellence of the staff.

As part of that, there has been a lot of investment in the Whittington hospital. I can remember, when I was in opposition, going to the Whittington and pledging all sorts of things. As I believe in keeping pledges, those pledges have been kept, and a lot of extra money has been invested in the Whittington. I could not get firm figures from the hospital today, but as I understand it £27 million was invested in the new accident and emergency department, so my hon. Friends and I find it slightly bizarre-to say the least-that nameless, faceless people have suddenly appeared on the scene and decided to recommend that the A and E department, in which all that money has been invested, no longer function, and that instead people be diverted to the Royal Free and University College hospitals.

I checked this morning at University College hospital. It was designed for 60,000 A and E attendees, and it now has knocking on for 90,000, so Lord only knows where the 90,000 people who use the Whittington will go. Apparently, the explanation is that many would go to clinics-new health centres-in Islington. The only trouble is that they have not been built, and it will cost money to build them. So if the closure is being undertaken to save money, it is utterly stupid because it will involve spending money to substitute for the money that has already been spent at the Whittington.

Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab): The issue is not only the waste of money, because the Whittington A and E rumours, which are rife in our part of the world, are having a serious knock-on effect on the hospital in my half of the borough of Camden, namely the Royal Free, and that is producing anxiety among not only patients but staff. Surely we have not invested all that money in the national health service and its staff suddenly to make them feel that they are no longer wanted or useful. It must be having an effect on their contribution now.

Frank Dobson: As ever, I agree with my hon. Friend and good friend. The report that was produced on behalf of the primary care trust last week shows how it estimates that between only 10 and 30 per cent. of the people who currently attend A and E could be properly attended to at one of the devolved clinics, as we might describe them. However, up to now the basis of the Darzi report has been that between 50 and 60 per cent. of people could be safely dealt with at such clinics, and I do not agree. I am simply not convinced.

The whole basis of the concentration of stroke provision and major trauma provision, which I strongly support, is that practice makes perfect, but apparently practice does not make perfect in A and E any more, because the people who have a lot of practice at a large A and E will be substituted by people who have a lot less practice at clinics in the community. So the closure does not make sense in terms of the practicalities or, indeed, the money.

The idea that there was widespread, successful consultation of Londoners over the whole Darzi thing is really preposterous. About 1,800 Londoners-and there are rather a lot of us-expressed support for the Darzi proposition, and about 1,700 said that they did not want it, so the view was far from unanimous even among those who were consulted. I find that outcome about as convincing as Lord Ashcroft’s protestations about his tax status, and we all know what that indicated.

Unfortunately, these aspects are bringing into disrepute a great deal of the achievements that the Government have brought about in the years that we have been in office. At the meeting I went to, when we had to listen to the burblings of some of the people who are proposing what is happening at the Whittington, nothing much was said about improving clinical performance; it was all about saying, “Oh, we think we’re going to be £500 million down.” When they were pressed to explain how that was going to happen, they could not come up with any satisfactory explanation. I can only assume that they are absolutely convinced that there will be a Tory Government and that there will therefore be a £500 million-a-year reduction in the money that is available, because they could not possibly conclude that from anything that the Labour Government have been committed to.

We need to look at the functions of NHS London. It is NHS London, not NHRS London: it is there to help clinicians in London to improve the services, not to be a national health reorganisation service for London. A lot more attention needs to be paid to what local people want.

In talking about A and E, I come back to the thing that I have been obsessed with for all the time that I have had an interest in this issue, and that goes back a very long way-if we want to make A and E departments more successful, let us put some GPs in there to deal with the folks who choose to turn up. People do not want to be told, even by clinicians, that they should not turn up at their local hospital. If they want to turn up for GP services, as well as strictly A and E provision, that should be fine by us, and it would be a proper response to the situation that we face.

I strongly welcome what the Minister said about being far from convinced of the merits of the closure of the A and E at Whittington hospital. One has to be careful what one says when one is a Minister, and what he said far from overstates the reaction of most people in the area and, according to all my sources, the reaction of most of the clinicians who are working at the Whittington and want to continue to do so. I welcome what he said, and I think he had better press on with it. We cannot leave this to bureaucrats. It is no good leaving things to bureaucrats, because when they get it wrong, they do not have to stand at the Dispatch Box to explain. Ministers have to do that, so Ministers should take responsibility right the way through. The people who take the decisions should carry the can, and the people who carry the can should take the decisions.