2.56 pm
Grant Shapps (Welwyn Hatfield) (Con): I was elected to the House after defeating a previous Health Minister, Melanie Johnson, on the subject of hospital health care in my constituency of Welwyn Hatfield. That happened despite the fact that the then Secretary of State for Health, now the Home Secretary, had come to my constituency and announced a huge, £550 million project to build a new Hatfield hospital, which was to have been the answer to many of the concerns of my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Hertfordshire area.

We now learn that that project will involve at best investment of only £250 million or £300 million, and that it will not include cancer care. In fact, nine years after the Prime Minister told us that there were 24 hours to save the NHS, we are sceptical about whether it will ever be built.

Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con): Does my hon. Friend recollect that when the hospital was originally announced, amid the claims that he has described, the fact that it would include cancer care to reduce the long journey that my and his constituents would otherwise have to make was put forward as one of its principal benefits?

Grant Shapps: Absolutely—I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. I have been through cancer; I went through the trauma of chemotherapy and radiotherapy for a year, and can say that the last thing a person in such a situation wants to do is travel. That point comes on to exactly what I was about to say: that we have recently lost our chemotherapy service at the QEII hospital. That means that my constituents and others are having to travel 14 miles to the Lister hospital in Stevenage—a journey that no one wants to make when they are feeling sick after chemotherapy.

The issue is not only about the chemotherapy unit, but the maternity unit, where my kids were born just two years ago, that is set to be closed, and the ward of elderly care beds that has already gone; another is set to be closed. The issue is about the accident and emergency service, the core of any acute hospital, that is set to be closed.

I defeated the former Health Minister because the paediatric service was to have been closed at night. She said that I was scaremongering, but it is now being closed in the daytime and stripped out entirely. It is difficult to comprehend, but all surgery is to be lost from the hospital. I ask the Minister: if we lose our surgery, our cancer care, our maternity services, our paediatrics and our A and E, what is left of our hospital? The Government have talked recently about their intention to create more community hospitals. Is this the route to creating more community hospitals? The hospital does not offer fundamental core services.

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Of course, that would all be okay if there were to be a shiny, new £500 million hospital 2 miles down the road in Hatfield.

Anne Main: As my hon. Friend knows, I defeated the former MP for St. Albans. During the election, we repeatedly sought assurances from Ministers that the hospital would be built. The Minister may be aware that I asked for minutes of the meeting. There have been no assurances from Ministers, and I believe that the public have been sorely misled over the status of the hospital.

Grant Shapps: My hon. Friend is right, and we look today for an assurance about the super-hospital at Hatfield that was promised by the then Secretary of State for Health in a blaze of publicity. There has been no publicity around an announcement to reverse the decision, so we would like to hear that assurance. I invite the Minister to come to Welwyn Hatfield to explain to the people in my locality when and where the hospital will be built, and whether, as was originally planned, it will include the cancer care unit moved from Mount Vernon hospital. Or has that plan been dropped? Will there be a brand-new teaching hospital in Hatfield this decade, the next decade or the one after? All the things that were promised have been quietly dropped now that the attention and focus are off and there is no general election—indeed, now that the seat is no longer in Labour’s hands.

It is understandable that people are looking to their MPs and asking what is going on. The truth is that, as things stand, we will be left with so little hospital health care in constituencies such as mine and those of my hon. Friends that the Government will be putting lives at risk. It is inconceivable what a constituent who falls over from a heart attack in Hatfield is supposed to do in a busy rush hour to get themselves to the Lister hospital in Stevenage, given that the motorway narrows to two lanes. It is unimaginable how ambulance services, which are being regionalised and cut, will pick up patient or victims of car accidents and get them to the health service that they require.

It is extraordinary to my hon. Friends and to our constituents to hear the Prime Minister and others stand up at the Dispatch Box week in and week out to reel off numbers that bear no relation at all to the situation on the ground. What should be discussed are the 500 job losses—such figures should be stated—the closure of departments and the broken promises about new hospitals that, when it comes to it, simply will not be built. I ask the Minister to accept my invitation to come and explain in person.
 

Promoted by Amanda Perkins on behalf of Grant Shapps, both of Maynard House, The Common, Hatfield, AL10 0NF