Tag Archives: nhs

Visiting 10 Downing Street

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At 10 Downing StreetAt the same time as the tornado hit Kensal Rise yesterday, the thunder clapped, the lightening lightened and the skies opened and bucketed down on me and my researcher Mette as I delivered the teacher cut outs by local children from Bounds Green School to 10 Downing Street.

As you can see in the picture I am holding two of the cut outs – there were hundreds in paper folders – but I couldn’t hold them for the picture without getting them soaked. But all were handed in and Mette and I got very, very wet.

Then I hosted a meeting on Shingles – which is a form of the herpes virus – to raise awareness of just how serious and debilitating an illness this is. It requires effective pain relief and relatively few GPs are truly experienced in this field and there are not many pain clinics. Also, there are drugs that can be prescribed if caught very early that prevent it actually coming full on – but the cost is not something some NHS primary care trusts will stomach with Patricia Hewitt’s job on the line if their budgets don’t come in on the line.

A new vaccine is hopefully soon going to come on the licensed market – but in the meantime, if raising awareness will help sufferers get the treatment and consideration for this painful disease that they need – then here is a bit of blog-awareness.

Last but certainly not least is a Westminster Hall debate on the reports of the Home Affairs Select Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. It was a sensible debate and you can read what I said about the powers of detention under the Terrorism Act here.

Hornsey Central Hospital

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Main event of the day was a public meeting organised by Save Hornsey Hospital Campaign titled ‘Save Local Health Services under Threat’ – which they most certainly are.

I was chairing the meeting and there were a number of speakers, including a really impressive doctor Jacky Davis who told it how it is. She laid out quite clearly the scenarios which are leading to the privatisation of the NHS and demonstrated the harmful effect that so called ‘patient choice’ has had in letting the private sector cherry pick – whilst the NHS (our NHS) is left with less funds and all the difficult cases.

We also had Maria Duggan – a local health expert and local resident – who spoke passionately about the death of services for older people in the west of Haringey. We have very high numbers of older people in the wards in the west of the borough – more than in the east – and yet no council facilities grace the west.

The long-promised all singing all dancing replacement facility for older people that was meant to be delivered in exchange for stopping the campaign to save Hornsey Central Hospital has never materialised.

In fact, the only bit of the proposals to supply beds for older people on the site has collapsed – a mix between Haringey Council withdrawing their sponsorship of that bit and the Primary Care Trust (PCT) taking so long and changing tack so many times that the Council gave up trying to work with them.

The Lib Dems have been campaigning for ‘Action Now’ on Hornsey Central Hospital after the six years of broken promises. Our fight is to make sure that health services are finally delivered – and that the development is about what is needed and wanted locally.

Shirley Murgraff – a long-standing community campaigner – tried to get across the urgency and extent of what was happening in the NHS and to get people signed up to the National Campaign to Keep the NHS. Richard Stein laid out the legal possibilities of challenging what is happening.

Sue Secher, Sue Hessel and Janet Shapiro all gave rousing speeches and more people are needed to sign up to the campaign. There are a number of fronts to be fought on – from pressurising Haringey Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee to making sure everyone local to Fortis Green clinic is aware that they can now put in their two pennies worth on its proposed closure.

There was a representative from the PCT there who tried to say that they were consulting. But as the ‘discussion’ (she was careful to make this distinction) will only be advertised through the newspaper or on lampposts – so there will be another job to do to make sure that people really know what is going on.

The bid to the Government for £7million towards the cost of the new proposed health facility on the Hornsey Central Hospital site will soon be decided. Together with £3.5 million from a LIFT project and the sale of two clinics and some land – this delivers the £14 million funding for the new facility. Of course – the problems are around how much will be private and what will be additional rather than shuffling deckchairs.

The Liberal Democrats have a 5-point plan for Hornsey Central if the bid comes in – which is why I have supported the bid. My pragmatic stance is: let’s get the £7 million and then fight to get what local people want out of it. To get the money we have to jump through some of the Government’s hoops – however much we might disagree with them.

The five points are:

1. More GPs and clinic sessions provided – not just the existing GPs and clinics we already have reshuffled and centralised. There needs to be a real dialogue between the PCT and local GPs to ensure what is provided is wanted by the practices. It is essential that coverage of GPs and GP practices across the area remains and that there is a net gain.

2. Real engagement and consultation with patients, residents, voluntary organisations and health workers over the development and relocation of services. As the promise was originally to replace the services for older people – their needs must be addressed and therefore full engagement with older residents is a priority.

3. Improved public transport to Hornsey Hospital, to ensure it is accessible – particularly for older people and parents with young children. The PCT needs to work with Transport for London to get existing bus routes extended to reach the site and the W2 route reinstated as a minimum.

4. Protect our community pharmacies by working with existing pharmacists and carrying out an impact assessment before opening a new pharmacy at the Hospital.

5. Ensure that the proceeds of any land or property sale go back into site.

This is not an exhaustive list and there are lots of pitfalls and dangers – but at least if we can fight for net gain and proper, and I mean proper, engagement – then just perhaps we can squeeze something out of the current disaster.

Anyway – top marks to the Save Hornsey Central Hospital campaigners who had worked so hard to get this meeting together. It can be very hard work to get people informed and out of their houses – but the hall was packed and the passions ran really high.

Whittington Hospital – and chance to watch me on TV!

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Local Haringey Police Chief, Simon O’Brien, came up to Parliament for one of our regular meetings. I usually go to him at Tottenham Police Station – so it was a nice change. Issues of discussion included the changing police estate (i.e. police stations and other land and buildings) in Haringey, the re-offending rate, youth courts, knife crime and anti-social behaviour.

Zoom back to Haringey to go to the new wing (long time coming) of the Whittington Hospital. Some real design thought and talent has gone into creating state of the art facilities at this much loved, but somewhat run down, hospital.

A wow factor entrance – with double height spaces, huge and voluminous, where outpatients will wait for imaging (x-ray) or other. High tech – the patients will be given a pager which allows them to go to the new restaurants or shops whilst waiting – and they will be paged just when they are next but one to be called.

The critical care area (intensive care in old jargon) is large and spacious – which will cut down on infection. The equipment should always be right up to date as the contract contracts the supplier to keep it up to date – no more purchasing and having to keep beyond sell by date stuff. And perhaps most of all – it has all been thought through so that form follows function – and the needs of the patient are at the forefront.

There have been huge problems getting to this stage – and all sorts of things wrong and should have been done differently with the Jarvis contract, the timings and costs etc – but finally we’re there.

Excuse the not fantastic picture – the girl who kindly agreed to take the photo sadly seems to have missed the splendid surroundings and just got me and the escalators!

Back to Westminster for briefing on tomorrow’s Queen’s Speech and a phone call to say that Iain Dale has invited me to co-present tomorrow’s (Wednesday’s) show on 18 Doughty Street. I phone Iain to say willing to give it a go!

Police Justice Bill

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Leading for the Liberal Democrats in Parliament on the Police Justice Bill today – which means pressure! What always astonishes me is that although it takes months for a Bill to wend its way through the legislative process in both Houses of Parliament, when it is due to come to the Chamber, it is so utterly rushed. Third reading in the Lords on the Thursday, Hansard published on Friday (needed so you can read up on what was said, what happened and why etc) and back in the Commons for Lords amendments on the Monday. So frantic weekend preparing – but even then you don’t know what amendments will be taken in what order – as that only came through at lunchtime today.

The big issue was extradition – because we on the Lib Dem side believe that – in a nutshell – our treaty with the USA means they can extradite our citizens much easier than we can get theirs. The Without going into the nitty gritty that had the lawyers in the house slavering – it’s not fair! Oor extradition expert, David Heath, did a great job on extradition

The rumours were that the vote would be close – possibly even a defeat for the Government. And given the number of Labour ministers in the lobbies (including Tony Blair – who often does not vote) I guess the Labour whips must have thought they might lose. It was close – but not that close. Close enough, however, for it to be likely that the House of Lords will have another go on this when the Bill goes back to them.

I then battled on Conditional Cautions – where the Government is creating (in my view) a two-tier justice system as you will be given a choice to pay a fine or go to court. If you pay a fine (i.e. if you can afford it) – then you not only avoid the nasty business of going to court, but you also evade a criminal record. I call this Labour’s Pay & Go policies.

Then it was the powers that the Home Secretary wants to directly intervene in a failing police force. There used to be independent inspection – which if negative would trigger intervention. The Government had conceded that some independent inspection should still be involved – but there are no criteria for what constitutes ‘failing’ or ‘last resort’. Given the Government’s sensitivity to bad publicity, you can just imagine something going wrong and getting them bad headlines over a crime incident. And then in order to look active and in charge – the Home Sec ‘intervenes’. The operational independence of the police in my view would be seriously compromised. The last thing we need is any more politicisation of the police.

On police mergers the Government agreed to the five test that we and the Tories put forward – making the case, public and proper (not just statutory) consultation, adequate parliamentary time, addressing the funding etc. So no vote needed on this one!

And last but not least – prison inspectorates. We had already had a great victory in the Lords. The Government’s defeat meant they came back at the last minute with 20 pages of amendments to Lords Third Reading stage abandoning their proposals to merge five inspectorates together. I had laid such a similar amendment at Committee stage in the Commons – but the Government didn’t budge. Sadly we rely on the Lords to right wrongs! Anyway – there were a few details that pulled back power to the Home Sec again – and away from the independent inspectorates. So the Tories managed to get amendments down on these – but the Government defeated us.

I also just about managed to meet my constituent Caroline Sharpe – part of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer lobby today. And she was very successful in lobbying me (and I was very happy to be lobbied as so many women fail to get screened). I am going to see if I can get a letter out to those areas in Hornsey & Wood Green where screening take up is so poor. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone (or more) who has breast cancer. I have several friends – and my mother had it too. Early detection and the new treatments can change the prospects of survival dramatically. Also – as Caroline pointed out – Herceptin is easy to get if you go privately as are new forms of chemo – which up your chances. Our state system has to improve in its treatment of these types of diseases. It used to be that the difference between going private or state was just that you got a nice private room and food – but the clinical treatment was the same – and in the end it is the clinical treatment that really counts. Now there appears to be a clinical difference – then we need to agitate for the NHS to be able to provide the best possible.

Hornsey Central Hospital

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Ruth Carnall is the Chief Executive of the new London Strategic Health Authority. I wanted to see her because at the recent public meeting on Hornsey Hospital it was made clear that a parcel of land from the site is to be sold off. Now – it is one thing if it is sold and all the money comes back into developing a new health facility on the site – but another if the money disappears into some distant pot and we here are left high and dry without hospital, without the land and without the dosh!

Where the money goes is down to this new body – so I wanted to meet them, but they didn’t want to see me! When my office phoned, (and my ‘arranger’ Ed is pretty insistent) – they insisted that I go and see the local Chief Executive of the Enfield Haringey Health Authority – Tracy Baldwin. So I did on Friday.

Happily, the fuss I made about wanting to see Ruth Carnall had preceded me in that Tracy Baldwin had been to the London body and been greeted by ‘who is this Lynne Featherstone?’! According to Ms Baldwin this was helpful in that the bid for a government pot of money is ready to be submitted (this is the larger part of the funding needed for the new facility) and if the government grants the bid then, together with the proceeds of the land sale, there would be the money and the plans to start work on the new facility on the site early in the new year. And – importantly – the London Strategic Health Authority have now said that Haringey will have first call on the proceeds. So – not quite a cast-iron legal contract, but pretty good news and if the bid is successful it looks as if the money will come here and the project will go ahead.

I am writing a letter of support for the bid – because this is the best shot at delivering facilities we are going to get. It’s best to get the best of what’s possible. There are other lesser options in the bid – but this is the one to go for. I am optimistic – and next it will be a matter of working to ensure that local people and users of local GPs services get an input to the next round of decisions about the site and its development.

We are a long way on from last year when it looked like only private money for private health would make the project viable. At least with this system the vast majority of the funding is NHS and the consequent facilities are mostly what local people say that they want. So – fingers crossed.

350 years of Jewish History

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Quarterly meeting with David Sloman, Chief Executive at the Whittington Hospital. Overall the Whittington has managed to balance its budget. Phew! But what awaits the good guys is a demand from the Government that they make ‘savings’ next year. David explains to me that there will be a capital investment (or at least that is the plan) – so that we will get it back another way. We have a discussion about the way health (and everything else) is being regionalised – and I talk about the need for nurses to be able to be caring as well as clinically excellent. So often they are rushed off their feet and so can’t give that extra personal care and attention. I remain convinced that the caring part of nursing is a keep part of medically effective treatment overall.

In the evening I get to go to 350 years of Jewish History. This is Mr Speaker’s reception for unsung heroes of the Jewish community and I go to have a drink etc. If Mr Speaker invites you – you go! In fact, I went last Monday to what I thought was this event. As I arrived, I shook hands with Mr Speaker – and in the reception line next to him was a Catholic priest. Which did strike me as odd – but… Then as I moved into the room, there were not very many people and there was a very quiet atmosphere. Jews gathered together are not normally quiet – I know ‘cos of family bashes. So I went back to Mr Speaker and asked him. And I had actually arrived at a celebration for the Apostles of the Sea! Mr Speaker kindly invited me to stay – but I said I would come back to the one he had actually invited me to the next week.

This time – the Chief Rabbi was there – and it wasn’t quiet! I met a little clutch of women from the Jewish Women’s League, a woman from Hornsey & Wood Green, the wife of the Chair of the Board of Jewish Deputies and a wonderful woman who sent people to far off places to do voluntary work. It is funny really. The Jewish population have managed to stay as a pretty firm culture and race – and assimilate at the same time. However, one woman told me that there is quite a lot of trouble and snobbishness about which type of synagogue or congregation that you belong too. There is no culture or race, I guess, who don’t have status levels. Great fun!

Foundation schools

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My youngest daughter’s 17th birthday today. I have to get her up for presents and cards at 7.30am – poor thing. Finished her AS’s yesterday thank goodness. So dash off to work. Am studying the news very hard this week as I am on Question Time tomorrow and live in terror of not knowing about some issue that may come up.

Lib Dem Home Affairs Team first thing – and we thrash out our views on the terror raid in Forrest Gate, discuss trafficking and general crime issues. I have to leave early to go and meet the School Council from Fortsimere School who I have sponsored for a tour and who come up to see the exhibition of some of their work on display at the House. The new head is with them and I ask him for a meeting to discuss the school’s desire or otherwise to become a foundation school. I am against this on principle – but Haringey have screwed them financially to the point where I guess they feel it is Hobson’s choice. I will try and persuade them – but in the end – so long as there is a proper democratic process for making this decision – it has to be for the school, the students, the governors, the staff and the parents to decide.

I go to PMQs – and then stay both for the statement on the NHS and then the Opposition Debate on Tax Credits. What a mess – both of them!

Ming Campbell visits Haringey

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Menzies Campbell MP launches Haringey local election campaign

Ming comes to launch our local election campaign in Haringey – where we have a real chance to take Haringey Council after 35 years of Labour rule. The Leader coming confirms this position!

I and Neil Williams (LibDem Council Group Leader) meet Ming at Harringay station. He arrives at 9.15am on the dot. I love people who are on time and organised. We go to the Tottenham side of the station – to Harringay ward – to photograph Ming with the Harringay candidates and then to the Hornsey & Wood Green side for photographs with the Stroud Green candidates. Both sides are to emphasize our campaign for CCTV on the scary entrances both sides of the bridge.

Ming (Sir Menzies Campbell to give him full title) is looking very dapper and smart. We proceed to the campaign HQ at The Three Compasses where Ming will launch our campaign, meet local members and activists (all stuffing envelopes – and boy there are a lot to stuff) and do one-to-one interviews with the journalists covering his visit.

One of the journos lets it be known that a hastily scrambled together ‘launch’ by Labour Minister Hazel Blears is now to take place at 11am same day having heard about Ming’s visit. I know Labour are terrified of losing the Council – but please!

If it’s true – then Hazel (who is my opposite number as I am her Shadow Minister) will do her duty and attack the LibDems and me as usual. It doesn’t matter which way we vote on anything – be it the police budget at the GLA or the Violent Crime Reduction Bill.

We supported the funding for the police and the Violent Crime Reduction Bill – but whatever we say or do – Labour’s mantra is always the same and always untrue. In politics, as opposed to pretty much every other walk of life, lying is just shrugged at and you are just meant to grin and put up with it – but I think that is why politics is in the state it is in – because people can’t be sure that what they read is the truth.

I know I digress – but there is an absurd letter going out in Stroud Green. It purports to be from a Bernard E who lives in Stapleton Hall Road (curiously there’s no-one with the first name Bernard on the electoral register in that road). It basically attacks me for supposedly being a known right winger and supporter of the Orange Book. (A think tank book of essays and ideas by LibDems – one of which was a ‘right-wing’ suggestion about funding in the NHS – thrown out robustly by the party at the following conference).

This would make the party laugh – as that is hardly my reputation or position in the political spectrum. Anyway – there are two versions – one with a Labour imprint and one without (although election law requires all leaflets to have an imprint) – and the writer says he is an old friend of one of the Labour candidates, though doesn’t mention that said person is already a councillor in another ward but was deselected by the Labour party there and so has had to find another ward to stand in.

I mention all this because – whilst we are standing at Harringay Station with Ming – a man comes up to Lib Dem Cllr Laura Edge and me and asks if we have seen this anonymous (in the sense there is no surname and no address) letter going out and how awful it is and how obviously a Labour smear letter. I am heartened by the public’s ability to see through this type of rubbish.

What is odd about the attacks on me is that I am not even a candidate in the local elections as I am stepping down after eight years as a local councillor and five as Leader of the Opposition. But I know that for Labour (and the defunct Tories who have no seats on the council at all) I am a symbol of all of their troubles and political losses.

So at the Three Compasses and into the working room where the stuffing tables are. A big cheer from quite a crowd gathered there and Ming delivers a rallying speech to encourage the troops – as does Neil. Ming clearly thinks we can do it – if we do the work between now and polling day.

Then the series of one-to-ones with reporters. Ming is in fine form – and truly a professional. Interviews over – a couple of members take him for a short tour and then off to Euston to get a train to Manchester for the next big launch. The cry is that we will make great gains across the board – more votes, more councillors and more councils!

Straight back down to earth and surgery at Jacksons Lane Community Centre. Run into Melanie – the Director – who is in happy mode as Haringey ‘found’ the funding to save the centre. I knew they would. Having made it explicit that I would turn this into an election issue if they didn’t I think that may have played a part in focusing their attention on resolving the matter quickly and before the election got under way – although they will undoubtedly claim that had nothing to do with it. That’s where politics works! A situation where Haringey has ignored or not responded on such an important matter – and suddenly with a political spotlight about to shine and me poking my nose in – then things happen.

I remember a similar thing when Labour Haringey wanting to close Muswell Hill library. But the library campaigners, local residents and the LibDems turned it around – with the fortuitous advent of a local ward by-election at that very moment.

In the evening I go to meet Linda Alliston who leads the Coldfall Woods Group. There have been huge problems with gangs of youths on motor bikes ‘buzzing’ dogs and walkers and then burning their no doubt stolen bikes. There is raw sewage (long term problem) being fed into the stream.

The solution to the bikes is to make the woods and football pitches secured by ‘kissing’ gates so that motorbikes can’t enter. For this they need to access the Section 106 money (£500k) from the Lynx Depot development. Cllr Martin Newton (Lib Dem, Fortis Green) comes with me and he has already secured a promise that they would have no problem with a bid for the gates – so they need to write in and I will support that bid. Also – Martin has got the new Safer Neighbourhood police team (which is just in place) to agree that they will come and look at how they can tackle the youth/bike problem.

In the meantime however, Haringey needs to deal with the perennial dumping – and to notify the allotment owners and houses (whether Haringey or Barnet) that back onto Muswell Hill playing field that throwing their BBQ waste over into the fields is not acceptable behaviour. Sadly, there’s an anti-social minority who do this. The good folk who love the fields and the woods have two major clear-ups a year.

Anyway – it was nice to meet the group who look after and love the fields and the woods – a wonderful local amenity – and Martin will pursue the issues and I will also be writing to support the case.

Go back to campaign HQ for a last hour of stuffing envelopes to sooth me down to sleep mode!

Royal Free hospital

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Reflecting on the swingeing cuts at the Royal Free and having done a bit of homework with various medical experts, I have come to the conclusion that many of the problems stem from the fact that management make decisions about which jobs to cut, and doctors are relatively expensive compared to, say, nurses.

However due to the way medicine works, it requires several nurses on the ward for every doctor. At the end of the day it is clinical staff – not managers – who see, assess, treat, take responsibility for, and discharge patients. The biggest growth area in the NHS is middle management. It would be virtually impossible to find a clinician who has any idea of the purpose/reason for this management ‘growth industry.’ Conversely managers often start interfering with clinical decisions based on a lack of medical understanding – for example pressure to discharge patients prematurely, thereby increasing their chances of rapid readmission.

Admittedly most doctors are patient-centred and not management-trained, so those hard-working managers who keep our cupboards stocked and pay the bills are crucial. The rest, who sit in pointless 9-5 meetings and hypothesise about meeting targets, while there are not enough clinicians to possibly do so within the limits of physics, should be redistributed.

Trouble at the Whittington?

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A grizzly surgery today. Four people cried. I sometimes despair of the misery that bedevils lives – from illness, to mental illness, to bullying by neighbours, to impossible housing situations, to being unable to leave the country to visit a daughter having a baby in a dangerous country from which you have fled for asylum.

I rush afterwards to have a quick lunch with a local journalist from The Muswell Hill and Crouch End Times in Crouch End – which is very pleasant. It is good to put a face and humanity to people you speak with often but haven’t met. I like the paper – as it reports news intelligently and is well-balanced. I don’t know how these reporters manage to get the paper out at all really. They always operate on the energy and ambition of young journalists hungry to get somewhere who will work incredibly hard on their path to future careers. Well – we all do that in those areas where working for little means that one day you get a chance to work at what you love.

Make a home visit to a disabled lady who has had an upsetting experience at the Whittington Hospital I will write to the Chief Exec to find out their side of the story and raise the issue. The bit I really find astonishing – without going into detail – is that traffic wardens (not sure yet if employed by council or hospital) actually burst in on a consultation when the woman was with the doctor. That seems slightly OTT whatever the dispute was about. We will see.

Anyway – I’m off now for a week! I may comment on what takes my fancy – but am not ‘doing’ for once.