Government in turmoil – over Kingston Hospital

By FRANCIS KING

Nothing would demonstrate better the present turmoil of Government – not of its personalities but of its policies – than the present plight of Kingston Hospital. “Devastating” was how you reported the comments of Susan Kramer MP, and of Unison, on the budget cuts, announced on Sept 1st, of £7.5 million that have to be achieved by April, and on the closure of beds and operating theatres and the job losses that are likely to follow.

New Labour, and its Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, have been pushing ahead, at all too hectic a pace, with establishing Kingston Hospital as a Foundation Trust, taking its Trust and the Kingston Primary Care Trust in train, but regardless of its accumulated deficits and of the need for financial discipline. Now the hospital and its patients – from Richmond as well as Kingston – are paying the price of the Department of Health’s failure to take aboard the Treasury’s strictures. No wonder that the Chancellor’s exasperation has reached its limits – nor that the NHS Chief Executive, Sir Nigel Crisp, resigned in December.

Whatever the merits of Foundation Trusts – and they are controversial – the consultation that Kingston Hospital Trust initiated on July 24th is now seen to be a nonsense. Many of the figures in the consultation document are wrong, and two of its “core values”, staff morale and “maintaining financial stability” are seen to be suspect.

The only protest that has been made has come from Richmond’s voluntary sector, from its Community Group (VSCG), part of the formal planning structure of the Borough. On July 11th our PCT Board covered the NHS’s “Fitness for Purpose Programme”, yet another Whitehall initiative extravagant in its comprehensiveness. Sir Nigel Crisp had laid it down in July 2005 that “the pace of change will be subject to local consideration and consultation”. Accordingly the VSCG posed this “public question” to the Board – “Was the present pace of change fit for purpose?” There has been no effective response.

The consultation ends on Oct. 16th, but the Hospital Trust should be urged, not least by its Council, its PCT and its MPs, to withdraw and abandon it now. Too many management resources are being wasted on this fruitless exercise, as they were last year over another Whitehall initiative – to reduce the number of London PCTs from 31 to 5. Then the Council’s Conservative administration took a lead in the campaign. Now the Liberal Democrat administration has remained silent for too long.

Managers are the unsung heroes of the NHS: so are social care managers in our communities: both are being asked to square too many circles. Both deserve better support from Richmond’s elected politicians, and indeed from its voluntary sector.