The NHS in Bristol
In February 2010 South Bristol community hospital, which has been promised to Bristol South residents for years, finally got the go ahead. It will be built at Whitchurch Lane in Hengrove Park and the hospital will be due to open in the spring of 2012. Southmead hospital will also be rebuilt. But both these new hospitals will be built with private money under what are Private Finance Initiatives (PFI).
The community hospital will be very similar to what the Green Party has been asking for for years in our national NHS policy - small local community health centres with basic services. Just as we envisage in our Green Party policy, the new comunity hospital will provide diagnostic and therapy services, a consultant and specialist medical appointment service, a GP service, a minor injury and illnesses unit, day surgery facilities and a few beds for rehabilitation (ideally with some for respite care for emergency domestic situations). It is unclear whether it will also provide mental health and disability services, or family planning and midwifery services, (as well as health education and promotion programmes) although we would hope that it will. (The Green Party's national health policy can be seen at: http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/mfsshe.html)
Ideally we would also want it to provide complementary medical services, although this seems unlikely. However, it seems a big step in the right direction. It is however to be built on what is currently green space and which the council effectively acknowledges will deprive local people of this green space. It would have been better if a brownfield site could have been used. Details can be seen on the city council website at: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/Environment-Planning/Planning/major-developments/hengrove-park---phase-1.en
But there is one major problem. The community hospital will be built by a private/public partnership using private finance. In other words it will effectively be a PFI hospital (one built using Public Finance Initiative money - though they try to avoid calling it that any more these days. Contracts were signed on February 12th and the hospital will cost £45m (which probably means nearer £100m by the time it is built as these projects always seem to end up costing well over double their supposed budget). The Hengrove Park site will also include a new 'skills academy' also to be funded by, yes, PFI.
Furthermore, last week the go ahead was also given for the £430m rebuilding of a new Southmead hospital to replace the existing one. Frenchay hospital will be downgraded. But guess what? This huge sum will be spent also under PFI, which means that this new hospital will ultimately cost the NHS about six times what it should cost (given that the current figures of PFI hospitals already built mean that NHS hospitals built under PFI cost nearly six times as much as if they were built directly by the NHS). The figures are uncertain, but presumably this means that the new hospital should cost the NHS only about £70m if it were built by the NHS itself. [See more details of the proposal at: http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/health/look-inside-Bristol-new-163-430m-super-hospital-gets-final-ahead/article-1869323-detail/article.html] In concept it also goes against the community health centre / community hospital model with regional centres providing only serious and specialist medical and surgery services. It is doubtful whether Bristol needs a second regional hospital as well as the Bristol Royal Infirmary.
The Green Party is totally opposed to using private finance (PFI) for public service provision. Earlier this year it was estimated that at current levels the NHS will end up paying £63 billion for new or refurbished hospitals which would have cost only £11 billion if paid for outright by the NHS (when the loans are finally paid off). The NHS does need investment in Bristol and the Green Party supports that. But using private money under PFI to finance the new south Bristol community hospital and the new Southmead hospital will add to the burden on public finances much more than is necessary. It seems that the Labour Party (and the Tories and Lib Dems) have still not taken on board that extra unnecessary borrowing leads to an unsustainable economy based on debt - and this even after the near economic meltdown and continuing crisis caused by huge debt. We are currently paying for this and will continue to do so for years to come. As we know, the economic and employment situation will get worse before it gets better because of this, and yet they want to prolong our debt problems well into the future so that our grandchildren will still be paying for it. Give us decent modern community hospitals in Bristol, yes, but fund them properly from the Treasury through taxation and not through very costly private loans.