Stormont parties must agree pact on hospital reform

It is almost 16 years since Bairbre de Brun, the health minister in 2000, ordered a review of acute hospital services. The following year that review, the Hayes Report, recommended six hospitals with maternity care and inpatient maternity services.

Studies since have reached similar conclusions. A range of big names, from the tycoon Gerry Robinson to the ex chief medical officer of England Sir Liam Donaldson, have called for reform to be implemented, yet little has been done about it.

The problem is simple. All political parties privately agree that current hospital provision is too expensive and inefficient. Yet not one of them is prepared to break ranks.

Every time a minor hospital is rightly marked for closure (in order to concentrate funds in a smaller number of world class hospitals), there is public uproar. The main political parties then attend rallies in support of keeping open the hospital that they all agree should close.

This is political cowardice on a grand scale. But shrinking from difficult decisions is not unique to Stormont. In Great Britain, health reform is so politically toxic that even the Conservatives felt the need to pledge to ring fence NHS spending.

In Manchester, however, the two main parties – Labour and the Tories – have signed up to a set of principles that will include reducing the number of emergency departments in the city (which will take control of its own health budget in April) from 10 to four. Ian Williamson, the chief officer of Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Devolution, said Northern Ireland politicians should agree something similar.

Stormont’s current health minister Simon Hamilton has also been calling for consensus. It is a pity that no political party had the courage to spell out to the public what needs to be done. But if the parties can agree a united front between themselves, the Province will at last begin to get more value for its health spending per pound than is currently the case.