It transpires that Hunt has lied to parliament! From today's Standard

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt pressed ahead with plans to downgrade Lewisham Hospital despite the “critical” concerns of the NHS’s medical director, it can be revealed.

Professor Sir Bruce Keogh warned him that cutting the accident and emergency and maternity departments could lead to major problems at neighbouring hospitals required to treat patients diverted from Lewisham.

It comes as Mr Hunt was today under fire for claiming in Parliament that the NHS chief told him the proposals “could save up to 100 lives every year” — a claim never made in his report. Sir Bruce, who was asked by Mr Hunt to review the proposed axing of Lewisham’s casualty and maternity wards prior to a final decision last week, backed the changes but told the Health Secretary that their timing “will be critical”.

patients are expected to divert to King’s College or to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich. This will result in both handling more than 8,000 births a year and having to “double-staff” the units.

Campaigners and MPs had already complained that hospitals including King’s College, in Denmark Hill, had been forced to turn away expectant mothers on 37 occasions in 18 months because their maternity wards were full.

Sir Bruce said there was a need to “ensure there is no risk to patients by inadvertent underprovision at hospitals receiving displaced Lewisham activity”, particularly “acute medical emergencies”.

Sir Bruce told Mr Hunt that it was “illogical” to transfer all A&E patients elsewhere — prompting the Health Secretary to retain a downgraded casualty unit at the hospital able to deal with about 80,000 of the less serious cases Lewisham handles each year.

Sir Bruce added: “We will need reassurance that there are sufficient critical care services for the receipt of acutely ill medical and surgical patients in receiving hospitals.”

Labour MP Dame Tessa Jowell said there has been a fourfold increase in cancelled operations at King’s College since 2009/10 as a result of existing pressures.

She added: “I am alarmed by the degree of risk that Sir Bruce Keogh identifies.”

Lewisham Hospital consultant and campaigner John O’Donohue said medics were writing to Sir Bruce to ask how Mr Hunt could “make the baseless claim that 100 lives will be saved”.

“What was said in Parliament by Jeremy Hunt is based on very false evidence,” he said. “It’s going to be used time and time again to justify local hospital closures.

“What they will do is play the ‘local safety’ card, but there is no evidence for it. The whole thing is a bit like a house of cards. It’s built on no concrete evidence.”

The Department of Health did not respond to requests for a comment.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/nh...79824.html

Jim Dowd has kindly directly me to the letter sent by Sir Bruce Keogh to Jeremy Hunt:
https://www.wp.dh.gov.uk/mediacentre/fil...1/SLHT.pdf
As noted above, doctors from Lewisham have written to Sir Bruce asking for details on the claim of 100 lives saved, which was not included in his report (although I remember seeing that figure in some of Kershaw's report). It will be interesting to see what Sir Bruce's response will be.

What about the thousands of lives that wil be lost!!

Does anyone have any more information on this event:

Saturday 16 February - 'Born in Lewisham event' for people born in, or who gave birth, in Lewisham Hospital. Further details to be confirmed.

My daughter was born in Lewisham Hospital in October and I would be very keen to take part and know other mums whose babies were born around the same time would be interested in participating.

there should be more info going out on the savelewishamhospital website this week. I will be going too as my son was born in lewisham

Thanks Meduza, will keep a look out on the website for further info!

As well as the controversial claim that 100 lives will be saved by the downgrading of Lewisham A&E, is some twisted statistics in the Hunt's speech:

So nobody will have to travel more than 30 minutes in an ambulance to get to an open A&E (you would hope so in London - I'm sure you could get to the other side of London in 30 minutes in an ambulance with flashing lights), but how long does the average ambulance travel to get to Lewisham, my guess is about 10 minutes (I suspect there are figures in Kershaw's report to back this up).

The 'one minute longer' is not for Lewisham residents, it is an average across 'the whole population of south-east London', most of whom will still be closer to one of the other three hospitals in SE London. By definition the impact on Lewisham residents will be considerably more than one minute, in fact it would be fair to assume from the headlines that for some the journey time will go from 10 minutes to closer to 30 minutes. That's the time from the ambulance loading you in and carting you off, not the time you dial 999.

Again the figures for public access to consultant-led maternity services are spread across all of South East London, making the two to three minutes seem more acceptable, and helpfully combining the private and public transport into a single figure. For plenty in Lewisham there will be a considerably longer journey time to such maternity services, but apparently that's okay because it is averaged out against the rest of south east London who will not have longer journey times.

The cuts to services hit worst in an area spread across most of Lewisham borough which roughly correlate with the worst deprivation and worst health in South East London. But it does allow the government to dismantle a good hospital in a poor borough while protecting the services of failing hospitals in rich areas.

Good to hear about Michael Gove's U-turn this morning, I hope Jeremy Hunt was watching how it's done.

I don't actually think there is much to argue about re journey times by ambulance. As you say, with blues and twos, most hospitals in London should be accessible in half an hour.

The more pertinent point is whether the destination hospital will be able to treat you when you get there. It seems that Bruce Keogh actually raised this concern in his report to the health minister. It is this that has probably led to the political fudge of downgrading the A&E to a category not recognised by the NHS.

Journey times without an ambulance, for instance in maternity cases, are more troublesome I think. My own daughter was meant to be born at King's but was rushed via ambulance to QE Woolwich to be delivered there. That was not a problem for the ambulance - I on the other hand, even with unofficial police escort, didn't make it to the hospital in time for the birth owing to bank holiday traffic. I did explain this in a letter to Jeremy Hunt but I don't think he is listening.

In view of Cameron and Hunt's crocodile tears over Mid-Staffs Hospital, who is to say that in 20-30 years time, if not before, there'll be some health minister or even PM apologising for what was done here in Lewisham despite all the warnings.
If my health or that of a loved one was to be demonstrably affected by the downgrading and the extra time it took to get a proper intervention, I'd hope to raise the money to sue Kershaw and Hunt and would gladly contribute towards anyone else doing so.

There has been various talk in the media of a possible legal challenge to Hunt's decision. Does anyone know any more about this? I would have thought that it could and should be judicially reviewed, particularly given the precedent that it sets. On the face of it the administrator and Hunt's subsequent decision seem to go beyond their legal powers. Isn't the administrator appointed to sort out trusts in deficit, rather than having powers to recommend other trusts to shut down services?
If I'm wrong then I'm afraid this is a sad day for our (lack of) democratic constitution because
1) it is completely counter to what the government set out in their election manifesto and countless announcements since, that they will use allow the market to decide ie. well run institutions (ie. Lewisham) will thrive while poorly run ones (Bromley) will be left to fail
2) it is completely counter to seemingly all the views of those who replied to the consultation, all those that protested, and all those that wrote to J Hunt - all those views have been ignored
3) this is clearly party politics - Lewisham is a Labour borough, Bromley isn't
4) this has nothing to do with health outcomes - Lewisham isn't a PFI hospital, so 2/3rds of the buildings will be sold off to bail out the shiny new PFI hospitals that have got themselves into financial trouble. So effectively the private sector contractors are being bailed out by cutting our health services.

First post on this forum - I had hoped to comment on something more positive.......!

Welcome Ponyboy,

The Forest Hill ward assembly heard from one of the leading campaigners last night. They have a solicitor looking at some of the matters, Steve Bullock has also asked council lawyers to look at this situation.

The problem as I see it is that however much a government sets themselves rules to make decisions, or sets up consultations and administrators to advice, the powers are finally in the hands of a single secretary of state.

The best way to change the policy is for Jeremy Hunt to understand that there is no such thing as a 'slimline A&E', and that imposing such cuts make no sense for our health or the finances of the NHS. But so much investment is required (in Kings and Woolwich) before any services can be cut, that there is plenty of time for a future secretary of state to reverse this proposed downgrade.

So... no problem there then.

This is quite a bombshell really - is this correct that any downgrade cannot happen until replacement health provision is in place at these 2 sites? (I know it sounds logical but not confident the government works like that). If so, that is moderately good news for Lewisham hospital - a shocker for public spending though as presumably SLHT will continue to run at a loss in the interim.

I share your scepticism but I would refer to Sir Bruce's advice:

They have been warned!

Lewisham Hospital has also issued a statement which includes:

Email from Steve Bullock, Mayor of Lewisham:

Well done Mayor Steve!

I am sure legal challenges to the government don't come cheap but if every person in Lewisham (population around 250,0000) put in a couple of quid then we could have a fund of half a million pounds....... I'm sure that would pay the legal bills!

More info on the lewisham.gov.uk web site.

Yep, i got that email today too. I'm chipping in a few quid. This is a fight worth having.

Would like to contribute, but notice that the lewisham.gov page where I enter my card details does not start https, nor has a lock icon - hence not secure?
Can anyone verify that this is a safe method of payment, please?

If you click the 'open form in a new window' link on the first page then, by the time you get to the payment screen, you can see it has switched to secure HTTPS.

I presume they are embedding the form in an IFRAME within their site.

I thought exactly the same, re: security (especially as there is a surcharge for credit cards which i'd normally use online) but if you scroll across when you get to the 'pay online' page there is a text box headed 'is my payment secure?' which tells you they are using encryption. That was enough for me.

I've just contributed - I think the fund is an excellent idea. It's another way to show our support, as well as being a practical way to help.