We now know just how meaningless was the recent Vote of No Confidence in the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Hospital Trust. In spite of the much publicised vote, Hartlepool Borough Council has taken no further steps to register its displeasure or make clear the public’s anger over the Trust’s actions and continues to cooperate with the Trust on all matters - just as before.

The signs were all there at the extraordinary meeting. A labour amendment to Lib-Dem Councillor Edna Wright’s motion put together after discussions with the local PCT and proposed by Cllr Ged Hall, a member of the Hospital Trust. The amendment remember, expressed total confidence in the Trust’s Clinicians and, just three days later, a full page statement appeared in the Hartlepool Mail by the Clinicians expressing their support for the closure of Hartlepool’s A&E Department.

It was a coordinated game plan put together by several between several separate groups none of which can claim to have the support of the people.

So we move forward to the meeting of Full Council on December,8th and in particular, to a question posed to the Council by Hospital Campaigner, Keith Fisher.  “Please explain in specific details how effective has been the Full Councils unanimously carried Vote of No Confidence in the Chief Executive, the Chairman and the Board of our Hospital Trust”.

It was an obvious question to which many local people would have liked a positive answer. No other Local authority had ever unanimously voted to express a complete lack of confidence in its local Hospital Trust so it had been a significant, perhaps even historic event. It would therefore have been reasonable to expect a veritable list of actions that Hartlepool Council had instigated to let it be known to the Hospital Trust just how angry the people of Hartlepool and its Council were over the future plans for their hospital.

Reasonable. yes; likely, no - not if the ‘Vote of No Confidence’ had been nothing more than a political stunt aimed at taking the sting out of public anger prior to the most important local elections to be held in Hartlepool for years. And so it was.

Soon after the actual meeting had taken place and despite numerous promises to the public audience to do so, Chair of the Council, Carl Richardson, apparently ‘forgot’ to forward any written questions to the Hospital Trust. In fact, it was left to the Hospital Trust, having heard of Mr Richardson’s stated commitment to forward the questions, to, several weeks later, question why none had been received.

No surprise then that Mr Fisher’s question was answered with the same, long standing response that HBC had “no control over the Trust”. This was the same standard response that the council had relied on before the extraordinary meeting had taken place and although ten weeks had elapsed since clearly nothing much had changed.

The fact that the Council has no direct control over the Health Trust has never been in dispute but it would be wrong to say that it has no influence, as Stockton Borough Council has demonstrated repeatedly. Through the no confidence vote, the Council had been asked to work for the people of Hartlepool and East Durham and to place the maximum amount of political pressure on the Trust to change direction.

So what has happened since September, 29th?

The Chairman of the Council sent a much publicised delegation, led by Health Scrutiny Forum Chairman, Stephen Akers-Belcher, to London to discuss the vote of no confidence with an aide to the Health Minister. This delegation was told by the aide that it was a “local matter”. Not very helpful but even so, it was a clear mandate from the Minister for the council and, in particular Stephen Akers_Belcher, to pursue the matter locally with the Hospital Trust.

So where is the evidence of the either doing so?

On November 17th. Paul Garvin, Chairman of the Health Trust, was invited to the Council’s Health Scrutiny Forum. Given the words of the Minister’s aide, you would be forgiven for assuming that the recent vote of no confidence would have been a hot topic of debate. The reality was that the outcome of the vote was not even on the agenda of the Health Scrutiny Forum meeting nor was it even mentioned during the two hour meeting.

It was, in fact, business as usual. with no acknowledgement or even suggestion that the vote had ever taken place.