Health (CSR)
Debate between Grahame Morris and Alex Cunningham(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Is he aware that, contrary to the Government’s claims that they will protect the NHS, many jobs have already been axed in our health service, including nearly 200 on Teesside alone in recent weeks? Is he also aware that, just this week, school nurses in that area are being targeted and asked to volunteer for redundancy due to the very real cuts being imposed?
Grahame M. Morris
I have a whole series of examples of hospitals and services that are threatened with closure or reductions in services from right across the length and breadth of the country, which was highlighted in a recent report in The Sunday Telegraph. I have the whole list, so I agree with the valid point that my hon. Friend makes forcefully.
After only six months in power, the coalition is putting the proud record of the previous Labour Government on the NHS in jeopardy. On top of this, feedback from the front line shows that the Government are removing the safeguards and patient guarantees that drove down waiting times and assured the same quality of care irrespective of where a patient lived. This is not a Government protecting the NHS. It seems as if this is round 2 of what the Tories never managed to accomplish in the 1980s: to break up and privatise the service.
North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust
Debate between Grahame Morris and Alex Cunningham(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Alex Cunningham
These issues were extensively explored with the public. There was detailed and extensive formal and informal consultation involving public meetings, leaflet drops to households and a radio campaign. The Government had promised additional funding to tackle some of the transport issues and communities across the place were in favour of the hospital.
I must outline why the new hospital should remain a priority for the new Government.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South— [Interruption.] I am sorry—we will get that one next time. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing this debate. People in my constituency and the five others that were to have been served by this new hospital need to know why this project was cancelled when three other schemes elsewhere in the country were approved. The Minister is being coy in his written answers to questions, but we really need answers. The need remains. Issues of health inequality need to be addressed. I want to place it on record that south Easington, which would be served by this new hospital, is one of the most deprived communities in the United Kingdom, as identified by the indices of multiple deprivation. Health inequalities still play a significant role in determining life expectancy and quality of life. Health inequalities remain a big issue: they are inequalities not just in terms of outcomes but in access to health care resources—