Maternity Services

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I will be brief, Mr Speaker. I just wanted to reiterate what my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) said. My constituency has a midwife-led maternity unit, Blake ward, at Gosport war memorial hospital, but it has been shut down temporarily on the basis that there are not enough midwives to cover the area. They have all been put into the Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth. I am concerned about that because Gosport is a peninsula serviced by the A32, which is an unbelievably difficult road at the best of times, and I am worried that babies will be born somewhere along the road or on a roundabout.

I desperately wanted to bring that to everyone’s attention, particularly the Minister’s. The ward has only been shut until January, but this follows an incident earlier in the year when the birthing pool was shut down. Now the ward has been shut down temporarily because of a baby boom caused by the snow earlier in the year. I sometimes feel that these are closures by stealth and that eventually the ward will be shut permanently. It is important that everyone understands the huge importance of these wards, particular the midwife-led maternity units, and especially in areas such as Gosport, which has high levels of social deprivation.