Thornbury Health Centre Debate
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Virendra Sharma
Main Page: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)Department Debates - View all Virendra Sharma's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Thornbury Health Centre
Virendra Sharma Excerpts(10 months, 1 week ago)
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Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)
I will call Luke Hall to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Thornbury Health Centre.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Sharma. It is a genuine privilege to have the chance to debate the important matter of how we deliver good local health services on such a symbolic and important national day: the 75th birthday and anniversary of our national health service. Today, it is quite natural that politicians from all political parties will be discussing the NHS—whether it needs to reform or innovate more, and how it can improve—but I take this opportunity to thank everybody who works in the NHS for all that they do and achieve every single day. Like so many others, my family has relied on their dedication, expertise and, at times, compassion in some of the most difficult times in our family’s life. I will never stop saying a huge thank you to the team at Southmead Hospital for all that it did for my family, and of course for so many others in the region.
People access healthcare in a variety of ways: through their GPs, through local hospitals and, increasingly, in their own homes. South Gloucestershire, where my constituency is based, is a growing community. We have new developments all the time, and there are more residents to support. If we are to meet the growing demand for local health services in the years ahead, it is vital that capacity in our local health service is extended, that pressure on the main hospitals is reduced and that our community receives the financial investment in local health services that it requires. That is why I called for this debate—to highlight some of the challenges that we face, but also some of the opportunities ahead of us in the west of England, in building a state-of-the-art Thornbury health centre to provide health services to people right across South Gloucestershire.