News

.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser

29 March 2007

 

I had one of my regular meetings with the Chairman of the East Kent Hospital Trust in Canterbury on Monday to find out what they were going to do with Buckland Hospital, to complain about their transport system and to find out how much they were in debt.

My meeting coincided with the news that the Government has allotted an additional £95.8 million to our Primary Care Trust to help them improve local health services and the additional money will raise local health funding above the one billion mark.

Some £27 million is earmarked to provide better and faster outcomes and additional funding for the Hospital Trust will help the NHS reduce waiting times so that for most patients - waiting lists will be virtually eliminated.

This new cash injection will enable us to meet Labour’s target of ensuring a maximum wait of 18-weeks from referral to treatment by December 2008 with many patients seen even more quickly than that.

This will be a major achievement for the NHS – making it more streamlined and productive as well as leading to a much better experience for patients. It will change people’s lives by improving care and cutting unnecessary delays.

I am proud to be a member of the Party that established the NHS, that really believes in it and is determined to retain it as a truly national service free at the point of access.

In the last ten years we have been re-building it from the decimated state the Tories left it in. They say they want to improve the NHS but they also want to cut spending by £28 billion. They can’t have it both ways. They must decide what their policy is.

Cameron tries to offer everything to everyone, but to be taken seriously he must now decide what his policy is: matching our year on year record investment or going ahead with his proposed cuts.

Labour’s investment has already delivered the lowest waiting times ever, 50,000 extra lives saved from cancer, 150,000 lives saved from coronary disease, 300,000 extra staff - an NHS that is improving the health and well-being of the people of East Kent and the whole of England.

It’s true that in Dover we have had more than our fair share of local difficulties. In the 28 years I’ve lived here we’ve lost Victoria Hospital and Buckland has been under constant threat of cuts or closure for all of those years. Past promises of re-development have been betrayed and each re-organisation has left Buckland looking smaller.

At my Canterbury meeting I received some bad news and some not-so-bad news. I was told that despite all that extra cash there was still no guarantee that Buckland would survive and that no progress had been made to improve patient transport. The not-so-bad news was that although the Hospital Trust would end the financial year in debt again - it would only be one quarter of last year’s deficit.

Should we be thankful for small mercies ?