Secretary of State for Health Statement: Harriett Baldwin calls for end to local NHS reorganisations
9th June 2010
Following the Secretay of State for Health's announcement of a public inquiry into patient care failures at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, Harriett Baldwin calls on him to end the multiple reorganisations currently being imposed on the NHS in Worcestershire.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con): I welcome my right hon. Friend to his post and thank him for his two visits to Malvern over the past few years to support the new community hospital that will open in October.
My right hon. Friend mentioned the West Midlands strategic health authority. In the past six months, the authority has required our local Worcestershire NHS to divest itself of its community hospitals. At the moment, the authority is proposing to abolish the mental health trust and put it and the community hospitals into a new trust. Secondly, it has asked NHS Worcestershire to cluster with neighbouring NHS organisations. What are my right hon. Friend's proposals to stop all those reorganisations and focus on patient outcomes?
Mr Lansley: The inquiry will look at both the West Midlands SHA and its predecessor bodies. My hon. Friend will know from what I said a couple of weeks ago that proposals for such reconfigurations in the national health service must now answer to the clinical evidence-the clinical base. They must answer to patients-current and prospective patient choice-and to the referral intentions and commissioning intentions of general practitioners exercising responsibility for commissioning. That will change the nature of such decisions from a top-down, unaccountable process to one that is much locally accountable and effective.
