The middle of the line

First, an update on Mark Pawsey MP. Apparently he went to see the Trust heads about their proposals to cut the A&E department at St Cross Hospital. Let’s see how influential he is.

Before the election, Mr Pawsey was clear about his commitment to services at St Cross. He had the shadow Health Secretary of the time (and of course, now the actual Secretary of State), Andrew Lansley, come up to the town to campaign. At the end of the day, our MP can only get any concessions or changes if the Health Secretary is amenable to them

Before the election, Lansley said that he had seen the plans that would retain the emergency department. After the election, these plans involve at the very least removing the overnight provision, and possibly the whole thing. So it would be nice to know what it was that he saw.

Before the election, Lansley said that he would stop all proposals to remove services from district hospitals like St Cross until after a proper review had taken place. But these proposals are now going to be consulted on, so clearly he has not put a moratorium on them.

(source for last two paragraphs : Coventry Telegraph.)

Mind you, this is the same Andrew Lansley who before the election promised no large-scale changes to the NHS imposed from the centre, and today announced the policy to… massively change the way that the NHS is run by forcing GPs to hold the purse-strings. It’s also the same Andrew Lansley who flipped his house for profit and tried to get the taxpayer to fund improvements that increased the value.