"LOCAL PEOPLE DESERVE A BETTER NHS" - Cornish MPs tell 'new brooms'

11.10.04am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 23rd Oct 2006

Cornish MPs (Colin Breed, Andrew George, Julia Goldsworthy, and Dan Rogerson) met the 'new brooms' who will run the NHS in Cornwall and Scilly in future at a meeting in the House of Commons yesterday (18th October 2006).

Sir Michael Pitt, the Chairman of NHS South West, Sir Ian Carruthers, Chief Executive (and who has been acting Chief Executive of the NHS in the Department of Health), Andrew Williamson, Chairman of the new Cornwall Primary Care Trust, and Ann James its new Chief Executive, told MPs that there would be "no let up in the financial pressures" facing Cornwall and that some "hard decisions" need to be made in the coming months. But they saw this as a "great opportunity" to put things right.

The MPs welcomed the new executives and wished them well. But they pointed out that local people deserve better than the standard of funding and management delivered by various departmental quangos in Cornwall in recent years.

Sir Ian Carruthers told the MPs that the organisations were beginning "without any preconceived ideas"; their minds were "open" and they wanted "to listen".

On behalf of MPs, Andrew George, (West Cornwall and Isles of Scilly MP for the St Ives constituency) told the officials that they should be aware of a history which had generated a significant lack of trust in local health trusts, their managers and that it should be a priority to restore that trust.

After the meeting, he said: "It was only right that we described some of what I saw as the inevitable "battle lines" that would emerge between us. We made clear our extreme irritation that Cornwall - the poorest region in the UK - had been significantly under funded.

"I emphasised that the perpetual obsession with trying to concentrate all specialist hospital and emergency services on one site was a dangerous folly and that a place like Cornwall had to have a safe and properly functioning second hospital able to receive a wide range of emergencies.

"The usual mantra of 'change is unavoidable' is perfectly true, but it shouldn't have to mean change for the worse, nor should it be simply about softening local people up for more hospital cuts.

"Under an 'Alice in Wonderland' management system where NHS hospitals will shortly have to put out adverts to attract patients to go there, local people need some reassurance that commonsense will eventually prevail."

Julia Goldsworthy added: "With poor dentistry services and patients sent through the revolving door of practice closures and scrambling to be re-registered at new services the NHS in Cornwall is in crisis pretty well everywhere you look.

"Change certainly is 'unavoidable' in the NHS as Ministers continually fiddle around with new management gimmicks. We have now seen four major reorganisations in the last ten years.

"Although I am not overly optimistic that this new structure will be better than any of the others, we will all do our utmost to support those working to make sure that we get a better local NHS."