Lynne Featherstone

I secured a 90 minute in Parliament today on the Future of London Hospitals – obviously about the Whittington A&E, maternity and paediatrics.

I wanted to use this opportunity to really put the case to the Minister that the sweeping changes being proposed have no clinical evidence base and no business case. I demonstrated (for about half an hour) how there is no evidence of where or how 45,000 A&E patients who could not be handled by an alternative means would be cared for, nor any existing services in the community to deal with the 38,000 shoved from the A&E to Primary Care. Out of hours GPs are already a worse service in Haringey than the rest of London and there is no statistical data on polyclinics or urgent care centres to show that they could cope. There has been no work on access and up until now – no proper extensive quantative consultation.

The Minister in his wind-up was pretty clear that he did not think the case for the Whittington A&E to close had been made. I think the fact that this is Labour policy that is driving this – together with the benefit of the pressure from the coming election – has helped the Minister into this position – at least for now!

As soon as Hansard is published – I will paste up or link to the actual debate – as many Members made very good and robust arguments from all sides of the political divide.

Comments

1. Chris Hall says:

   17 March 2010 at 7:51 pm

   Dear Lynne
   I am glad you had this chance to secure a debate in the House today – as someone who takes people into the Whittington in big yellow trucks with blue lights on, from time to time, the closure of the A&E would have most certainly had an impact on the outcomes of someone’s clinical condition.

   The ‘golden hour’ could be missed, rush hour traffic and having to travel further towards the West End (UCH) or to the Royal Free would only delay treatment which a patient so sorely was in need of!

   Well done!!

   Chris in Central London (also a libdem and delga blogger)
2. Whittington A&E Update :Chris and Eddie in London NW1 says:

   17 March 2010 at 7:55 pm

   [...] to hear that Lynne Featherstone secured a 90 minute debate about this in the House today. Click here to read her blog and [...]
3. John Oakes says:

   18 March 2010 at 6:55 am

   Well done for getting this potential disaster the national attention it deserves.