Mike Penning makes a passionate speech on the closure of Hemel hospital in the House of Commons.

Mike Penning, MP for Hemel Hempstead, made a passionate speech on the closure of Hemel’s hospital in a House of Commons debate yesterday. He told fellow MPs that the short-term effects of the Government’s commitment to tackle financial deficits will have a crippling long-term effect on health provision in Hemel Hempstead.

“The acute accident and emergency department, which has received substantial investment over the past 15 years…will be closed and moved to Watford” he said, adding: ”Along with it will go the brand new stroke and cardiac units, the MRI scanner and all acute facilities. Their closure marks the end of acute facilities in my general hospital.”

“…in 18 months’ time, not one in-patient bed will be left in a general hospital that caters for the largest town in Hertfordshire. That is not reconfiguration, but closure—closure that will affect the day-to-day lives and prospects of my constituents.”

Mike, who is a member of the House of Commons Health Select Committee, criticised the absurd funding formula which allows some areas to receive twice as much per head as others. Patricia Hewitt justified this by arrogantly stating that her constituents in Leicester were less healthy than the people of Dacorum.

Mike told MPs:

” That is absolute madness. It does not matter whether someone who is knocked down by a car is healthy, because they still need an accident and emergency department at the end of the street.”

Mike concluded by calling on the Government to allow health staff to speak up for the services in their community:

“Day in, day out, I receive anonymous e-mails and phone calls from members of staff in the NHS locally, telling me what is going on. They say to me, “Please, Mike, do not tell anybody that I am telling you this or giving you this document, because I will get the sack” he said.

Mike called for the Government to allow staff to talk openly to their MP and he asked the Minister to “instruct every trust in the country not to threaten their staff with action if they speak to their MP?”

Afterwards he said:

“Healthcare in Hemel Hempstead is being destroyed in the long-term in order to achieve a short-term solution to financial deficits - deficits that have only been created because our money is being spent in the Midlands and North of England. In a year’s time Patricia Hewitt may well be able to say that she has got the NHS out of deficit – but at what cost to the healthcare of the people of Hemel Hempstead? It’s a win-win situation for Patricia Hewitt; she can claim that she got the NHS out of deficit and win herself a seat in the House of Lords or whatever she is after and her constituents get better healthcare at the same time!!”