NHS Reorganisation

I fully accept that my hon. Friend and his constituents are, rightly, deeply concerned. I shall deal with Staffordshire shortly and I hope that he will be able to combine what I say with the representations that he is already making. The proposed regionalisation is simply not service-led. In fact, it is diametrically opposed to what the service needs. It is not enough that the people of the north-east rejected the Government’s regionalisation agenda out of hand, which led to the withdrawal of similar proposals in the north-west and Yorkshire and Humberside. In a forlorn attempt to save the Deputy Prime Minister’s face—I shall not inquire what type of face it is—the Government will ram the proposal through anyway, as part of their dogmatic regionalisation agenda. For ambulance services, local knowledge is key, as are small, efficient management structures. Where trusts have been merged, their quality has been destroyed. The trust that used to serve my constituency, the Cheshire ambulance trust, had three stars. It was merged with the Merseyside ambulance trust. The ensuing crisis has been so appalling that the chief executive of the joint Cheshire and Merseyside ambulance trust conveniently ““resigned””. The greater tragedy is that the trust has descended to a nil star rating. Only this weekend, I had cause to test the service. A horse rider fell on the road just outside my house, severely injuring her head. It was a serious injury. Luckily, my wife was on hand to give professional nursing help, as it took over half an hour for the ambulance to arrive. It had to be guided in by the nearest people who could be contacted by mobile phone, as the Warrington call centre never understood where we were. Concerns have also been expressed about the merger of Staffordshire, West Midlands, Coventry and Warwickshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire, and Shropshire ambulance trusts. There have been proposals to reduce control room numbers by co-aligning them with the police and fire services. The fire service in Warwickshire responds to some 3,000 emergency calls a year, whereas the ambulance services respond to some 100,000 emergency calls. Both Staffordshire and Coventry and Warwickshire ambulance trusts are three-star rated. Where is the benefit in amalgamating them, especially if they suffer the same fate as Cheshire? It is not patient-led, it is no closer to the patient and it does not centre the service on local knowledge. The only changes that should ever happen are those requested by the ambulance service itself. My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) has highlighted fears over the merging of Staffordshire ambulance trust, joining other Members from his area to meet the Secretary of State. He has pointed out that Staffordshire ambulance trust has the fastest 999 response time in Europe. He has met constituents living in Lichfield and Burntwood who would probably be dead today, because of slower ambulance response times, had Staffordshire been subsumed into the West Midlands trust.