NHS Reorganisation

The hon. Member for Tamworth (Mr. Jenkins) said that he has no objection to his PCTs merging, as long as it provides a better service, but he is concerned about the criteria for such mergers. I agree with him. I am not here tonight to talk about the South Staffordshire PCT; I am here to talk about the merger of the Staffordshire ambulance service. A few months ago, a friend of mine, a youngish guy, went jogging round Whittington, a village in my constituency. He felt sick. He did not know what was wrong with him. He went home, took a shower and started feeling worse. He went downstairs and suddenly thought, ““There’s something seriously wrong.”” He dialled 999 and then collapsed. All Staffordshire ambulance service staff are paramedics; in fact, the service was the first in the United Kingdom to employ paramedics. The ambulances are strategically placed, controlled by global positioning system satellites, which Staffordshire was also the first to introduce. So the ambulance arrived within five minutes, and the paramedics defibrillated my friend. They gave him an injection of decoagulants and he was taken to Burton hospital; he survived. If that had happened in the west midlands, he would undoubtedly have died. The simple fact is that the response times in the west midlands are far worse than those in Staffordshire. In fact, Staffordshire enjoys the fastest response times not just in the United Kingdom but in the whole European Union.