Health Services (Gloucestershire)

Indeed, this becomes more complicated because the three trusts are merging into one. I am not making a point about one area against another, and west Gloucestershire makes up a large part of my constituency. However, it does appear that good financial management is being penalised by that top-slicing. In fact, Gloucestershire loses out in the first place when it comes to funding. We receive only 88 per cent. of national average funding. That is supposed to be because we are healthier, but—as local health chiefs point out—healthy people live longer, and older people cost the NHS even more money. So where is the joined-up thinking in that particular philosophy? Where is the joined-up thinking about the NHS generally? To follow up the point made by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), I should explain that when I was elected in 1997 there was one Gloucestershire health authority. At present there are three PCTs, but there is a proposal to revert to one; in other words, we are to go back to exactly where we were nine years ago, except that there is now another tier of bureaucracy—the pointless strategic health authority, which costs more than £5 million a year to run. Even that is being tinkered with, because it will cover a different area. The situation is ridiculous. A number of PCTs and hospital trusts, under a single SHA, are making far-reaching decisions. Those PCTs will not exist come October, and the SHA will not exist in its present form by the end of the summer, yet massive cuts are being planned by people who probably will not be in post to carry them out—or to carry the can for them. I referred earlier to the consultation document published by the health chiefs today. They wanted a consultation period of only five weeks, but Members and some members of Gloucestershire county council managed to exert enough pressure to get the deadline extended to 12 weeks. That is still not a long time, but, farcically, it takes us to the point when the people making the proposals might all be seeking alternative employment. At the end of the consultation period, none of them might be in post, such is the nonsense of the situation. As well as containing dubious phrases such as the one I quoted earlier, the document insults the intelligence of the people of Gloucestershire. Among other ““motherhood and apple pie”” questions, it asks:"““Do you think that helping people to stay fit and well is an important principle?””" For goodness sake, what kind of smokescreen, what kind of sham, is this public consultation exercise? Will the people be listened to or will their views be ignored, as they normally are? There is an unhappy situation in Gloucestershire. We are paying more tax to fund the NHS, yet we are losing our hospitals. The Government are piling billions of pounds into the NHS, yet a quarter of the country’s PCTs are in deficit. Local health chiefs say that they have to balance the books within the current financial year, yet the Government say that they have to achieve a monthly balance. The Government claim that they are reforming the NHS, but in truth they are merely tinkering with its structures. The net result is that the people of Gloucestershire, especially older people, children, poorer people, the pregnant and the mentally ill—in other words, the vulnerable—all lose out. As I said at the beginning of the debate, I do not seek to blame the Government; I am trying to bring home to the Minister the strength of opposition in Gloucestershire to the proposals being made across the county. Will she clarify exactly what she is asking trusts to achieve financially this year? If she only does that we shall have made some progress, but otherwise the most vulnerable and the most in need will lose out.