Health Services (Gloucestershire)

I entirely agree with that. In fact, the atmosphere in which things are being done is so febrile that, at a recent meeting where all the county’s MPs met the chief executives of the trusts, I asked about the impact of having to take more time—quite properly—over consultation. The impact was another £1 million of savings that they were told to find. The manager who replied to the question said that they did not think that even the existing savings proposals would make up the amount that they were being asked to save by the strategic health authority and, above it, the Department of Health. The atmosphere of financial crisis is all-pervasive. The numbers vary. I managed to find a total of £29 million, but the hon. Gentleman has mentioned figures in excess of £30 million. I am afraid that the result is not, as the Secretary of State believes, patient care improving everywhere. Instead, there are real impacts on front-line care. St. Paul’s maternity wing is a first class maternity ward that is just 10 years old. We celebrate its 10th birthday party this Wednesday. It is in Sandford park at 12 o’clock if the Minister cares to come along. She might find a rather hostile reception. I was born in its predecessor hospital. We have had that service in Cheltenham since the 1940s—long before this Government were elected. My children were both born in the ward. It delivers 2,600 babies a year and serves a town with a population of 110,000 people. It draws in mothers who wish to give birth there from as far afield as Banbury, Malvern and Evesham, and even from beyond Gloucester in the Forest of Dean. One might arguably say that if one maternity ward were to close it might be Gloucester’s rather than Cheltenham’s, since Cheltenham’s seems to be rather more popular. However, I would not want to encourage recent accusations of snobbery in that respect. The most important thing is that Cheltenham women want to give birth in Cheltenham. A patient safety argument has been made in favour of the proposal—rather after the event since it came up as a savings proposals. It is argued that bigger and better maternity wards are always safer. That might be true, but in the end that is an argument for the entire country going to St. Mary’s in Paddington for their delivery. There is always a balance of risk to be struck. In a meeting today, midwives put to me the risk posed by combining dual centres into one centre. That makes the maternity ward more vulnerable to infections such as clostridium difficile and the much more widely known MRSA. The whole trend of obstetrics and midwifery recently has been away from big hospitalised units towards smaller, friendly units, and away from treating maternity as a sickness and towards regarding it as a healthy, normal process.