Primary Care Trusts

As it happens, the Government are to be commended for listening during the Cheshire consultation with the Minister’s predecessor, with whom I had a number of discussions. The Conservative-controlled Cheshire county council, under its new post-1974 configuration, wanted coterminosity of the four PCTs of Ellesmere Port, Cheshire West, Central Cheshire and Cheshire East and indeed the SHA. In the end, my hon. Friends the Members for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) and for Congleton (Ann Winterton) and myself were able to persuade the Government that the health economies that would really be best kept as a localised focus were the combinations of central with east and of west with Ellesmere Port. The added advantage was that the Cheshire West PCT, which has just received a £20 million bail-out, would therefore not be able to disguise its dysfunctionality by combining with others and has therefore been held accountable.