NHS Services (Hertfordshire)

My hon. Friend is right, and we look today for an assurance about the super-hospital at Hatfield that was promised by the then Secretary of State for Health in a blaze of publicity. There has been no publicity around an announcement to reverse the decision, so we would like to hear that assurance. I invite the Minister to come to Welwyn Hatfield to explain to the people in my locality when and where the hospital will be built, and whether, as was originally planned, it will include the cancer care unit moved from Mount Vernon hospital. Or has that plan been dropped? Will there be a brand-new teaching hospital in Hatfield this decade, the next decade or the one after? All the things that were promised have been quietly dropped now that the attention and focus are off and there is no general election—indeed, now that the seat is no longer in Labour’s hands. It is understandable that people are looking to their MPs and asking what is going on. The truth is that, as things stand, we will be left with so little hospital health care in constituencies such as mine and those of my hon. Friends that the Government will be putting lives at risk. It is inconceivable what a constituent who falls over from a heart attack in Hatfield is supposed to do in a busy rush hour to get themselves to the Lister hospital in Stevenage, given that the motorway narrows to two lanes. It is unimaginable how ambulance services, which are being regionalised and cut, will pick up patient or victims of car accidents and get them to the health service that they require. It is extraordinary to my hon. Friends and to our constituents to hear the Prime Minister and others stand up at the Dispatch Box week in and week out to reel off numbers that bear no relation at all to the situation on the ground. What should be discussed are the 500 job losses—such figures should be stated—the closure of departments and the broken promises about new hospitals that, when it comes to it, simply will not be built. I ask the Minister to accept my invitation to come and explain in person.