An important motion put before parliament this week on ensuring much more transparency over proposed controversial cuts failed with 195 in favour, verses 280 against.
This is extremely disappointing, given our situation in Devon, which is at the top of the list of being financially challenged, with huge bed cuts planned across acute and community hospitals.
This was only revealed by the BBC in a leaked document last week.
The motion read: “That this house notes with concern that NHS sustainability and transformation plans are expected to lead to significant cuts to changes to frontline services; believes that the process agreed by the Government in December 2015 lacks transparency and the timeline announced by NHS England is insufficient to finalise such a major restructure of the NHS; further believes that the timeline does not allow for adequate public or parliamentary engagement in the formulation of the plans; and calls on the government to publish the plans and to provide an adequate consultation period for the public and practitioners to respond.”
This is a thoroughly excellent motion in my opinion and cannot surely be disagreed with, except perhaps by a political party who appear to be calling the damaging shots in relation to bringing the NHS to its metaphorical knees.
Our MP, Hugo Swire is no longer a foreign office minister and his twitter feed showed him in Westminster this week, yet he is not listed as voting on the motion. Is this a mistake?. Mr Swire claims to care about local hospitals. This debate should surely have been a number one priority for him.
Where was he?
http://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2016-09-14/division/16091440000631/NHSSustainabilityAndTransformationPlans?outputType=Names