Gummer, Ipswich Hospital and the NHS

Today we have been told that the All Party Commons health select committee is expected to say that plans to scrap primary care trusts and other changes are hampering efforts to save billions

But Lansley has been nowhere to find and so Nick Clegg was wheeled out to answer the questions by Marr.

A national newspaper quoted the committee's report, due to be published next week, as saying: "The reorganisation process continues to complicate the push for efficiency gains."
"Although it may have facilitated savings in some cases, we heard that it more often creates disruption and distraction that hinders the ability of organisations to consider truly effective ways of reforming service delivery and releasing savings."
The committee is made up of MPs from all parties and chaired by ex-Conservative health secretary Stephen Dorrell.

The same time we hear of this attack on the Tory/Lib Dem plans we are also told that the Royal College of Nursing is also critical of the plan and it is impossible to find any Health Union, Health body or professional organisation who agrees with the Tory plans for the NHS.

But somehow every Tory MP wheeled in front of the cameras can tell you of a group of GP’s in their constitiancy who are very happy with the new plan!

Now where does Ben Gummer stand in all this, because as well as Lansley and his plan we start to hear rumours of Ipswich Hospital losing more services? Now I mentioned this on twitter and Mr Gummer was quick to answer and ‘have a slight go at me’ his tweet said: the trouble with you Alasdair is that you always confused noise with activity. Watch carefully and you'll soon see progress

Now that is funny as before he was elected we never went more than a couple of weeks before finding Mr Gummer in the Evening Star, criticising Chris Mole for not doing enough for our hospital, now I know Chris was doing his best and as a junior minister himself had a number of meetings with the hospital management and Heath Department ministers. But that was not enough for Mr Gummer who made plenty of ‘noise’ in the Evening Star.

Now he seems to think there is no need to tell the local paper what he is doing, funny how the MP for North Ipswich, Dan Poulter is in the paper every week on some issue with GP’s, the NHS in general or Ipswich Hospital. Is he just making ‘a noise’, Mr Gummer?

Now Mr Gummer is in the paper every week and even holding public meetings about the state of our railways – is that just ‘a noise’. Because over the first 20 months of the coalition I have seen no improvement to the service but have seen extortionate fare rises.

Mr Gummer, I care about not only the NHS but Ipswich Hospital, my late mother came here in 1959 to work at Anglesea Road as a freshly qualified Nurse from Birmingham. My father also worked at the same hospital as an optician, my sister is a nurse in Suffolk. Wonder why my parents joined the Labour Party? It was because they worked and believed in the NHS – the greatest social invention the world has seen.



The NHS is not safe under the Tories, as you can see from reading this post by a senior Ipswich Tory, so unsafe that even senior Tories and former Health Ministers are saying it.

The NHS is only safe and will only improve under Labour, many say what would Nye Bevan think of the latest Tory plan, I also think what would my late father and mother think of the way the Tories are trying to destroy the service they devoted their lives to. I know what they would do, they would get out in Ipswich and fight even harder to get rid of Mr Gummer and elect an MP who wants to defend the NHS not dismantle it and that is what I will be doing from now till 2015.


"It is time for David Cameron to listen to what doctors, nurses and now his own senior MPs are saying and call a halt to this reckless reorganisation”

Andy Burnham

Shadow health secretary