Health crisis utterly irresponsible - Houseley

5.10.06pm GMT Sun 30th Oct 2005

The government's behaviour in seeking to cut local health services before replacement services are properly determined has been condemned as "utterly irresponsible" by a Suffolk Liberal Democrat.

Speaking at the party's east of england conference, Central Suffolk & North Ipswich Parliamentary spokesman Andrew Houseley told how local people are appalled that a review of services has been driven by what he called "a timetable to close Hartismere Hospital and sell off part of the site but by no means a certain timetable for replacement services."

Mr Houseley described the government's pursuit of community-based home services over providing hospital beds as "doctrinaire" and against the advice of many local GPs. Ministers were also "obsessed with promoting flagship regional hospitals" above local services in remote communities.

Later Mr Houseley expressed his concern for the loss of local beds in the constituency and highlighted that many had been lost at Hartismere in recent years. He said: "Common illnesses need common treatment for local people near to home. Older people are particularly affected, when they cannot go home and should not be transported to a hospital miles away. The idea of regional hospitals has gone too far and funding as been increasingly diverted away from treating illness at the place of need. Home support services may be underfunded, but they cannot be used as a replacement for a community hospital."

"The consultation exercise over the future of local health services has been very poor, with no adequate means for local people to make their voices heard. Not the first time the government has exploited holes in our democracy. It only highlights national Lib Dem policy to restore the role of community health councils and make commissioning for healthcare a local council responsibility."

Liberal Democrat activists from across the east of england were debating health issues and were highly critical of the local health services funding formula and the lack of accountability for services.

Mr Houseley and other Suffolk delegates pointed to the use of health funding to divert money away from more rural areas with county towns like Suffolk and Ipswich and into deprived urban areas whose problems were derived from economic, housing, education as well as health deficiencies.

The conference debate called for the funding formula to be urgently reviewed to ensure what it called 'misallocation of resources' is eliminated.