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| The Conservative Manifesto on health |
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| Written by Gordon Prentice | |||
| Tuesday, 13 April 2010 21:00 | |||
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Today, I have been reading the Conservative manifesto. I turn immediately to the section on health. The downgrading of Burnley General Hospital’s A&E department to an Urgent Care Centre has been a red hot issue for years. People around here want their A&E back. I agree. But it should come with a publicly available protocol setting out the conditions which can, and cannot, be treated at Burnley. The Conservative Shadow Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, has been to East Lancashire milking the controversy for all it is worth. He solemnly promised to re-instate A&E at Burnley. “There is no reason why Burnley cannot have its A&E back.” Then he qualified his promise. Now it was to be a matter for local doctors. If they wanted A&E reinstated then so be it. Pull the other one! That promise too has disappeared into the ether. The manifesto says nothing about re-instating A&Es which have been downgraded to Urgent Care Centres. It says: “We will stop the forced closure of A&E and maternity wards, so that people have betteraccess to local services, and give mothers a real choice over where to have their baby, with NHS funding following their decisions.” Nye Bevan told us you can’t trust the Tories. So true. Some things never change. 
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| Last Updated on Tuesday, 13 April 2010 22:55 |