Westminster Diary - 23rd March 2006

Thursday, 23rd March 2006

This week, the deadline passes for responses to the consultation process on proposed changes to the way our local health service is structured. The most controversial of these proposals is the plan to merge Coventry and Warwickshire’s Ambulance Trust into a much larger West Midlands-wide organisation and this plan is controversial for good reason. It will create one Ambulance Trust to cover over 5,000 square miles and to serve more than 5 million people. Why should this be a problem?

First, there is the issue of accountability. At the moment decisions are made for the Coventry & Warwickshire Ambulance Service in Coventry & Warwickshire. More distant management is unlikely in my view to lead to more responsiveness to local needs and circumstances. It is more likely to lead to a ‘one size fits all’ approach for a very diverse part of the country.

Secondly, we should be concerned about the effectiveness of a new, larger structure. The current arrangements fit well with the area covered by our local hospitals. Significantly, a regional organisation may institute regional call centres from which ambulances are dispatched. Where limited information is given by a caller and the call cannot be traced, local knowledge on the part of the call-centre operator can get an ambulance to an emergency more quickly and save lives. I do not believe that regional knowledge will be as good as local knowledge in this respect.

Thirdly, we must ask what benefits are available from a regional merger. The consultation document tells us we can expect cost savings of about 4% of the combined budgets of the existing Trusts. On the other hand of course, it will cost money to re-band and re-organise a new Trust.

Most importantly, we should not overlook the fact that 2 out of the 4 Ambulance Trusts in the West Midlands perform extremely well and provide an excellent service. Ours is one of them. It is unfortunate that the other 2 do not currently meet quite the same high standards, but that is no argument for abolishing what works well. Coventry and Warwickshire Ambulance Trust is well-managed, well-operated and in my opinion deserves to survive. That is my response to this consultation and having spoken to health professionals, patient groups and those involved in local government within the County, I have not met anyone who takes a different view. That is in itself striking and I hope that the Department of Health will listen.

Our Ambulance Trust does a good job of trying to fix us when we are broken, we should not try to fix it when it is not.

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Updated on Thursday, 23rd March 2006