Save King George Hospital

The Save King George Hospital campaign is a multi-party, multi-faith campaign to persuade Andrew Lansley, the Secretary of State for Health to stop the closure of A and E and maternity services at King George Hospital, Ilford. Yesterday I took part in the day of the protests which began outside Queens Hospital and included a march to Ilford Town Hall for a rally where more than 500 people heard speeches from John Cryer, Mike Gapes, Margaret Hodge, Lee Scott and local faith leaders, including myself. My contribution was as follows:


"What will be gained by this proposed reorganisation and who will benefit from it?

Clearly, we, the people of the affected boroughs, do not want it to happen. We have said so loudly and vociferously throughout the campaign but our voice has not been heeded by those in the Health Service who wish to push the changes through in the face of our opposition. As that is the case, we can only conclude that those who are driving these proposals either have some other agenda which benefits the Health Service itself or think that they know better than the huge number of local people who are opposed to these proposals.

So, on the one hand there is the possibility that this reorganisation is not about better service delivery to local people at all or the possibility that these proposals are paternalistic with so-called Health experts thinking that they know better than us what is good for us.

The whole direction of Government policy in the previous and current Government has been in terms of greater accountability to patients and yet these proposals ride roughshod over such accountability because those responsible for them insist on driving through in the face of overwhelming local opposition.

There are essentially two ways of delivering public services, whether as a Health Trust or a local authority, either you bring all your workers together in one place so that you reduce your costs and the public have to travel to you. Doing so, primarily benefits the Agency delivering the service and inconveniences those who use it. Alternatively, you locate your service as close to the people you are serving as it is feasible to do. This means you need more buildings and staff, rather than the public, are inconvenienced by having further to travel. This approach is about best practice and best customer service.

It is what we have now with locally delivered A and E and Maternity Services at King George Hospital. We must not lose it simply to satisfy Health Service managers pursuing their own agendas at the expense of hearing what we, the people they are in post to serve, are saying to them. What we are saying is simple and clear: Save King George Hospital."

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Writz - Night Nurse.