MP challenges Health Secretary to intervene over cuts to local out-of-hours GP service
On the floor of the House of Commons this afternoon, Cumbrian MP Tim Farron urged the Secretary of State for Health Steve Barclay to intervene over controversial plans to reduce the out-of-hours GP service at Westmorland General Hospital.
From next month, there is set to be no out-of-hours GP service from Kendal's hospital from 2am-8am on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays.
Instead, the service will operate from Barrow and Penrith resulting in vulnerable people having to wait much longer to receive vital palliative care - especially those in our most rural areas.
Tim has launched a petition opposing the move which can be found here.
Speaking during Heath Questions in Parliament, Tim said: "Plans to remove overnight primary care clinicians from the Westmorland General Hospital three nights a week are a massive risk to our community.
"It means that people overnight will be reliant on Barrow or Penrith for an out-of-hours doctor.
"Will he instruct the ICB to intervene to protect people in South Lakeland from this massive reduction in quality and access of service?
Responding, the Health Secretary Steve Barclay said: "Well some of us Mr Speaker remember when the Lib Dems were for greater localism.
"And one of the things we're looking at is how do we empower commissioners on a place based basis to make decisions as to where to best place services.
"We need to move more services into the community upstream, address frail elderly before they get to hospital and have more community services.
"Now I'm very happy to look at the specific issue he raises.
"But I think the general trend of empowering integrated commissioning systems to make place based decisions I would have thought is one the Lib Dems would support."
Speaking afterwards, Tim said: "I'm bitterly disappointed with the Secretary of State's cloth-eared response.
"The planned cuts to the out-of-hours GP service pose a huge risk to our community and yet the Minister has decided to pretty much wash his hands of the matter.
"The only crumb of comfort is that the Minister did say he would look into this issue and so I will be following this up to him in writing setting out the clear problems that these cuts represent."