Grantham Hospital : 18 September 2005

It is excellent news that the Volunteer Bureau and Churches Together are organising a petition on Grantham Hospital. I shall look forward to presenting it formally in Parliament.

This is the moment of truth for Grantham Hospital. It has never faced so serious a threat to its existence in all its history.

Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust are considering the closure of our Accident and Emergency unit and of our critical care ward. In my several meetings with the Trust since they first conceived these plans as a result of new financial instructions sent to them after the General Election, I have made it clear that either decision would be an unpardonable and irrevocable betrayal of the people of Grantham. It would also inevitably entail the avoidable loss of lives.

I do not say such things lightly. But I fear they now have to be said.

Imagine a situation when Grantham only has a minor injuries unit. All life-threatening emergency cases, haemorrhages, acute asthma attacks, cardiac arrest and so forth would be taken directly by ambulance to Lincoln or Nottingham, 30 or 40 minutes away even with the siren on.

In these situations, minutes, even seconds, are critical. Some patients simply will not make it, despite the best efforts of the Ambulance service. I cannot tell how many. But some people will die unnecessarily. That is quite certain.

If the A&E unit closes so, certainly, will critical care. Without that back-up, no surgeon will agree to perform major surgery in Grantham. Grantham will become a cottage hospital – a site for day surgery and out-patient appointments, and possibly recuperative care (though the latter seems to be being phased out of the NHS altogether and stealthily pushed into the means-tested social services or private sectors, just as geriatric care has been).

This is what I mean by saying that the existence of Grantham as a general hospital is now at stake. No-one with any commitment to personal honesty who is not utterly ignorant of medical matters can possibly deny that. I hope no-one tries.

What an extraordinary thing it is that when the country is getting richer, the population of our area is increasing and its average age is increasing also, we should seriously be contemplating closing hospital facilities, let alone facilities that save lives.

Let us all pray that wiser counsels will prevail.

Of course I will do all I can to fight this alarmingly misjudged scheme. But I cannot do it alone. Every citizen of our area needs to make his or her own feelings known. The petition is a very good start.