Council pledges to fight NHS cuts
SEFTON Council has pledged to fight plans to cut NHS services in the area.
At a full council meeting in Southport, councillors supported a motion from local Lib Dem councillors who hope to bring the council and residents together to work to retain this vital local service.
The motion will mean the council works to ensure that NHS bosses wouldn’t be able to make controversial cuts in secret.
In the controversial NHS Sustainability & Transformation Programme (STP) Southport’s A&E department has been threatened with being downgraded from the current 24-hour coverage.
The plans for Southport & Ormskirk Hospital initially only came to light because the plans for Cheshire & Merseyside STP were leaked to the press.
A campaign to retain the A&E service in Southport is being spearheaded by Southport Liberal Democrat councillors and Southport MP John Pugh, but local elected representatives are seeking involvement from all sections of the community.
The leader of the LibDems in Sefton, Cllr Sue McGuire who proposed the motion, said: “I’m delighted that the overwhelming majority of councillors supported our motion.
“Sefton Council now needs to work to ensure that residents are informed of the proposals which are likely to have a big impact on their local heath services.
“The STP is an attempt to disguise cutbacks in the NHS which is being presented as if it were simply a ‘re-jig’ of services.
“The decisions and plans have been made behind closed doors with no input from patients, residents or local healthcare professionals. These proposals will impact on the health and wellbeing of all our communities. They now need to be discussed honestly in the open with input and discussion from the people who will be affected.”
Speaking during the meeting, Cllr McGuire revealed that she became involved in politics as a result of the closure of the children’s A&E in Southport.
She continued: “The NHS is struggling as demand for services increases but funding to match this increase doesn’t – its very survival is on a knife edge. But these STPs are not the way to do this.
“It was the paramedics who saved my life when they resuscitated me at the side of the road, it was an A&E consultant who arranged for me to be blue lighted with police outriders to Walton Hospital from Southport Infirmary and it was the neurosurgeons and critical team at Walton that saved my life for a second time.
“So I owe everything to the NHS and, like most people in this chamber, I want to keep the NHS as the best health service in the world which is free at the point of delivery.”
Cllr Tony Dawson, LibDem spokesperson on health and adult care said: “The people of Southport, Formby and West Lancashire must all work together to send a clear message to health chiefs that this is not an option for our town.”