Cabinet Minister visits hospital
Matt Hancock guarantees ‘overall expansion’ in visit to town
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said that “there will be an expansion of services” during a visit to Scarborough Hospital.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he can see “nothing but expansion” in the future of Scarborough Hospital. The Cabinet Minister travelled to Scarborough on Thursday last week to meet with patients and staff and discuss details of the £40m investment plan to revamp the A&E department. At the end of his visit, Mr Hancock said: “I can see nothing but expansion of the services available in Scarborough.”
In the last year, due to the difficulty in recruiting staff, yet more cuts have had to be made, this time at the expense of breast cancer outpatient and children and young people’s behavioural services. This resulted in growing concern over the future of the hospital, with many residents fearing it was only a matter of time until more services would be axed.
Asked whether he could guarantee there would be no more cutbacks, Mr Hancock replied: “I can guarantee that there will be an overall expansion of services.”
Speaking about his party’s efforts to boost the number of doctors, the Secretary mentioned there will now be an extra five medical schools across the country, Lincoln being the closest to Scarborough, and that rules to hire quality doctors from overseas have been “relaxed”.
As far as nurses are concerned, thanks to the linkup between Scarborough Hospital and CU Scarborough, “people can train to be a nurse in Scarborough and get a great career delivering care for people in the town”.
Denying the upcoming election had anything to do with his expansion talks, Mr Hancock added: “We’ve put an extra £33.9bn into the NHS over the next five years and we’ve done that because we believe in the NHS and in making sure that it gets the support so that it’s always there for you and for your family and for everybody in this country. The money is going in and the expansion is going in and they were going in well before we announced this election.”
Labour candidate Hugo Fearnley said Mr Hancock’s comments don’t “ring true” with people’s experiences, adding that “over time we’ve seen a lot of empty promises but very little action”.