LEA CASTLE CLOSURE DENOUNCED AT LIB DEM LIVERPOOL CONFERENCE

12.28.00pm GMT Fri 14th Mar 2008

Neville Farmer Wyre Forest PPC Speaking at Liverpool Conference 2008

The proposed closure of Lea Castle Hospital has been denounced at the Liberal Democrats' national conference in Liverpool. Speaking to 2000 delegates at the party's health debate last Saturday, Wyre Forest's Lib Dem Parliamentary Candidate, Neville Farmer, argued that too much of the NHS budget was being spent on avoidable diseases, leaving vital facilities like Lea Castle out in the cold. "Decades of team building and expertise will be dissipated, dozens of patients' lives shockingly disrupted", he said.

"According to the World Health Organisation, sixty percent of deaths this year will be caused by chronic disease - heart and respiratory conditions, diabetes, strokes and cancer", he stated, adding that the W.H.O. linked this directly to a rise in obesity, which is set to affect a quarter of British citizens by 2015. Neville Farmer argued that if we changed our public health culture, many of these deaths could be prevented or delayed till later in life, freeing up NHS resources for essential services such as those provided by Lea Castle.

Farmer, who cheerfully admits he should set an example by losing a few pounds himself, supported the party's call for greater emphasis on public health education and argued that past Conservative and Labour policies had done little to address the problem.

"After years of selling off school playing fields, laying off school nurses and cutting back games lessons to devote more time to meeting academic targets, we are raising a nation of overweight, unfit, computer geeks, who by the middle of the century might have a brain the size of a planet but won't have a body fit to carry it around" he said, adding that "it would be naïve to think that this is the cure to all the NHS's problems but what it does is help to instil a sense of responsibility upon each and every one of us from the day we enter school. By widening the remit of the Health Secretary to Public Health we are taking a major step in the right direction".

The Liberal Democrats' plan transfers many healthcare decisions away from central government to locally elected Health Boards comprising members of the public and health professionals with their own budgets. It proposes patient empowerment to choose personal treatment plans. It guarantees payments towards care of the elderly, regardless of ability to pay. It also recommends reinstatement of school nurses to improve health education, dietary care and exercise programmes.

"If we can reduce the number of people likely to fall victim to chronic disease, we can give the NHS the financial elbow room to see the likes of Lea Castle Hospital as both viable and essential," said Neville Farmer. His speech helped persuade party members to vote overwhelmingly for the plan, which will now become national Lib Dem policy and was welcomed by the party's Health Spokesperson, Norman Lamb MP, who has offered to visit Wyre Forest to discuss local health issues.