Closure Of NHS Services

EDM number 656 in 2013-14, proposed by Caroline Lucas on 30/10/2013.
Categorised under the topic of Health services.

That this House notes that the Secretary of State for Health has suffered another embarrassing legal defeat after the Court of Appeal judges ruled he had acted illegally in deciding to cut accident and emergency and maternity services at Lewisham Hospital; has concerns about Government amendment 168a to the Care Bill designed to change the rules to give the power to any hospital administrator appointed in England to dismantle whichever hospital services arbitrarily, as long as a neighbouring hospital is deemed to be failing; believes that this attempt to sneak through a fundamental change to the way decisions are made about local hospitals makes a mockery of local scrutiny and democracy; and calls on the Government to accept that it has lost and to stop trying to change the law to enable it to close successful hospital services that the community wants and needs.

This motion has been signed by a total of 43 MPs.