Very few residents here in Wyre Forest will forget why it is such a famous parliamentary constituency. With the new Labour government barely getting its feet under its desk, the decision to downgrade Kidderminster Hospital from a full district general to a treatment centre resulted in the election of heroic local campaigner to Parliament. Dr Richard Taylor served not one, but two terms as our local MP, campaigning to reverse the Labour governments decision to downgrade our hospital and axe A&E services.
I won the seat from Dr Taylor in 2010, but I learnt a lot from him. Honesty and decency, for one, but debating the issues and not attacking individuals was the main lesson.
In the passing 20 years since the changes, Kidderminster Hospital has become incredibly successful. It is clean, does excellent elective treatments, has virtually zero cancellations, and we have fantastic cancer care. That’s not to say that I am satisfied, as I will always strive to make sure our local hospital is cutting edge.
But, of course, being a treatment centre means it does not have all those services that support all the needs that an A&E department requires. It is no good going to a hospital with a heart attack if there is no heart specialism to help you recover. That is why we do not have an A&E, but just a minor injuries unit.
But from time to time, a local politician will raise the issue of what the Labour government did to our local hospital two decades ago. I guess that because it was Labour who did it, it is all more surprising that a Labour councillor is trying to raise a petition to bring back A&E services to Kidderminster.
Of course, to achieve this, it would require reversing everything Labour did back in early 2000s. It would also have profound effects on how acute hospital services are delivered across county, and would have effects on local services such as possible cancellations.
But I do think we should be grateful that the local Labour Party, who, like all politicians, want to serve their community as best they can, are honest enough to recognise that what they did here in Wyre Forest was so hugely unpopular at the time. Most of us have moved on, and as I said earlier, my task is to hold the acute trust to account and to help support them with their objectives (as we have done with securing capital investment across the county, including here in Kidderminster). But I’m not sure we want to turn the clock back 20 years. Medicine has moved on a lot.