YOUR MP WRITES (From Worcester News)

YOUR MP WRITES

9:05am Thursday 3rd January 2008

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IF he or she is lucky, there will occur once or twice in the political lifetime of a Member of Parliament an event which is of seismic proportions in his/her constituency.
Such an event took place in my constituency of West Worcestershire when on Monday, December 17, I took a phone call from Ben Bradshaw, Minister of State for Health Services. He told me that a decision had been taken to build a new hospital in Malvern.
The only comparable event with which I had been intimately involved was the building in the 1980s of a series of bypasses near Evesham, all in the former constituency of South Worcestershire.
The significance of the Malvern hospital decision is, in part, that it has been so long in the making.
I well remember in the mid 1970s (some 30 years ago) looking out of a cracked window in the existing hospital at Lansdowne Crescent and wondering then whether there was sufficient space for it to be pulled down and rebuilt.
In the event I helped to secure the site at Seaford Court where the new building is to go up.
And go up it now must on time and to the most all-embracing specification.
In particular it must include a range of outpatient facilities including a diagnostics suite and minor injuries unit.
My understanding is that the design and planning stage will be completed in about 18 months and that it will take about a year to build. This means that the hospital should be opened in the spring of 2010.
If the present Parliament runs the full term, the opening ceremony will take place in the run up to a general election and immediately prior to my retirement.
From my point of view there would be no better leaving present.
There is no question that Malvern requires a replacement for its present hospital, which over many years has done such a wonderful job.
An ageing population puts great pressure on local medical facilities.
This cannot, and indeed should not, be met from Worcester alone. It is entirely right that people who have had major operations at the Royal recover in a hospital which is near their friends and relatives.
For me, after years of writing letters to ministers, of putting countless questions to them in Parliament and of initiating several special debates on the subject, it has all now been so worthwhile.