MICHAEL Howard has told the Shuttle/Times and News Wyre Forest MP Dr Richard Taylor has "failed" in his health mission and the Tories will poach his seat at the next General Election.Tory leader Michael Howard.

The Conservative Party leader said the Independent MP - who swept to a landslide victory over Labour in 2001 - was left without an agenda and would fall to the prospective Conservative candidate Mark Garnier when Wyre Forest voters are expected to go to the polls next year.

He said: "I've great respect for Dr Taylor but what I don't understand is what his platform would be at the next election.

"I understand that he fought the last election on a promise to save Kidderminster Hospital and he's failed to do that.

"It may not have been his fault, I'm not criticising him, but he's failed to do that. So I don't quite understand what his platform would be if he stood again."

He added: "Of course we can win it and we can win it on the same basis on which we can win the General Election.

"The people of Kidderminster, the people of Wyre Forest, and the people in this country as a whole are paying huge amounts more in tax and they not seeing in return the improvements in our public services which they were promised and which they were led to expect."

Yet Mr Howard - who was in Bewdley to speak at the annual dinner of the Wyre Forest Conservative Association - was quick to deflect specific questions about Wyre Forest's woes onto Mr Garnier. The 40-year-old would-be-MP was doing his homework and would prove more than a match for Dr Taylor come election time, Mr Howard suggested.Michael Howard gets the lowdown on issues affecting Wyre Forest.

Asked if he wanted to see vital services taken from Kidderminster Hospital in 2000 restored, Mr Howard said: "I would like to see the people of Kidderminster - just like I want to see people across the country - with the best healthcare that it is possible to provide them with."

He added the "precise way" in which that healthcare was provided was up for discussion. He said: "I am going to encourage Mark to talk to Andrew Lansley, our shadow secretary of state for health."

A direct question about whether he regretted the downgrading of Kidderminster Hospital - the Tories have been blamed for "getting the ball rolling" on the plan while still in power - met with a blunt response.

"I'm not prepared to enter into a discussion on history. I am much more interested in the future than in the past," he said.

"I want the people of Kidderminster to have the best possible health care. I think that Mark Garnier can work very hard on their behalf to make sure that they get it."

Fears over funding for district schools - Worcestershire came second from bottom in a 2003 league table of funding per child - provoked another brisk answer.

Mr Howard said: "I don't know the details of that but I am sure if Mark Garnier was the Member of Parliament - and when Mark Garnier is the Member of Parliament for Wyre Forest - and he goes to see a Conservative education secretary he would get a very warm hearing."

The Tory leader was enthusiastic about his solutions to the country's health problems and set out a catalogue of reforms which he said would get services back on their feet.

He said: "We have very radical proposals towards the health service.

"We are going to introduce the 'patients passport' which will enable any NHS patient to go to any NHS hospital - you will no longer have to go to the NHS hospital closest to where you live.

"So if, for example, you are an elderly person but your adult children have moved away - they could live a couple of hundred miles away - and it was more convenient to go to the NHS hospital nearest to where your children live, you can do that. It would make a huge difference to the quality of life of people."

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Mr Howard said: "And we would say, if you don't want to go 200 miles and there is a long waiting list in your local hospital, we would enable you to go into the private sector, perhaps get your operation done more quickly with the NHS paying a proportion of what it would have cost the NHS to carry out your operation if you hadn't gone private.

"That would relieve the burden on the NHS, enable the NHS to treat more patients and it would enable you, if you could pay a bit extra, to get your operation done a bit more quickly."

And the principle of foundation hospitals - where health bosses can bid for private cash and set their own clinical priorities - would be rolled out across the board, he said.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust - which runs Kidderminster Hospital, Worcestershire Royal Hospital and Alexandra Hospital in Redditch - is already bidding for foundation hospital status.

Mr Howard said: "We are going to make every NHS hospital a foundation hospital, and not just a few of them as Labour suggest, but proper foundation hospitals with the freedom to decide who they are going to employ, how much they are would pay the people they employ, the freedom to borrow, and so on."

He said Mr Garnier - who won the party nomination last month - would be talking to Mr Lansley about how "the future of Kidderminster Hospital should work out within the context of our proposals for radical reform of the health service."