'Just come and see', Witney MP invites Tony Blair (From Witney Gazette)

'Just come and see', Witney MP invites Tony Blair

9:00am Monday 24th April 2006 in Witney By Emma-Kate Lidbury

WITNEY MP David Cameron went head to head with Tony Blair in the House of Commons on Wednesday last week over the crisis facing the county's health services.

The Tory leader told Mr Blair problems in the NHS were being caused by 'Government mismanagement and a failure of leadership', and accused the Prime Minister of 'presiding over the biggest administrative chaos in the NHS's history'.

After Mr Blair listed improvements he said health services in the Thames Valley area had enjoyed since Labour was elected in 1997, Mr Cameron responded by inviting Mr Blair to visit Oxfordshire, so he could show him the problems.

He said: "If he wants to come to my constituency, he's very welcome to, and I'll take him to Moorview Hospital for the mentally ill, which is earmarked for closure under his Government.

"And maybe he can explain to the staff and the patients why it's going to be shut."

Mr Cameron added: "He could spend some time trying to find an NHS dentist. I think he'd have more luck looking for Lord Lucan riding on Shergar."

"If he wants to come to my constituency, he's very welcome to, and I'll take him to Moorview Hospital for the mentally ill, which is earmarked for closure under his Government. And maybe he can explain to the staff and the patients why it's going to be shut."

David Cameron MP

Mr Blair claimed the number of people in the Thames Valley Strategic Health Authority area waiting over six months for an operation has dropped from more than 10,000 in 1997 to just 12 today.

He also said the number of patients waiting longer than 13 weeks for an out-patient appointment had decreased from 2,500 in 1997 to none now.

* Last week, Dr Evan Harris, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, criticised Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt's refusal to lift the threat of job losses from the county's hospitals.

He said: "It is a damning indictment of the way the Government has run the health service when much of the extra money that has been invested has been frittered away on endless reorganisations, Government initiatives, and political target chasing.

"The Government admits that there are thousands of posts that the NHS cannot fill, yet in Oxfordshire and elsewhere people doing good work are being made redundant."

* Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust health managers could be forced to make frontline medical staff redundant to ease a deficit of £35m following the loss of thousands of jobs nationally.

The £35m is the trust's share of an estimated £82m savings, which may need to be made to health services across Oxfordshire by the end of the 2006/07 financial year.

The ORH NHS trust employs about 10,000 people across Oxfordshire, including medical staff and ancillary workers. Earlier this month, ORH chief executive, Trevor Campbell Davis, said managers would be 'looking at the workforce' as a way of lowering costs quickly.