Madam,

Your readers could be forgiven for being confused about the whirligig of options and apparent good intentions which Hywel Dda Health Board calls “Our big NHS change”.

Public consultation is taking place on a range of alternative plans which could involve the closure of Withybush Hospital and maybe Glangwili in Carmarthen and maybe Prince Philip in Llanelli.

There’s nothing better than alternative closure plans to get local communities fighting each other and cancelling out each other’s voices. And Bronglais Hospital in Aberystwyth will allegedly continue unchanged. So phew, north Ceredigion’s all right then.

And there will be a new “social model for health”, with more care being provided in the community closer to home. Who doesn’t want to stay at home while they’re getting better?

And there will be a bewildering array of new community hospitals and “hubs”. And there quite possibly will be a brand-new “super-hospital”, somewhere, at some date in the future, if the money to pay for it shows up.

And best of all there is a cast-iron guarantee that “this is not about money”. In a health board that in the last financial year overspent by £70m (9.2 per cent) – this is in no way about money!

At the last meeting of Ceredigion Labour Party we invited HDHB’s chief executive and medical director to give their presentation and answer questions. We grilled them and the picture that emerged is scary. Far from “not being about money”, this is more or less all about money, and when the clinical services are moved out of the closing hospitals and other units into the community, what we will probably be left with will be a shoddy and under-financed community-based version of what we had before.

This is the real threat of the Hywel Dda consultation. This won’t affect just one hospital, or just one hard-done-by local community. This will be happening all over Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire. This is a systemic threat.

We challenge HDHB and the Welsh (Labour) Government to guarantee that when the cuts that they propose have freed up perhaps £60m per annum of revenue spending (HDHB figures), every single penny of that cash will be retained within the HDHB area and spent on building up services in the community to replace the services that have been cut from the hospital sector. Nothing must be siphoned off or clawed back by the WG. No consequent reduction must be made to HDHB’s annual revenue allocations. The replacement services in the community must be of at least the same volume and quality as the services that have been taken away. Only then will we believe that this is “not about money”.

Please, HDHB and WG, sign your pledges in blood.

Meanwhile, last week was the 70th anniversary of the NHS, and the HDHB public consultation ends this week, on Thursday, 12 July. Happy Birthday NHS!

Yours etc,

Tony Geraghty, chair of Ceredigion Labour Party; Dave Bradney, Hannah Holtom, Nel Jenkins, Dinah Mulholland, Sam Williams, members of Ceredigion Labour Party Executive Committee.

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