Mid Bedfordshire MP Blake Stephenson’s campaign for a GP surgery in Wixams has continued in the House of Commons, but was met by a ‘baffling’ answer from Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
Nearly two decades on from the first shovels going into the ground on the new town of Wixams in Bedfordshire, residents are still waiting for a long-promised GP surgery.
And since his election almost 12 months ago, Conservative MP Blake Stephenson has been banging the drum in Parliament, to the local ICB [our unelected Integrated Care Board] and with our two local councils to try and secure progress.
In his latest push in the House of Commons, local MP Blake asked Health Secretary Wes Streeting how merging Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB with Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough would help areas in Mid Bedfordshire get the local services they need.
In response, the Health Secretary said: “They [Conservatives] thought that the answer to the NHS crisis was more quangos, and they measured success in the number of ICBs, not the number of appointments and the size of the waiting list.
“We are taking a different approach, slashing bureaucracy and reinvesting in the front line. We are not centralising but decentralising and cutting waiting lists.”
But this answer has left Mid Beds MP Blake Stephenson ‘baffled’ with claims of decentralising and slashing bureaucracy inconsistent with plans to supersize the ICB and decisions taken by an organisation further from the community and responsible for the healthcare of some 3 million people.
Blake Stephenson MP said: “The answer from Wes Streeting is completely baffling. If slashing bureaucracy and decentralising is truly this Government’s aim, why are they increasing the size of an already bloated quango and pushing decisions to a regional level?
“His response to my question just doesn’t match the reality of what Labour is doing with local healthcare and it’s frustrating when we are just trying to get answers for Wixams residents who have been waiting so long for a GP surgery.”
