Peterborough City Hospital, photo by Davecrosby uk (Creative Commons)

Peterborough City Hospital, photo by Davecrosby uk (Creative Commons)   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Peterborough Socialist Party

On 24 May the Peterborough and Stamford Hospital Trust agreed in principle a merger with Hinchingbrooke Hospital.

This merger allows particular services such as the A&E to be transferred between sites, or even cut altogether.

The document proposing the merger makes it clear that mergers or takeovers have been considered for the past few years, all because of financial problems. However, the document downplays the cost of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) payments.
Any reader of the local press or magazines like Private Eye would know that the trust is being required to pay a sum in the region of £2 billion for work costing around a quarter of that sum.

Yet such considerations are not apparently being considered by the people paid a small fortune to manage the result.

Cambridgeshire needs to fight for all its hospitals. Roll on the days of opening the books with full and democratic control of the NHS.

Jeremy Corbyn needs to say that the next labour government will cancel all PFI debts.

This simple announcement would alter such calculations up and down the country and stop in their tracks these types of cuts. How about it, Jeremy?