Welwyn Hatfield MP Grant Shapps: 'It's a sad day for our hospital' (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

Welwyn Hatfield MP Grant Shapps: 'It's a sad day for our hospital'

1:19pm Wednesday 12th August 2009 in News By Alexandra Barham

PLANS for a multi-million pound maternity unit at Stevenage's Lister Hospital have been given final approval by chief health bosses, pulling the plug on services at the QEII Hospital in Welwyn Garden City.

A full business case to spend £16.4 million on enlarging the maternity unit at the Lister Hospital, taking on staff and work from the QEII, was given the go ahead by the NHS East of England board yesterday, with work starting immediately.

But a rubber stamp on the plans, and the consequential cut to maternity services at the QEII has outraged campaigners, who staged a vigorous battle to prevent the change.

Welwyn Hatfield MP Grant Shapps said: “The implication of this announcement is absolutely clear. Ministers are determined to reach the point of no return for our maternity unit at the QEII by directing the regional NHS bureaucracy to approve a multi-million pound expansion of maternity at the Lister Hospital in the Labour marginal constituency of Stevenage.

“Even on their last legs, this discredited government seems hell bent on destroying our most important services at the QEII with the tipping point reached in order to ensure that our A&E, elderly care, paediatrics, all operations and of course our maternity unit will all get shut, simply because they will have already spent hundreds of millions of pounds building up the Lister Hospital.

"This announcement is another sad day for our hospital and for all of us whose children were born there.”

The major expansion and consolidation of maternity services at the Lister Hospital will enable it to support more than 5,500 births every year from its planned opening date in late 2011.

North and East Herts NHS Trust, which is responsible for running both hospitals, reassures mothers in the Welwyn Hatfield area that ante-natal and post-natal services will continue to be provided at the QEII.

The trust’s chief executive, Nick Carver, said: "This £16.4 million project will transform the service we can offer pregnant women, providing them with more choices of how they have their baby. "When completed before the end of 2011, we will have a maternity unit that will rival the facilities of the best in the country."