Truro and Falmouth Labour Party today welcomed the fact that the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust has withdrawn redundancy notices to 500 staff. The local Labour Party supported UNISON’s campaign against the proposed outsourcing of some secretarial work. Local campaigner Charlotte MacKenzie said: “We think that the new chief executive John Watkinson was right to apologise to staff for the way in which this had been handled. The transitional funding announced by the Health Secretary during her visit to Treliske should enable RCHT to bring down it’s financial deficit without having an unacceptable impact on local NHS services and jobs.”

Update to this post:
At a meeting on Saturday 20 January, Cornwall Labour Party welcomed recent news about the NHS in Cornwall. Members of the local Labour Party met with Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt MP on her visit to Cornwall last November (photo below). During her visit the Health Secretary announced transitional funding to ease the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust’s multi-million pounds deficit; and said that turnaround plans would not include the closure of Hayle hospital. Since that visit there have been further positive announcements including:

• The new Chief Executive of RCHT has confirmed that Hayle hospital and West Cornwall Hospital will remain open and have a vital role to play in future NHS services.
• Hundreds of jobs in Truro have been saved after redundancy notices were withdrawn from secretarial staff after outsourcing proposals were dropped.
• RCHT’s budget will increase by 11 per cent next year, well above the rate of inflation.
• Specialist nursing support for Multiple Sclerosis sufferers in Cornwall is continuing.

Speaking on behalf of Cornwall Labour Party, Charlotte MacKenzie said: “We welcome recent announcements confirming local NHS jobs and services are safe. Transitional funding and the increase to next year’s budget should enable RCHT to bring down its deficit without any unacceptable impact on local jobs and services. NHS services are too important to people to be used as a political football; we hope that the Liberal Democrats and Tories will now stop scaremongering about threats to local services and support new local managers in making best possible use of massively increased investment in the NHS.”