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NHS: Community Hospitals

My Lords, I cannot, so to speak, reprieve any individual community hospital. That is not the purpose of this announcement. It is down to people locally in the form of the PCT to make decisions based on all the available evidence. Since the publication of the White Paper, we have tried to say to the NHS that, before making short-term decisions about closing particular facilities or changing particular services, it should think about the longer-term direction of travel towards moving services closer to where people live, as set out in the White Paper. The guidance tries to raise people's sights on the range of services and is certainly intended to give strong support to the general idea of community hospitals having a wider range of services closer to people. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, that changes in primary care trust configurations will come into operation on 1 October this year. It will be for many of the new primary care trusts to ensure that the decisions are appropriate for communities in their particular areas.