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Access to NHS Services

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I entirely agree with his point. The new Prime Minister has stated that he must listen to what the public and NHS professionals are saying throughout the country, but he cannot do that in circumstances where—as is happening in many places—top-down reconfiguration of services is being forced upon local health care economies. I was recently in Hastings in my hon. Friend’s part of the country. The ways in which the reconfigurations are to be applied raise serious questions both of the evidential basis for them and of access considerations in respect of the services that will result. I will say more about that.