---

Emergency Care

My hon. Friend reminds me that I visited Queen Mary's in Sidcup in the autumn, when I had the opportunity to see the emergency services and maternity services proposals at work. Many people in south-east London will be concerned about emergency services because, leaving aside the geographical distribution of emergency services in the area and the question of access at normal times, they will worry about the capacity of those services to respond. That is part of the argument about A and E in London more generally. Many dramatic pressures and a lot of demand have been put on emergency services. The number of beds in hospitals in London has been cut and departments have been downgraded. The right hon. Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan) will know that the Government are trying to downgrade the emergency services at Chase Farm hospital in her constituency to an urgent care centre. Just before Christmas the College of Emergency Medicine published a document on the way forward for emergency medicine and it did not regard urgent care centres as clinically proven or consistent with the principle of patient choice. Emergency consultants in hospitals are criticising urgent care centres, so why are the Government persisting with them? I fear that we will see the same problem in Sidcup.