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Health Care in London

I am pleased that the Minister will at least ask her about the report, because, as he said earlier, this process should be open, but it is certainly far from that. These are our local health services and our taxes that are being spent, so we deserve to know what is being planned behind closed doors. We demand disclosure. We presume that the Conservatives know about the report because one of their parliamentary candidates works in McKinsey's health team, so they are presumably party to it. Meanwhile, the public and clinicians are kept in the dark. I ask the Government to commit to bringing into the public domain, before the general election, the processes that are taking place around the country, in every strategic health authority, so that people can cast their vote in the full knowledge of what is being planned behind the scenes. Those who reveal plans to the public are accused of scaremongering. My hon. Friends the Members for Kingston and Surbiton and for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) rightly decided to inform the public of what they have been told and about draft reports that they have seen regarding threats to their local hospital, but the Conservative shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), accused them, in an Adjournment debate, of scaring the public. The Conservative view seems to be that these issues are best kept secret and that they should not be revealed to the public until after the general election, which is outrageous. I applaud my hon. Friends for having had the guts to put that information into the public domain so that the public can know what threats exist. The threat is real. I have a copy of a draft report entitled "Presentation to NHS Kingston Joint Board and PEC meeting", which confirms that one in three of its 18 options would involve the closure of Kingston hospital's maternity unit, accident and emergency unit and paediatric in-patient department. Sixteen of the 18 options would see Kingston lose a significant service from that hospital. My hon. Friends deserve an apology from members of the Conservative Front-Bench team and local Conservative campaigners. They have been accused of scaremongering, when the matter is in black and white. Interestingly, the report ends with a note saying that it should be sent to NHS London but not published. My hon. Friends have got it into the public domain, and they made the right judgment in doing so. These are decisions of which the public should be fully aware.