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Health Care in London

My hon. Friend is perfectly right. The biggest problem in this whole exercise is that Queen's hospital cannot cope even now. There are many occasions on which it cannot take A and E patients, who are diverted back to King George hospital, so how cutting the services there could possibly benefit anybody I do not know. We have also seen another major problem. We heard earlier about the NHS and rewards for failure. This House has heard me say before that the previous chief executive in the Barking, Havering and Redbridge trust got a substantial pay-off for working up one of the largest deficits in this country, totalling more than £100 million, which is why the current problems exist. The most important thing that can be said is that we have to protect the services. I promise that I am not scaremongering, but lives will be lost, given the time that it would take for someone living in the west of my constituency—for instance, in Hainault, where I happen to live, or in Woodford or Woodford Bridge—to get to Queen's hospital in Romford. The proposals have to be stopped. That is why, whatever motion we have tabled, if it says, "We must halt this now," it is the right motion. We cannot have these ludicrous cuts. I have received more than 1,000 communications from my constituents. Surprisingly enough, not one has said, "We think it'd be a good idea to cut services at King George"—and that is true across the political spectrum; this has nothing to do with party politics or scaremongering. I have also received anonymous e-mails, but I am not even going to mention those because they were anonymous, and I do not know whether they were correct or not. However, I do know that many staff at the hospital are scared to speak their minds because they fear to lose their jobs. I understand and respect that. I have one final point. At the public meeting that I held, I was told by the PCT and a doctor that if somebody had a heart attack outside King George hospital, they would be taken to another A and E unit. I have never heard anything so ludicrous. How could it possibly be better for anybody not to be assessed at the A and E unit closest to where they live? If we do not stop the proposals—not only the proposals for King George hospital, but those for hospitals across our area—we will be letting down the very people who elected us to this House last time, and who will or will not elect us here in a few weeks. We are here to represent them. Let us not forget that.