People win A&E battle EXCLUSIVE: Health Secretary Andy Burnham talks to the Tribune

Published: 30 April, 2010
by TOM FOOT

IT was supposed to be a protest ­rally, but it felt more like a birthday party.
Wearing fancy dress and holding green balloons, around 250 campaigners assembled triumphantly in the forecourt of the Whittington Hospital yesterday (Thursday) to celebrate a monumental victory in the battle to save its emergency services.
In a London exclusive published in our sister paper the Camden New Journal yesterday, the Secretary of State for Health Andy Burnham announced he would call a “complete halt” to the proposals.
He said: “It is inconceivable that Labour would support the closing or downgrading of the Whittington A&E or it’s maternity service. I will order a complete halt in the process that is being run and I’m asking NHS London to go back to the drawing board.

People power saves hospital

“This is a service in which we have invested £32 million over the last few years and as far as I’ve seen there is no ­clinical evidence or clinical support for any kind of downgrading or closure.”
“Clinical evidence” from the British Medical Association and two independent reports, one commissioned by the Department of Health, has found the figures underpinning the closure of A&E departments as “not standing up to scrutiny”.
The hospital’s 100 consultants have also signed a joint letter condemning the proposals.
Mr Burnham’s statement of intent – which was echoed in speeches by the shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley and his Lib Dem opposite Norman Lamb at the hospital yesterday – has put a seal on an inspirational campaign that captured the imaginations of tens of thousands of people across north London.
Shirley Franklin, co-chair of the Defend Whittington Hospital Coalition, who helped organise the mass march, said: “It is wonderful news. People power,  the Press and all the politicians really came together on this one. We have had 16,000 sign  our petition, 5,000 out marching – it is this that has forced the issue so that politicians have taken our side.”
Labour MPs Emily Thornberry, Jeremy Corbyn and the minister David Lammy have been working behind the scenes to finally bring Mr Burnham off the bench.
Ms Thornberry said: “At last, we can say the Whittington A&E will not close.”
Mr Corbyn said: “We campaigned and we got the result we wanted. But we are not about to give up and go away. There are other NHS services to defend. We should turn this coalition into the NHS Accountability Campaign.”
Mr Lammy added: “The public have spoken, and they have spoken loudly. There is no way in hell this A&E will close.
“If they try again there will be a black man chained to the railings outside and that man will be me.”
Mr Lansley said: “The A&E at the Whittington Hospital will be safe and secure in for the future.”
Mr Lamb said: “The A&E will not close. Surely we have tested to destruction the idea of unaccountable quangos making decision without the consent of local people and clinicians.”
Among the 25 speakers were anti-privatisation campaigner Dr Wendy Savage, secretary of Islington Trades Union Council Gary Heather and Paul Brandon, union rep at the Holloway bus driver’s garage.
Hundreds of frontline staff at the hospital can now rest assured that the immediate threat to their jobs is over. A cloud of fear and uncertainty has hung over the Archway hospital since November, when an internal memo revealing the cuts was leaked to this newspaper.
“Two major public meetings were called before Christmas and  Mr Corbyn secured two parliamentary debates in the House of Commons. Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone in neighbouring Hornsey and Wood Green also took up the cudgels in Parliament. It was not until February that the changes were officially proposed by the North Central London (NCL) sector. The unelected health quango – headed by NHS Islington chief executive Rachel Tyndall – claimed up to 60 per cent of the 80,000 patients admitted to the Whittington A&E each year could be “more effectively treated” in doctors surgeries and “lower-cost settings”.
Our enquiries show that more than 60 managers have been working full-time on the controversial review since July with an annual budget of £2.3million – and £1.9million has been spent on compiling the review.
Serious questions will now be asked as to why, in the face of such universal opposition, health bosses continued to press ahead with plans that have brought so much distress to so many people in north London. A spokesman for North Central London (NCL) was unavailable for comment yesterday (Thursday).