SIR Michael Lord has joined the growing chorus of those worried about the future of Ipswich Hospital and has written to new Health Secretary Andy Burnham demanding an explanation over the decision to remove cardiac services from the county.

Graham Dines

SIR Michael Lord has joined the growing chorus of those worried about the future of Ipswich Hospital and has written to new Health Secretary Andy Burnham demanding an explanation over the decision to remove cardiac services from the county.

Sir Michael, who is MP for Suffolk Central and Ipswich North and a deputy speaker of the Commons, says he is “deeply concerned” about the plans.

“Along with a great many of my constituents, I am seriously disturbed about the future of Ipswich Hospital and the piecemeal way with which its component parts are being dealt with.”

In his letter, which has gone also to the chief executives of the East of England Strategic Health Authority, Suffolk Primary Care Trust and Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, he says: “Clearly, we need a competent and well-run general hospital which may not have specialist services best done in specialist centres, but which does have all those other departments which any hospital would need to service an area like this.”

Although welcoming the decision to call in Professor Roger Boyle, the national director for heart disease and stroke, to review the decision to downgrade cardiac services at Ipswich and for emergencies to be dealt with at Norwich, Basildon, and Papworth, Sir Michael points out that too many departments are being taken away from Ipswich.

“It is only right that health chiefs explain their policy for the hospital in the short to medium term and, more importantly, how they envisage its long term future,” says the MP.