Chris Bloore

I congratulate the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) on securing today’s debate. My constituents are watching at home and she eloquently set out the challenges that face our maternity services and the health of women across the UK, so I thank her for doing that so well. When people in Redditch elect their Members of Parliament, they do so with a clear mandate on maternity services and the future of the Alexandra hospital. It would be remiss of me not to thank the shadow spokesperson, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) who did a tour of service at our hospital in the earlier parts of his career—we thank him for that. Our maternity services are famed for delivering one Harry Styles many years ago—[Interruption.] Yes, just the one Harry Styles. More seriously, in 2015 our maternity services were closed and relocated to Worcestershire Royal. That temporary relocation was made permanent in 2017. That is the only site delivering such services across our entire county. That means many of my residents are forced to travel to Worcester or Birmingham to get the services they need. Although the hon. Member for Chichester was brave enough to share some of the stories that she has heard from her constituents, I am quite frankly not strong enough to retell some of the stories I have heard—of stillbirths and, frighteningly, of parents giving birth to their children on the roadside—in the way that they deserve. Since 2015, the initial promises to return those services to my constituency have been forgotten. Despite signatories totalling over 50,000 from the local community, no parameters for the return of such services have been discussed by the ICB. I want safe services for my constituents, but although I am concerned by the current configuration of services, I am deeply concerned about the future of services in my constituency. Worcestershire Royal has significant constraints on growth. Worcestershire is set to deliver tens of thousands of new homes and huge population growth in the next 10 years, with pressures on services set to rise substantially. As this Government seek to rebuild and reconfigure our NHS, it is time for those services to meet the needs of the present and, most importantly, deliver the services of the future. I urge the Government to review the decisions taken on the centralisation of services that may have made sense in the past, but will not in the future.