David Ruffley MP has renewed his calls for Norfolk Suffolk and Cambridgeshire Strategic Health Authority (SHA) to be abolished on the day of their public board meeting which will discuss an overspend in excess of £100 million.

Based on draft accounts NHS bodies across the area overspent by a net £101 million in 2005/06.

The role of the SHA is to give financial advice, training and support to health trusts in the region.

The Norfolk Suffolk and Cambridgeshire SHA board meeting will be held at 10am on Wednesday 28 June in the Nightingale Room , Victoria House, Fulbourn, Cambridge.

David said:

'The Strategic Health Authority for Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire is supposed to support and advise the local Primary Care Trusts and Hospital Trusts. The SHA has simply not been doing its job.

'In the last year it has overseen a collective overspend in excess of £100 million. How on earth was this allowed to happen?

'This ineffective Quango has failed in its remit, failed the health service in our region and worst of all failed the people of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.

'The SHA, which itself costs millions of pounds to run, should be scrapped and the money redirected to those who need it most- the professionals and patients.

'The extra investment this Government says is going into our NHS simply isn't reaching the front line.'