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| Bury Free Press, 18 January 2006 |
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| The growing NHS cash crisis in Suffolk came under the spotlight when churchgoers quizzed MPs on the future of healthcare. |
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| Bury MP David Ruffley and West Suffolk MP Richard Spring shared a platform before more than 40 people, including representatives of the Salvation Army and health workers, at Christchurch, Moreton Hall, in Bury St Edmunds, on Friday. |
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| Opening the meeting, Mr Spring praised frontline care staff as 'wonderful and caring staff whose jobs are under threat'. |
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| "They simply do not deserve to live under this cloud of uncertainty," he said. |
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| He blamed the Government's funding system for the crisis, which has left primary care trusts and hospitals facing massive cutbacks in order to get out of debt, including the loss of 50 beds at West Suffolk Hospital, in Bury, and threatened closure of community hospitals in Sudbury and Newmarket. |
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| He then attacked bureaucracy in the NHS as 'out of control'. |
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| "There are now more people running the NHS in this country than there are hospital beds," he said. |
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| Mr Spring also urged those present to start a letter-writing campaign. |
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| He said: "We cannot have the decimation of the NHS in our county. |
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| "We are all in this together and if we come together, who knows? We may stop some of these ridiculous proposals, which are undermining the fabric of our communities." |
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| David Ruffley spoke to those present of his own first-hand experience of healthcare in the county, when he spent a week in West Suffolk Hospital after suffering kidney problems. |
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| He said it was essential that health secretary Patricia Hewitt gave trusts more time to get out of debt, rather than making sweeping cuts to services in order to resolve the cash crisis more quickly. |
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"If she allows us more time, cuts will be fewer. If she insists on us balancing the books, the cuts will be savage," said Mr Ruffley.
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| The Rev Jonathan Ford, of Christchurch, who called the meeting on behalf of the clergy, said health bosses were not invited to the meeting to give people the opportunity to speak freely on issues concerning them. |
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| "It was a listening exercise and a chance to put the issue on the agenda," he added. |
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