Politicians have vowed to fight with everything they have to stave off the planned closure of A&E departments at West Sussex hospitals. Three Sussex MPs explain why the facilities need to be saved and why they are determined to unpick the plans "bit by wretched bit"

  • Shadow health minister Tim Loughton, MP for East Worthing and Shoreham

At last the phoney war is over for hospital reconfiguration in West Sussex.

The Primary Care Trusts have published their consultation document, nine months after first promised.

It doesn't make good reading. It's not good for the health of my constituents in Worthing and Adur, not good for the population of West Sussex and not good for the people of Brighton and Hove, relying on a Royal Sussex County Hospital already under pressure. It's time for the gloves to come off.

We are being given three options for consultation over the next 18 weeks. They involve different permutations on downgrading Worthing and Southlands to a local general hospital with the loss of A&E, maternity, paediatrics and other acute services and retaining St Richard's in Chichester as the only major general hospital in West Sussex, or vice versa.

In all scenarios the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath loses out and faces being downgraded to a community hospital.

A county the size of West Sussex, with a population of 760,000 and growing, all competing for the same increasingly inadequate i n f r a - structure and road space, will apparently have to cope with just one major hospital.

The 63,000 A&E attendees from Worthing will be expected to crawl along the A27 to Brighton or Chichester or go north to Surrey. Lives will be lost and patients will suffer.

Worthing and St Richard's are good hospitals, well liked, cost effective and efficient. Only 11 years ago Worthing Hospital was substantially expanded by the last Conservative government.

Interestingly the largest growth in births at the maternity unit are by mums living in Brighton and Hove voting with their feet. We know the pressures that the Royal Sussex County is now under to cope with the patient workload and balancing the books, putting additional challenges on staff.

These proposals represent an attack on the NHS in West Sussex and dishonestly the PCT is doing the dirty work of the Health Secretary by dressing up cost cutting measures as modernisation. The Keep Worthing and Southlands Hospitals campaign and other campaigns in West Sussex backed by more than 300,000 petition signatures so far will be stepping up a gear and fighting these crazy proposals to the bitter end. Mrs Hewitt (or hopefully her successor) - you ain't seen nothing yet.

  • Andrew Tyrie, MP for Chichester

This is round two of the fight to save St Richard's Hospital.

Everybody is united in wanting to keep it. Next week we are delivering a petition.

We have all got to pull our weight if we are going to thwart plans to downgrade healthcare in West Sussex.

It is 17 months since the publication of the first consultation document and yet the case for the reconfiguration has still not convincingly been made whether on cost or clinical grounds. It is a scandal that a hospital such as St Richard's, identified as one of the very best in the country over many years, should even be considered for downgrading.

The Fit for the Future consultation collapsed in an embarrassing shambles as it was scrutinised by the Support St Richard's campaign, GPs and others. We will now see whether these proposals bear serious scrutiny.

The public deserve better than the uncertainty with which they have had to cope. Even now implementation is likely to be measured in years not months. I want to congratulate the staff of both St Richard's and Worthing for continuing to provide very high levels of care in the face of such uncertainty.

  • Nicholas Soames, MP for Mid Sussex

These options are absolutely unacceptable.

The Primary Care Trust has not listened to any of the points that were put to them very strongly right across West Sussex. In the course of producing this decision they said they were holding meetings to listen to people and finding out what they wanted. Clearly they have done nothing of the sort.

This is just a national solution which has no regard for care in these communities. To do away with A&E and maternity services at the Princess Royal Hospital is an act of madness. There is no other way of describing it. People from Mid Sussex cannot realistically be expected to travel miles to Brighton to be treated at a struggling hospital where they will be unable to park.

They have not listened to people's concerns so now we have no other choice but to fight this however we can. If not we will end up with one major hospital in the whole of West Sussex, a county with one of the fastest growing populations in the country.

All of this has been done to save the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

The way this information has been disclosed is also a disgrace. It came to us second- hand. This really is unacceptable and I have already told the PCT as much.

They have got the whole thing off to a terrible start but at least we know where we stand.

We shall now set about dismantling it bit by wretched bit.

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