He made the point that the final repudiating of those ill-conceived clinical wishes was a triumph for 'the NHS system' in that there were enough 'fail-safe appeal mechanisms', eventually through the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, to ensure the right safe and sensible decision was upheld. But at what cost both emotionally and financially?
He failed to mention the amount of work and effort, and risk in Liz Walke's family's case, which had to be ploughed into fighting such a poorly conceived plan.
It was produced by people who may have had an 'idealised
concept', but as representatives of all the potential patients in the area should have only taken their ultimate safety into account and realised the
potential risks they were
expecting others to take.
Ideally such reasoning should have caused them to abandon their initial concept at the onset, even if they did continue to hold the not unreasonable view that in the long run all services would be best served by one big
multiservice hospital equidistant between the two towns.
Certainly when their flawed thinking was shown up by all sensibly-thinking individuals and opposed by all the local GPs, they should have realised it was unlikely so many people could be wrong and changed their minds, or resigned.
Unfortunately they chose to arrogantly ignore those expressed views and not even put the two- site option to the vote.
I am sure that those in the Palace of Westminster are best placed to ensure such expensive arrogance is not allowed to flourish in the future and hopefully they will do so.
It is often stated that 'power corrupts and total power corrupts totally' and there is little doubt that in this day and age it is
stupidly seen as a weakness when somebody changes their mind and admits they got it wrong in the first place. If somebody can do that following thoughtful dialogue they should in fact be trusted, but if they cannot change an ideal or view for the better after discussion with a broad-based majority then they should never be trusted again to hold the responsibility for other people's lives.
For that reason any member of the East Sussex Downs & Weald Primary Care Trust (PCT) Board and East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust Board, together with the medical directors of the Eastbourne and Hastings Hospitals and the consultants who voted for or otherwise supported this ill thought-out scheme, should have already considered their position and ideally resigned from any decision-making roles for the future care of local people.
If John Barnes, as chairman of the PCT, in his statement that there is no resignation responsibility for such flawed initial thought, is the authoritative voice of these people then one can only hope that Alan Johnson will follow up his statement with appropriate action and ensure their wholesale removal from such important and powerful positions.
Nobody is saying the decisions they were appointed to make were easy. But having made them they showed themselves to be flawed in their attitude and judgement to the ultimate care and safety of those they were chosen to protect – thus relinquishing their moral right to be automatically trusted and continue in their roles as the public's representatives in such important matters.
Brian H Valentine (MBBS, FRCS, FRCOG), High Street,
Westham