By Dr Emma Royd
IN her campaign to get elected as the Labour MP for Barrow & Furness, energetic Ulverston shopkeeper Michelle Scrogham, loudly pledged to “PROTECT OUR NHS!”
So how’s that going four months down the line?
Because the critical care unit (CCU) – arguably the most important room in Furness General Hospital – has been temporarily mothballed for nearly six weeks now due to a shortage of sufficiently trained staff. It doesn’t look like reopening soon.
The unit is the place you need for heart attacks, strokes, serious car accidents etc, and its closure means that patients in life-threatening situations have to be carted 50 miles to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. A right old slog when minutes count and not handy for visiting family either.
“Super Scrogs”, who pledged to be a “woman of action, not words” has taken up the case by, er, writing a long wordy column about it for The Evening Snail.
Barrow’s first ever female Labour MP has also stood up in Parliament to read out a question about it.
But it was more of a meek underarm bowl for her fellow Labour comrade, Andrew Gwynne MP; a low-level health and social care bod, who knocked it out of the park.
He offered the usual weasel words of commiseration before pinning the temporary closure decision firmly back on the Lancashire and South Cumbria Disintegrated Care Board and the local NHS Trust.
A deflated Scrogham (below) looked on.
Result? Poorly patients at FGH still have to traipse-arse down to Lancaster!
Scrogham, a genuine community champion in Ulverston, looks weary after just four months. What will five years as an MP do?
But this is a painful lesson to Cumbria’s new cohort of idealistic Labour MPs to dial down on the braggadocio.
Being in Government is a damn sight harder than being in opposition where you can grandstand all you like about what you would do if your party was in power. . . .
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