Cumbria’s new MPs and the leaders of local health and care services met this month at West Cumberland Hospital to discuss the improvements they all want to see to local services.
The meeting, convened by MPs Josh MacAlister, Julie Minns and Markus Campbell-Savours, brought together the leaders of local hospital, mental health, GP, pharmacy, dental and adult social care services for an honest and frank discussion about the challenges local services face after years of financial pressures, workforce challenges and the lack of a joined up approach.
In a joint statement after the meeting, Josh, Julie and Markus said:
“After 14 years of Conservative government our NHS and care services are on their knees.
“One of the missions of the new Labour government is to rebuild our NHS, and as your new MPs we are committed to playing our part to rebuild our local NHS and sort out social care services too.
“We welcomed the discussion with local health and care leaders and we agreed to work together to improve integration of health and care services, address workforce issues to get more doctors, dentists and other health professionals here so we can improve outcomes for patients and help people lead happier, healthier lives.
“We’ll meet every three months to hold services to account for delivering improvements and we will also be working in Parliament to push the government to ensure that north and west Cumbria gets our fair share of resources as Labour’s plan to fix our broken NHS is rolled out.”
Josh MacAlister MP 