News Release

30th April 2007

AMBULANCE MERGER AND COMMUNITY FIRST RESPONDERS

Commenting on reports that the Strategic Health Authority has ordered Staffordshire and West Midlands ambulance trusts to draw up a detailed timetable by June 1st for how a full merger will be implemented, Michael Fabricant says "In a recent one to one meeting with Anthony Marsh, the Chief Executive of the West Midlands Ambulance Service, I have insisted that if a merger does take place, separate performance figures for the/ Staffordshire arm of the new amalgamated ambulance service must continue to be published. Anthony Marsh has assured me that this will be the case. Meanwhile, I am now concerned to have just learnt that Staffordshire community first responders are under attack again: this time they are being told not to respond to incidents involving children and are being told they can't use blue lights in an emergency. I will be monitoring developments closely and will have further meetings with Anthony Marsh to discuss this retrograde step.

"With regard to the proposed amalgamation, I am prepared to accept this provided that high standards in Staffordshire continue to be maintained and are not jeopardised. For that reason it important that we can continue to monitor the performance of the ambulance service in Staffordshire and compare it with other services. All the data available now must continue to be available after the merger and not be absorbed into aggregated west midlands data. And the work of community first responders must be secured too.

"I still think it important that performance levels for the West Midlands, particularly their ability to resuscitate victims with cardiac arrest, begin to approach the high standards achieved in Staffordshire before a full merger takes place. This has not happened yet. But the good news is that latest figures show a dramatic narrowing of the gap in 999 response times between the internationally-acclaimed Staffordshire service, and the rest of the West Midlands. The statistics show that the previous gap of 20% has narrowed to less than three per cent for the past three weeks. I hope west midlands can continue to keep it up. It is vital that they do so. In Staffordshire, 82.5 per cent of emergency calls brought a paramedic to the scene within eight minutes - compared to 80.1 per cent in the West Midlands regional ambulance trust, which was created last year from three former services covering Birmingham, Hereford and Worcester and Warwickshire. Staffordshire community first responders have a large part to play in this." Staffordshire Ambulance receives 125,326 emergency calls every year.

Back at the end of February, Michael Fabricant raised the timing of the merger with Tony Blair .

Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): Will he will make a statement on the proposed merger of the West Midlands and Staffordshire ambulance services.

The Prime Minister: As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health announced on 16 May, the intention is that Staffordshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust and the West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust should work together to prepare for a merger. A timetable has not been set for the merger, but a partnership board has been established to take forward work relating to it.

Michael Fabricant: I am grateful to the Prime Minister for that answer. He might know that in fact a merger is now being proposed. The Health Secretary gave assurances to Staffordshire Members of Parliament that there would be no merger until the West Midlands trust had reached the same high standard as Staffordshire. However, if, God forbid, one was to have a cardiac arrest in Staffordshire, one would have a 60 per cent. chance of recovery, whereas in the west midlands one would have a 65 per cent. chance of dying. That high standard has not yet been reached, yet a merger is still being proposed. What can the Prime Minister say to people in Staffordshire to assure them that our ambulance service will not be downgraded through that merger?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly reasonable point. Obviously, the terms of the merger are extremely important. Within the past few days, the partnership board chairman has said:

"the whole process is about levelling up performance. Staffordshire leads the country in certain areas"-

I think that he was talking about the idea of the return of spontaneous circulation-

and it is the task of the West Midlands Trust to bring its performance up to those levels."

In other words, this is clearly about the West Midlands trust coming up to the very high standard that has been set by Staffordshire, not the other way round. Later, the Prime Minister wrote to Michael Fabricant to clarify his position and said in his letter:-

"As I made clear at Prime Minister's Questions, this is about levelling up standards, not levelling down and that continues to be our overriding concern. However, we would expect that this will happen over time, both before and after any merger. Therefore, it continues to be for the NHS locally to determine when there is sufficient convergence to allow merger to go forward, and the Secretary of State for Health would consider a request to merge, were it to be made, on that basis.