Wyre Forest: Passionate about health
Wyre Forest was the story of the 2001 general election. A retired hospital consultant unknown outside of Kidderminster won the seat on the back of anger at the downgrading of the local hospital, booting a Government minister out of office in the process.
“People felt passionately about the hospital,” says Dr Richard Taylor, who having polled 58 per cent of the vote became the only independent MP in the House of Commons, “it was a full blown district general hospital – it wasn’t just a little tin pot community hospital.”
The Labour government took what was to prove an ill-fated decision to close Kidderminster hospital’s A&E department and acute inpatient services and the hospital was downgraded in September 2000.
“That meant that 100,000 people who were within four or five miles of emergency facilities were now 18 miles plus,” Dr Taylor continues, “and those people in the country areas who were ten to 15 miles away were now even up as far as 35 miles away from an A&E department.”
The suspicion was that Kidderminster hospital was being “robbed” to pay for a brand new hospital thirty miles down the road in Worcester, where costs had shot up from £49 million to £116 million. “The authorities never admit that it was £116 million,” Dr Taylor explains, “but I’ve actually got a press release from the Department of Health … saying ‘Frank Dobson comes to cut the first turf of the £116 million new hospital’.”
“That was why this hospital had to go, and the consultation was wrapped up to give people of Redditch and Worcester a new hospital, and to take everything away from us.”
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Fast forward four years and the town of Kidderminster appears to be thriving. With an industrial past built on carpet weaving, it is making the transition to a service economy, typified by the Weavers Wharf complex – the site of a former carpet factory now a large retail complex that retains many of the factory’s buildings and much of its character. Kidderminster is at the heart of the constituency that also includes the towns of Stourport and Bewdley and a large rural hinterland, where 35 per cent of Wyre Forest’s electorate live.
The atmosphere in Wyre Forest is different in 2005. It is still getting more media attention than many constituencies but it is not the big story that it was in 2001. Dr Taylor is standing for re-election to the House of Commons on his Independent Kidderminster Hospital Health Concern platform, but faces a sterner test from challengers – Marc Bayliss for Labour and Mark Garnier for the Conservatives – than in 2001
For one thing, there is doubt as to how big an issue health is this time around. Bayliss says: “I wouldn’t say it’s the major issue here,” he says. “I’d say it was always going to be a big issue in any constituency and it certainly is important here – because of what happened last time perhaps even more important. But it’s not the first issue that’s raised with me on the door – I mean there’s lots and lots of other things that come first.”
“But when we talk about health I think people are generally quite pleased – especially on the primary care side – with the improvements that have happened. I think they are also reassured by some of the services that are being delivered at Kidderminster hospital.
He adds: “I think … people are much more content with the situation than in 2001 where they were being, I believe, told deliberate untruths about what Labour’s plans were.”
Dr Taylor says that although services are beginning to come back to the hospital, he is standing again in order to keep the pressure up.
“We won’t get a full A&E department back but we should at least be able to have a doctor in the urgent care centre 24 hours a day,” he says.
The reopening of the birth centre and an increase in inpatient surgery are also on his wish list. “So on the hospital issue those are our three things and I need to be around to keep the pressure up for those.”
Garnier is both surprised and “sorry” that Dr Taylor has decided to stand again – “if he were to stand down he would be remembered by the people of this constituency … as somebody who was a very great man”, he says. He also casts doubt on the impact Dr Taylor has had in returning services to Kidderminster hospital.
“Far be it for me to stand up and praise the opposition, but I think in this particular case … it’s not Richard Taylor.” He adds: “The fact of the matter is that [Kidderminster hospital] is now a treatment centre, it has got a minor injuries unit, it’s going to see more services come back as a treatment centre because that is … what Government policy is.”
But Dr Taylor feels that he has both as a result of what happened in 2001, and as a member of the Health Select Committee, had an impact on Government health policy – from the introduction of local authority overview and scrutiny committees, the creation of the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, to documents such as Keeping the NHS local.
“We think it’s entirely due to [what happened in Kidderminster]. They’ll never admit that but we could have written the booklet keeping the NHS local … so unashamedly I am claiming credit …”
He adds: “I feel that the Government recognised that if you take everything away – acute inpatient beds, A&E departments – you are going to have a revolt and they can’t face that.”
As a doctor for 25 years and being elected on a mandate to save the hospital Dr Taylor’s health credential are clear. But he is often labelled as “single issue” – something his opponents are keen to press home.
Garnier says: “I know very much that he like to proclaim that he isn’t single issue. Most people when you talk to them and say ‘what do you mean by a single issue MP’? … they will say an MP who got voted in on a single issue. He was voted in on one issue … like it or not. People who did vote for him, voted for him because of the hospital.”
Bayliss concurs: “I also think that Richard is a single issue candidate. Like it or not, I mean his record speaks for itself as well … his last twenty questions whether they be oral questions, written questions, or speeches in the House … I think fourteen of the last twenty were about health. There are some big issues here in Wyre Forest other than health.”
Transport and education are also featuring prominently in the campaign. A key strand of the Conservative campaign is a pledge to build the Stourport relief road within the first term of a Conservative government; while a recent education review in the Wyre Forest district concluded that the current three-tier system of first, middle and secondary education, should be replaced with the two-tier system used in the majority of the country. All candidates are keen to ensure this disadvantages neither pupils nor teachers.
After four years Dr Taylor is used to the ‘single issue’ accusation: “Now we are always being accused of being single issue,” he says. “And it is absolutely utterly impossible if you are an MP to be a single issue MP. I mean surgeries, you have to take whatever comes through the door.”
He adds: “The most important things I’ve had in my surgeries are the child support agency, housing problems, crime and the police, neighbourhood disputes as well as health issues.”
In addition to Labour and the Conservatives, parties standing against Dr Taylor include UKIP – whose candidate is former TV chef and Bewdley resident Rustie Lee – and the Liberals; but like in 2001 the Liberal Democrats have stood aside
