Coventry North MP Bob
Ainsworth today issued an outspoken attack on the Coventry Health Authority as the row
over the city’s super hospital raged on.
Ainsworth is firmly behind the new hospital being sited at Walsgrave and is fuming as
the health authority’s move to postpone a final decision.
The City Council and fellow Labour MP Jim Cunningham want the new hospital built on the
site of the Coventry and Warwickshire in the centre of the city. The council has offered
to lend the NHS £20 million to help that happen but the move has caused another delay.
"I was promised an examination of the city centre site would not cause a delay or
jeopardise the project. I was promised a decision would be made at the end of the
September. That then became October, then the end of October, then this week and now they
want another fortnight.
"If we gave them until the millennium, the health authority have shown themselves
incapable of making a decision.
"They are now jeopardising this scheme. They are not prepared to make the decision
despite these repeated promises that they would not cause a delay.
"It’s now been two months. It’s not a matter for the City Council –
they are entitled to express a view but it is the health authority who take the decision
and they never, ever will.
"How many new issues are going to have to examined, how many new things are going
to be thrown on to the table at the last minutes to cause delay and prevent them coming to
a decision? The people of Coventry deserve better.
"I meet the people of Coventry every weekend and they are utterly frustrated. I am
fed up with people refusing to come to any sort of conclusion and if they don’t, then
I feel we need an inquiry to find out why."
Ainsworth added he didn’t think the city centre site would be viable but said he
just wanted a decision one way or the other.
