Health Care (Shropshire) debate

Full text of Philip Dunne's speech on on healthcare services in Shropshire.

Mr. Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con): It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs. Humble. We know each other from our work on the Select Committee on Work and Pensions in years gone by.

I am particularly pleased to have this opportunity to review with the Minister the state of health care in Shropshire. I will mostly discuss the facilities in my constituency of Ludlow, but I will touch on the county's wider health care economy. I am delighted to see so many colleagues from Shropshire here today. I will, of course, be pleased to accept their contributions, which may be more focused on the acute hospitals in their constituencies, whereas I will focus mostly on the community hospitals in mine.

I begin with a slight sense of d