Community Hospitals

Roz Savage Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered community hospitals.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy, and I am grateful to have secured this debate. I want to begin by thanking Jo Posnette and Dr Helen Tucker from the Community Hospitals Association, who have been an enormous help in preparing for the debate. I welcome Jo, who is in the Gallery.

Last year, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, around 15,860 patients died in NHS A&E departments in England while waiting for care that could have saved them. That is roughly 1,300 people every month—nearly 10 times the figure recorded in 2015. Every week, more than 300 people died a preventable death simply because they waited too long. Those numbers are shocking, but behind every number there is a real-life tragedy. Let us remember that human aspect throughout the debate.

I am sure I do not need to point out to colleagues that in rural areas the situation is often even more challenging. The ambulance takes longer to reach people, the journey to A&E is longer and, when services at a community hospital have been reduced to a limited number, as is currently happening in my constituency, there might be no early safety net to catch the patient before a crisis becomes a catastrophe.

[Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her passionate speech about community hospitals. In my constituency we have a fantastic community hospital with a minor injuries unit, but the unit is open only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with reduced hours. It could treat thousands more patients each year. Does my hon. Friend agree that opening minor injuries units for extended hours would help to relieve pressure on A&E departments in acute hospitals?

[Dr Savage]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Not everybody can time their minor injuries to fall conveniently within the unit’s opening hours, so I absolutely sympathise with the challenge facing her local hospital.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this important debate. I apologise to her and to you, Sir Jeremy, for not being able to stay; unfortunately, I have to be somewhere at 10 o’clock that is about 10 miles away. Like the hon. Lady, I wish to shine a light on the quiet heroes of our health service: our community hospitals. Places like Ards community hospital in my constituency are not just buildings but the bedrock of local care. They are the vital bridge between the high-tech intensity of a major acute hospital and the sanctuary of a patient’s own home. I support the hon. Lady in making the case for community hospitals, because my community hospital does all the things she wants community hospitals to do across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

[Dr Savage]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his perceptive intervention. Community hospitals often do feel more like a home from home. They are more accessible for a patient’s friends and family to visit, and they deliver better outcomes for patients and clinicians alike.

In the south-west, ambulance handovers at acute hospitals took more than 30 minutes in more than half of cases in January 2025—nearly 30% above the England average. A few months ago, I had the privilege to ride in an ambulance for a day. In what ended up being a 13-hour shift we attended only three call-outs. Maybe it was a quiet day—I am definitely not saying I wish there had been more grief out there—but we spent much of the day on the road and/or waiting outside hospitals, which did not seem the best use of a highly qualified ambulance crew and an expensive resource.

It will not be news to anybody in this room that our NHS is under pressure, yet, against the odds, community hospitals continue to perform. The Care Quality Commission reports that between 75% and 92% of community hospitals are rated good or outstanding, which is remarkable given that the number of district nurses working in them fell by around 55% between 2009 and 2024, with underinvestment and the loss of EU staff after Brexit cited as key causes.

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

I recently met the chief executive officer of the newly combined Surrey and Sussex integrated care board, and urged her to consider the potential for expanding Horsham community hospital on Hurst Road into a neighbourhood hub, including a women’s health unit, to mitigate the lack of a general hospital in the area. Sadly, her first task has been to reduce her staff by more than half. Does my hon. Friend wonder, like me, what happened to the extra £29 billion that the Government invested into the NHS? It does not seem to have got anywhere near Horsham.

[Dr Savage]

That is a very good question that I hope the Minister will be able to answer. I pay tribute to the absolute heroism of the people who staff our community hospitals; they are delivering an incredible return on investment.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

I have had loads of emails from staff who were worried that Crewkerne community hospital was shutting down, because the communication from local NHS leaders has not been good enough—a problem we also had with the maternity unit. Does my hon. Friend agree that communication from NHS leaders needs to be a lot better?

[Dr Savage]

I absolutely agree that a lot of the frustration felt on the frontline is due to lack of clarity of communication. Community hospitals are institutions, and I pay tribute to the people who work at them, who do more with less, year after year. They deserve better than for services to be quietly wound down.

I invite Members to imagine for a moment that they are 80 years old—it is less of a feat of imagination for some of us than for others—and living in a village outside Cirencester. Maybe they can no longer drive due to poor eyesight. They wake up one morning with chest pain. There is a hospital in town, but the services have dwindled one by one: no A&E, acute ward or surgery, and the theatre may be currently paused. What is actually needed—prompt assessment, a bed close to home and blood tests that do not require a 25-mile journey to Cheltenham on rural roads—may not be available. That is the reality for many people across my constituency right now, and it is getting worse.

Community hospitals have been an honoured part of our healthcare system for over 150 years. Research published in the Journal of Community Nursing in 2024 describes them as bridging

“the gap between primary and secondary care.”

They are person-centred, nurse-led and multidisciplinary settings that help people to recover, maintain independence and enjoy visits from friends and family. They are not a quaint historical relic; they are precisely what the NHS says it wants more of.

The Cirencester community hospital was exactly that kind of place. Since the day surgery unit was suspended last year, I have heard so many moving stories from constituents, their fond memories of being in hospital, and how much that hospital, right at the heart of their community, meant to them when their children, parents or spouses were sick. But over the years the services there have been eroded one by one: first A&E, then acute wards, paediatrics, maternity and blood services. In 2025, the day surgery unit was paused as part of NHS Gloucestershire’s centres of excellence trial. Each change came with reassurances, but each one left residents further from care. My constituents have become deeply and rightly sceptical that a trial closure will ever be reversed.

[Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful point about trust and promises being made but not delivered. Twenty years ago, Littlehampton hospital in my constituency closed, with the promise that a replacement health service would follow. In Rustington, there has been a lack of consultation and the hospital has closed; we are hoping it will reopen. Does the hon. Lady agree that consultation, trust and following through on promises are so important?

[Dr Savage]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady’s point. I have been pressing the NHS to find out the criteria by which they will judge the trial closure, but the criteria have not been forthcoming. I am concerned that there is a circular logic: “Well, you’ve managed without that ward for six months or a year, so you can continue to manage without it.”

A constituent described a cardiac arrest at Cirencester, handled with what she called “absolute skill and excellence” by a team of senior staff working together to stabilise the patient before transfer to an acute hospital. She told me that the nursing care on the wards is excellent, and that patients nearing the end of their lives are cared for with compassion and great dignity. That is what we are talking about when we talk about community hospitals, and that is what the trial closure of a ward potentially puts at risk.

Another constituent—a former GP who started practicing in Cirencester 40 years ago, in 1986—told me about a child who, after the surgical ward closed, waited 20 hours in Cheltenham for an appendix operation. Previously, that operation could have been done in Cirencester much more quickly. That is a family sitting in a corridor in an unfamiliar hospital at 2 in the morning, feeling anxious and far from home, because the local service they relied on had gone.

A month or so ago I launched a petition, in collaboration with a local county councillor, to protect community hospitals across the Cotswolds. Within a couple of weeks, well over 3,000 people had signed it, and last week we handed it in at No. 10. The South Cotswolds population is growing rapidly, largely due to the Government’s housing targets. Thousands of new houses are being built around Cirencester, and there are plans for many more housing developments that will swallow up nearby villages. It does not make mathematical sense for communities to grow while the services that support them shrink. The numbers just do not add up.

NHS bodies often describe these changes as reconfigurations—a shift in how care is delivered rather than a reduction in what is available. For a rural resident with no car and negligible public transport, a 25-mile journey to Cheltenham is a significant barrier to care. The Government’s own 10-year plan talks about “neighbourhood health” and care “closer to home”, but Gloucestershire is heading in the direct opposite direction. I would like to hear from the Minister how those two things can be reconciled.

A few miles to the north-west of my constituency, post-natal beds at Stroud maternity hospital were suspended in 2022. That year, the Care Quality Commission rated Gloucestershire’s maternity services as inadequate—a rating they retained on reinspection the following year. The hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher), who is a GP, has made the valid point that post-natal care saves money downstream because it is the time when mothers and babies bond, when breastfeeding is established and when families who need extra support get it on a timely basis. If we lose that support, the costs will appear elsewhere later on. Will the Minister provide a timeline, with dates, for the full restoration of maternity services in Gloucestershire, including the Aveta ward in Cheltenham, which is currently closed for labour and births? Will she provide details of the specific workforce support the Government are providing to make that happen?

In other countries, the decline of community hospitals is not seen as inevitable. Other countries are under the same pressures, but they are making different choices. In Sweden, research found that rural GPs value community hospitals because they provide exactly the things that cannot be replicated in a large acute centre, including proximity, continuity and a holistic understanding of elderly patients and others with multiple conditions. Heart failure and pneumonia rehabilitation can be managed closer to home by staff who know the patient and their family.

In Italy, the Government have committed to building or renovating 400 community hospitals using European recovery funds, backed by research from the Emilia-Romagna region showing that they deliver better integration among care sectors, between primary and specialist staff, and between healthcare and the communities it serves. Last October, more than 150 people from 23 countries joined an international webinar co-hosted by the Community Hospitals Association, and the conclusion was consistent: community hospitals anchor care in local communities, support home-based care and help people to live better for longer.

The Government’s NHS 10-year plan commits to shifting care from hospital to community. That sounds like a very good idea, but a Nuffield Trust report published in September 2025 makes a point that needs to be heard: this ambition is not new. Successive Governments have promised to move care closer to home, and most have fallen short, almost always because the community infrastructure needed to enable the shift is simply not there, and nor is the investment. Ireland, which has pursued reform for nearly a decade, had the wisdom to invest up front in new facilities, digital systems and community workforce capacity.

Unfortunately, the Nuffield Trust found that England’s 10-year plan contains no equivalent ringfenced funding. The expectation appears to be that hospitals cut waiting lists and simultaneously release funds to build community capacity. Again, the maths just does not work.

The starting point is already challenging. More than 1.1 million people are currently waiting for community care in England, with the steepest rise among children and young people. A hospital where the theatre has been paused cannot absorb more community care. A maternity unit closed for three years cannot deliver neighbourhood health. A community health system with 1.1 million people already waiting cannot become the landing ground for patients displaced from acute settings unless it is properly resourced to do so. As so often, rural areas pay the highest price when the gap between ambition and delivery opens up. There is no slack in the system and no easily accessible option down the road.

[Manuela Perteghella]

My hon. Friend is very generous to give way again. In my Stratford-on-Avon constituency, the Ellen Badger community hospital in Shipston-on-Stour served the community for hundreds of years. The Coventry and Warwickshire integrated care board removed the in-patient beds, which were really important in rehabilitating and looking after patients from acute settings before they went home. Those beds were close to their home. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must invest in care in community hospitals to relieve the pressure on acute settings?

[Dr Savage]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s point. We need a more joined-up approach. From conversations that I have had with nurses in my constituency, I know that those on the pointy end can see very clearly where the bottlenecks in the system are. We need to relieve the pressure on those bottlenecks.

I will conclude with five asks for the Minister. First, will the Government give a clear commitment to protect and properly resource Cirencester hospital as a local health hub, with the operating theatre restored, not paused indefinitely while the trial closure quietly becomes permanent?

Secondly, will the Government give a timeline, with dates, for the full restoration of maternity services in Gloucestershire, including post-natal provision at Stroud?

Thirdly, will the Government give an honest account of how the shift from hospital to community will actually be delivered in rural areas? What oversight will there be? What protections are in place? What prevents the same pattern of managed reduction from continuing in the name of the 10-year plan?

Fourthly, will the Government commit to work with the Community Hospitals Association towards a national definition and dataset for community hospitals in England, so that our 500 community hospitals can finally be planned for, funded and properly valued?

Finally, will the Minister agree to a meeting? I would very much welcome the opportunity to sit down with her, alongside local NHS leaders and the Community Hospitals Association, to discuss the long-term future of Cirencester hospital, its role and resourcing, and its place in the vision of care closer to home, which this Government say they believe in.

My constituents are not asking for anything exceptional. They just want to know that, if they get ill, there is somewhere to go that they can get to. The NHS was founded on that promise, and that promise must be kept.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Savage]

I thank all Members who have contributed to this debate with wonderful and sometimes moving stories about the role that community hospitals have played in the lives of their constituents and who have shared their concerns. I also thank the Minister—I appreciate that this is not her brief—for stepping up today.

I echo the words of the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) that community hospitals are “much more than buildings”. There is the expertise of the staff working there, and they are an important hub for healthcare in a community. While I welcome the announcement of 250 neighbourhood health centres, I would like the message to go back to the relevant Minister that we already have community hospitals that are well known and well loved in our constituencies, so I very much hope they will form an integral part of the NHS’s plans for the future. I thank the Minister for passing on my requests to the relevant Minister; I look forward to hearing more about them in due course.

I will end with a reminder to all of us that we are talking about human beings at a very vulnerable moment in their life. I was especially moved to hear about the urgency of the husband of my hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) suffering anaphylactic shock. Local medicine delivery is not just sentimental or about harking back to a bygone era. It is so important to recovery that patients do not feel scared and do not feel far from home, their community, or their family, friends and neighbours, but feel that they are not so far from home and are still in the bosom of their community. Anything we can do to minimise their stress and maximise their sense of connection and comfort can only ever help the speed and quality of their recovery.

I thank all colleagues for their contributions today, and I thank you, Sir Jeremy.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered community hospitals.

Sudden Unexpected Death in Childhood

Roz Savage Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John, and to open this important debate. Today we are discussing a category of child death that has previously been described in this room as

“one of the most serious medical phenomena in our country”.—[Official Report, 17 January 2023; Vol. 726, c. 88WH.]

Sudden unexplained death in childhood is the fourth leading cause of death in children aged one to 18. Since Parliament last debated this issue in 2023, in the UK around 120 children who appeared perfectly healthy have died suddenly. That is the equivalent of four full classrooms of pre-school and school-aged children—four classrooms of lives cut short without explanation.

For families, the devastation after a child dies is immediate and lifelong. What makes SUDC uniquely cruel is not only the loss, but the absence of answers. Why did those children die? I can only imagine the pain of that. When we lost our daughter Mallorie to Edwards’ syndrome, we at least had the comfort of knowing why and what was coming. We knew there was nothing more we could do. Families experiencing SUDC have none of that. It is brutal. We cannot continue to tell grieving parents, “I am sorry; we simply don’t know why your child died.” As a society we have a responsibility to do all we can to find the answers to prevent future deaths. That is why today we ask the Government to lead the search for answers through a co-ordinated national plan.

First, let us be clear about what SUDC is and what it is not. Sudden unexplained death in childhood is the sudden unexpected death of a child over one year old that remains unexplained after a full investigation. Cases do not involve crime, terminal illness, diagnosed epilepsy, cardiac conditions or tragic accidents. The children appear healthy. They fall suddenly ill or go to sleep and never wake up. Parents, grandparents and siblings are left asking, “Why did this happen? Could it happen again? Is there a genetic risk? Will my other children die? Should we risk another pregnancy?” Those are questions that currently no one can answer.

At the heart of today’s debate and our discussion is a little boy named Frankie Grogan. Frankie was three years old: bright, curious and full of energy with a particular love of giraffes. His family had every reason to believe that they would watch him grow and thrive. Instead, he went to sleep and did not wake up. The night before, Frankie was excited that his father would be running the Manchester 10k the next day. He briefly woke at 4.30 am asking for water. A few hours later, he was found to be still and unresponsive. Despite a thorough investigation, no cause of death could be identified. That happened in 2019 and Frankie’s family, who are here today, still do not know why.

In the midst of unimaginable grief, Frankie’s grandfather, Brian Topping, came to see me. He did not ask for sympathy; he asked for structure, leadership, co-ordination and a plan. Frankie’s story reminds us that behind every statistic is a child with a name, a personality and a future that should have been. It is because of Frankie and the determination of his family that the debate is taking place today. Through SUDC UK, families, clinicians and researchers have united around the conviction that unexplained should never mean unexamined. We know that research and awareness raising, backed up by national leadership, can make a profound difference. In other areas of childhood death, when priorities are clear, progress follows.

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this important debate and for his very moving speech. I recently had the honour of meeting Eleanor Wroath, who is here in the Gallery today with her son Sam. Eleanor lost her daughter Miranda, aged 18 months, in 2008. Since then, she has been a tireless campaigner for raising awareness of sudden unexplained death in childhood. She and Sam will be running the Great North Run in support of the charity. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as highlighted by campaigners such as Eleanor and Sam, there is an urgent need for more specialist research to understand the causes of and the risk factors underlying SUDC?

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

Order. Given the seriousness of the subject and of the hon. Lady’s intervention, I let that go, but interventions should generally be slightly more pithy.

Healthcare in Rural Areas

Roz Savage Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) for introducing the debate and doing such a great job of painting a picture of the bigger systemic issues—as I do not have very long, I will not repeat those, but will focus instead on two specific issues that I face in my constituency. It is only fair to let the Minister know that I will ask him for a meeting at the end of the debate, because I feel I have just about exhausted all other possible avenues.

Those two examples of the system failing rural constituencies affect Cirencester community hospital and the Tolsey GP surgery in Sherston. Cirencester hospital offers vital community services to a wide rural catchment, but over recent years the hospital has seen a gradual reduction in services. It lost its minor injuries unit in 2016; blood services were removed in 2020, and the day surgical unit is now undergoing a trial closure—I am very concerned that these trial closures have a nasty habit of becoming permanent. Residents are very concerned because they have seen that pattern before.

I do not quite understand how that fits with the NHS 10-year plan, which emphasises care closer to home, when patients will potentially now have to travel considerable distances. By definition, people who need hospitals tend to be elderly, sick or parents of small children, and I do not need to repeat yet again how poor our rural public transport is. There is a great deal of public passion about this. Our petition has gathered getting on for 2,000 signatures in just a matter of days. As new housing developments arrive, the increased population of Cirencester will only increase the demand for services at that hospital.

The second example is Sherston surgery. A developer has offered to build a lovely new custom-built facility to replace the existing one, the lease for which expires at the end of the year. I have lost count of how many meetings I have had with the ICB, which has acknowledged that its toolkit is not well suited to rural areas, yet it still has not agreed to that offer. I am out of time, but I look forward to meeting the Minister in due course.

Rural GPs: Funding

Roz Savage Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered GP funding in rural areas.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk about this important topic. Statistics show that, as of 2024, 17% of England’s population, equating to 9.6 million people, live in rural areas. For these communities, accessing healthcare can be challenging. The challenges are well known: rural GP practices serve elderly and often isolated populations, and are tasked with delivering complex care in large and often sparse geographical areas. The demands have long been accounted for in our funding formula for GPs, the Carr-Hill formula. The model was introduced in 2004 and was designed to ensure that GP funding reflected variations in workload and local population characteristics, including a measure of rurality.

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

Sherston in South Cotswolds is in imminent danger of losing its surgery. There is an enormous local strength of feeling, with 2,850 out of 3,000 patients signing a petition. As the right hon. Lady mentioned, people who need doctors’ surgeries by definition tend to be elderly, ill or parents with small children, so does she agree that the NHS should prioritise the provision of GP surgeries for small rural communities such as Sherston?

[Esther McVey]

The hon. Lady raises a very relevant point, and I agree wholeheartedly. People in lots of areas in my constituency cannot get to a GP and are bereft of a GP surgery.

Until now, we have had a measure of rurality, but this Government have instructed the National Institute for Health and Care Research to review the funding model and examine how working-class areas could benefit under a new model based on deprivation rather than workload.

Defibrillators

Roz Savage Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

As the MP for the South Cotswolds, I know that living in a rural area brings many blessings, but also some challenges. Ambulance wait times are nearly 50% longer in rural areas. When every second counts, that delay can make the difference between life and death. That is why access to defibrillators matters so profoundly.

Let me share the story of one of my constituents, Sonya Harris. In October 2023, Sonya collapsed outside her son’s school in Malmesbury after suffering a sudden cardiac arrest. Only about one in 10 people survive such an event. Sonya was one of those lucky ones: someone nearby knew CPR, a defibrillator was close at hand and she received swift care from the NHS and her family. Without that chain of good luck, she would not be here, and her son would be growing up without a mother. But survival from cardiac arrest should not come down to luck; it should come down to preparation.

I recently visited a newly installed defibrillator in my constituency. With huge thanks to the Lechlade Lions, the South Western ambulance service and Gloucestershire street lighting, Lechlade and Fairford now have some of the best defibrillator coverage in the country. They have pioneered the use of lamp post power to run devices, the first scheme of its kind in the south-west, making installation simpler and cheaper.

We should be broadening that approach across the whole country. Every community, rural or urban, deserves the same safety net. I advocate for defibrillators as a standard requirement in the planning process for all new housing estates and industrial estates. If developers include them from the outset, the cost is very reasonable—far lower than the cost of trying to retrofit them later on. New estates should be designed so that no home is more than 400 metres from a defibrillator, because when cardiac arrest happens, every moment counts.

Each year, thousands of lives are lost because help simply does not arrive quickly enough. By ensuring that defibrillators are widespread, visible and easy to access, we can change that. Let us make defibrillators as commonplace as fire extinguishers and as trusted as seat belts. Let us make sure that help is never more than a few steps away.

GP Funding: South-west England

Roz Savage Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for securing this important debate on GP funding in the south-west, and for his passionate speech.

I want to shine a spotlight on a village in my constituency called Sherston, where the future of the local GP surgery hangs in the balance. I realise that Sherston may not be the centre of everybody’s universe, as it is of mine, but in many ways it is a microcosm of the wider issues facing NHS-funded GPs in the rural parts of the south-west. For years, residents of Sherston and the surrounding villages have lived with growing uncertainty as to whether they will continue to have access to primary care close to home.

Here is the situation: the lease on the current building for Tolsey surgery expires in 2027 and, for a range of reasons, it cannot be renewed. A local housing developer stepped in and offered to build a brand new surgery at no cost to the NHS, in exchange for a modest increase in the number of homes in a proposed development. Understandably, the community overwhelmingly backed the plan. The only missing piece is a commitment from the integrated care board to fund the running of the surgery.

The issue has been running and running. It is not just the local residents who have been calling for action; the parish council, our county councillor and I have all repeatedly urged the ICB to commit to supporting this facility—not just the bricks and mortar, but the long-term operation of a much-needed service. After months of dialogue, however, no clear answer has been given.

The ICB relies on a toolkit to decide how to allocate resources. Early in our discussions, it acknowledged that the toolkit was designed with urban settings in mind and is not well suited to rural areas, yet the ICB has continued to defer to the toolkit, as if it is unable or unwilling to apply common sense to a rural context. It argues that there is spare capacity at the Malmesbury primary care centre, but anybody familiar with these places knows that that is simply not the case. Staff are stretched, appointment slots are limited, car parking slots are even more limited and patients are already struggling to get seen. Understandably, the people of Sherston are at their wits’ end. This is not just about one surgery; it is about a broader failure to meet the healthcare needs of rural communities.

Access to healthcare in rural areas is closely tied to transport. Sherston has no regular reliable public transport to Malmesbury, which is five miles away. Many elderly residents no longer drive. For a sick or disabled person in significant need of a GP, or for a parent with young children, getting to a GP appointment in another town can be close to impossible. Once again, as in so many other contexts, we see rural issues—transport, healthcare, infrastructure and resilience—being treated in silos, when in reality they are deeply interwoven. We must start recognising that in the system.

Following the Health Secretary’s announcement in May of new funding for GP surgeries, I wrote to his Department to ask whether Sherston might benefit. Unfortunately, the reply was disappointing. I was told that the surgery did not meet the criteria and has

“not been selected for this year’s funding.”

Well, Sherston surgery does not have very many years left. This response reflects a deeper issue: a fundamental lack of understanding of rural life in our national decision making. A site visit and a short attempt to navigate the journey from Sherston to Malmesbury by bus—or, more likely, the lack of a bus—would speak volumes. I understand that not every village can have its own GP surgery, but when a brand-new, purpose-built facility is being offered, free, to replace a much-used existing practice, why would we say no?

It is not just Sherston. Across the south-west, rural GP surgeries are being overlooked in NHS investment planning. If we are serious about levelling up healthcare access, that has to change, so I have launched a petition to save Sherston surgery. I invite residents to sign and share it. Once we have gathered sufficient support, I will present it in Parliament to show the Government just how strong the feeling is.

I was impressed by the figures from the Health Secretary that my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot cited—that the cost for a GP visit is about £40, versus about £400 for an A&E visit. Failing to fund rural GPs adequately is a false economy. For economic reasons as well as for health reasons, rural communities should not be treated as an afterthought. Everybody, wherever they live, deserves compassionate, reliable and, above all, accessible healthcare.