Pressure builds over trust merger

1:50pm Saturday 5th January 2008

THE Welsh Assembly is coming under increasing pressure to reconsider a decision to merge the three NHS health trusts in Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire.

Both Ceredigion MP Mark Williams and Liberal Democrats focus team leader in Pembrokeshire, Liz Campion, are campaigning to prevent the setting up of a new super-trust' for Dyfed.

Liz Campion took a petition to the Welsh Assembly to keep the pressure on health minister Edwina Hart to stop her pushing through the merger.

"Local people's calls for their own local NHS Trusts to represent the needs of their own local areas is being ignored by the Assembly Government," she said.

Mark Williams, who collected hundreds of petition signatures against the merger, said: "I'm very concerned to hear that the Assembly Government are steamrollering through their plans to merge the three NHS Trusts."

Liz Campion met with AM Jenny Randerson, the Liberal Democrat health spokesperson, at the Welsh Assembly and told her: "People in rural areas like Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion are concerned that resources in a merged NHS Trust will go to the most densely populated centres and be taken away from Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion."