At last a significant development at our hospital has been announced!

Our Primary Care Trust and the West Midlands South Health Authority have realised the need and are planning an increase in elective, inpatient, orthopaedic surgery at Kidderminster. This will provide a much needed service for us and surrounding areas to shorten waiting lists for joint replacements and other operations. Increased elective surgery has been our first and most easily achievable goal since downgrading took place. We will continue to press for emergency services to widen the range of patients that can be assessed and treated locally in addition to those already seen in our excellent minor injuries unit.

I met briefly Margaret Becket MP, Secretary of State for DEFRA and I have heard from the Environment Agency that she may accept the invitation to visit the Bewdley flood defences that are of such interest nationally.

At a useful meeting with the local branch of the National Farmers’ Union. I heard of problems because of bovine tuberculosis; about fears of still inadequate detection of illegally imported meat; about food labelling that is too complex for the consumer to pick up the vital message about home production at a glance and about the derisory share of the sale price for their products sold in the supermarkets and the difficulties put in the way of farmers wishing to diversify. Some of these concerns I can take up with letters and questions to DEFRA and other bodies.

I was privileged to be invited to a meeting of the Anglo-Polish Society to hear Mike Oborski perform extracts from "Tadeusz and the Cat Ivan ", a moving reminder of life in Poland under Communist rule. To those of us who have lived our whole lives in a free society it does us good to be reminded of what so many others have suffered during their lives.

I voted with the Labour rebels and the Liberal Democrats over the Iraq issue. Their amendment agreed with the Government motion which supported the United Nations Security Council Resolution on Iraq but added clauses to ensure that it would be a UN decision when and if Iraq breaches the Resolution, that military action should be backed by the Security Council and that the House of Commons should debate military action before the deployment of British troops. This would have gone some way to prevent unilateral military action by the USA and UK participation without a specific debate in Parliament. The amendment was defeated by a large majority but the Government motion carried without a vote.

R.T.