EAST Hampshire MP Michael Mates has turned up the heat ahead of a public Save The Grange campaign meeting later this month. Addressing the town's business men and women in an after-lunch speech last week, he said the closure of the birthing unit had been "a shabby tale". And he criticised "bad decision-making" by Portsmouth Hospital NHS Trust bosses in their dealings with the Swan Street-based centre, which was temporarily closed last July. Mr Mates is due to chair the public meeting at the Festival Hall on February 22 and he has already invited PHT's chief executive Ursula Ward to attend. Last week, three of the campaign's leaders went to the House of Commons to question health minister Liam Byrne about government policy on maternity units. Mr Mates' latest outburst last week is sure to add more pressure on NHS bosses who are being asked to give a date for the popular unit to be reopened. He told Friday Focus representatives: "It has been a shabby tale. We are having a public meeting which I am chairing and the chief executive of PHT is coming. "The reasons for closing were financial, and that is why they have not reopened. "It is a question of choice. Mums don't want to have their babies in an ambulance on the A3. "And there are all sorts of reasons why they should not be looking to send people to Portsmouth to have their babies. "We have got to get these sort of decisions made lower down. "What has happened at The Grange is the bottom end of bad decision making." But sounding a note of caution, he added: "I'm not offering hope that we are going to make it." Support for the campaigners has also been offered by East Hampshire district councillors. At Wednesday's central area community committee, members were asked for their views on the closure by campaigner Rachael Batory. Chairman Jennifer Gray told the committee: "We won't know until after the NHS review. "But we are all sincerely hoping that it will be reopened. As far as we hear, they are sticking to their guns." l The meeting, on February 22, will take place at the Festival Hall in Petersfield at 8 pm. Meanwhile, Mr Mates has called on the government and health service managers to ensure that community hospitals survive the current NHS funding crisis. "This week the health secretary published a White Paper promoting better health services in the community but was unable to guarantee that the current wave of community hospital closures would come to an end," he said. "We cannot have better community health services without adequately funded community hospitals. It is no good ministers wishing there to be better community services but not providing the means to ensure that they can be delivered. "Ministers constantly boast of all the extra money they are putting into the health service. If this is true, why is there is not enough money to fund popular and effective community hospitals? "Locally, I am delighted by the news that Inwood Ward at the Alton Community Hospital is likely to reopen by the end of the summer, but I remain concerned at the continued closure of The Grange maternity ward in Petersfield Hospital. "It is important that ministers issue a clear message to NHS managers in Hampshire that the hospitals in Alton and Petersfield are just the sort of local hospitals that the government are going to need to deliver their ambitious plans for community healthcare."
