Sir,
It was heartening to read Christine Gwyther's news in your paper (April 4) that she has succeeded in getting Jane Hutt to confirm that the new Pembrokeshire Local Health Board must submit a case for the new hospital to consider on-site beds.
Those of us who attended the first 'open to the public' meeting of that same board last Thursday came away quite disheartened. Despite the advertising of the meeting offering to allow the public to submit questions for discussion, one of the first things the chairman, Mr. Chris Martin, announced, was that no member of the public would be allowed to speak.
Next, he went on to warn the public that he would not allow any lobbying of members of the board for any reason. He then went on at length to speak about the quality of the members. There were 27 with four apologies. There would be 11 board meetings a year.
For an hour the board listened whilst some members spoke about matters addressed at a previous meeting. Codes of conduct and accountability. Then several committees were set up for procedures, legalities and endorsement and everything was rubber-stamped.
The Welsh government had given the board £105 million, a growth of 9.4 per cent growth.
Tenby Cottage Hospital was not on the agenda.
Finally, under AOB, a member of the public who had protested as a point of order had some of her questions briefly answered, with a promise to reply in writing.
Another local person requested permission to speak and asked the board not to lose sight of the people in all their deliberations about procedures and invited them to have vision -there was no response. Two others also spoke about lack of local representation.
We would pose the question... Has the new much-awaited Local Health Board come any closer to local people who request continued NHS provision in the Tenby area?
The next meeting of the board is on April 30 at 2 pm when our representation with others will continue.
Mollie Neate, Marjorie Bevan, Norman Spence,
Chair and joint secretaries of Tenby and Saundersfoot Labour Party.