Romsey Advertiser 1 December 2006

Written by Sandra Gidley and published in Romsey Advertiser on Fri 1st Dec 2006

This week has been busy on a number of levels. It started off at a relatively low pace when I visited Southampton Airport to have a chat about the work of the Immigration service and to watch them at work.

In a well organised world I would have been able to park at Parkway and then travel to London but life is never that simple. Lack of availability of spaces meant that I had to drive to Winchester in order to be able to park. The trains were then disrupted but no one really seemed to know why. The consensus amongst passengers was that there must be the wrong sort of leaves on the line.

The afternoon passed in a blur of meetings and in the evening I had dinner with the Eye Health Alliance. They had asked to see me in my capacity as Chair of the All Party Eye Health Group and we were discussing how to engage the interests of more MPs.

On Tuesday I was at the office bright and early making sure that arrangements were in place for a meeting with Ivan Lewis, the Minister with responsibility for maternity services. Romsey birthing centre was on the agenda. Wheels were set in motion for the meeting over six weeks ago and it never ceases to amaze me how much Ministers and their staff differ in their efficiency in co-ordinating meetings. During the time taken to arrange this meeting I've managed three meetings with another member of the Ministerial Health team.

I was accompanied by Barbara Wyant who has done a lot of work locally. Other members of the campaign group attended the Overview and Scrutiny Committee at Hampshire County Council and everyone did what they could in their different ways. It was disappointing to learn later in the day that the OSC committee had approved the decision to close the centre.

My mood was not great when I visited the Terrace Pavilion to meet a young constituent who was taking part in an exhibition of work by young physicists. He was a charming young man who was obviously thrilled to be at Westminster and such feelings are infectious and made me remember that it wasn't a bad day for everybody.

So, feeling more cheerful I set off for an afternoon of meetings and an evening event chairing a panel discussion on Human rights and population control at the School of African Studies. It would have been nice to have joined the speakers in the pub afterwards but I still had the finishing touches to add to a speech I was making on Wednesday morning on Joint Commissioning of health and social care. I was panicking because I had read the list of conference participants and realised that they knew far more about the subject than I did because they were involved at the front line.

Once the speech was out of the way I was hoping to relax a little but I had a string of calls to return and not all of the news was good. Low point of Wednesday was learning that the Government have pulled the plug on funding for Police Community Support Officers a year early. This means that local numbers of these officers will have to be reduced and, given the early positive feedback about the scheme, I can't help but feel that this is one of the Governments more short sighted decisions.

Published by kind permission of Romsey Advertiser