MID-WORCESTERSHIRE MP Peter Luff won assurances in the House of Commons on Tuesday that Vale people would be listened to in the consultation process set up by the South Worcestershire Primary Care Trust.
During a debate, health minister Hazel Blears outlined new principles to be applied in the NHS when planning changes to hospital services.
She said: "In the NHS in the past a preferred option would emerge and people would be presented with it almost as a fait accompli. Consultation was sometimes simply the expiry of a period of time. People would do the first thing that they thought, and the process was not altered by the involvement of the public.
"The first underlying principal is that we develop proposals for change in consultation with the public." She said that they were core principals that underpin the whole thrust of future policy development."
The debate came in the wake of a document published by the government on February 14 entitled Keeping the NHS Local. Under the proposals smaller local hospitals would be supported to develop new roles at the heart of local communities.
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