Michael Fabricant has hit out at the South Staffordshire Health Authority who, just hours after polls closed on the General Election, issued the report they had previously been denying: that the Hammerwich Hospital and Barton Hospital will close and the facilities at the Victoria Hospital will be halved and removed to a hospital to be built on the St Michael's site in Lichfield.

"Just days before this announcement, the Health Authority were denying that this would happen saying that there were 'a number of draft proposals in circulation' and that my claims of closure were wrong", says Michael Fabricant. "I do appreciate that Government cuts have forced these decisions on the Health Authority, but they have been less than open with the people they are paid to serve. The timing of this announcement has been cynical and cruel. By denying these closures, they gave false hope to people in our locality.

"I now call on the citizens of Lichfield and Burntwood to unite and to bombard the Health Authority with objections to these proposals.

"Once Parliament is recalled, I will raise these matters with both Tony Blair and with the Health Secretary. In the past, they have both used the excuse that as this heavily leaked report had not yet been published, they would not comment on it. Now the report is in the open, they must answer whether they will intervene to save hospital facilities in our area. I still hope that all is not yet lost and that local hospital facilities can be preserved".