Commenting on the end of the independent Staffordshire Ambulance Service
which became a part of the West Midlands Ambulance Service today (1st
October), Michael Fabricant says: "It is a sad end to an era.
Staffordshire Ambulance Service had become the top performing ambulance
service in Europe yet the Government were determined to bulldozer
through this merger with the West Midlands service. I take the view: if
something isn’t broken, why fix it?

"In many meetings I have had with Anthony Marsh, the Chief Executive of
the West Midlands Ambulance Service, he has insisted that standards of
patient and emergency care will not fall in Staffordshire. I hope he is
right. I have asked for, and he has now agreed to provide, performance
data for Staffordshire alone to continue to be published and not be
aggregated in to the West Midlands as a whole. I – and I am sure many
others – will be closely scrutinising this data over the years to come
to ensure that the high standards we already have are maintained in
Staffordshire.

"We have already seen the recent withdrawal of life-saving ResQPod
resuscitation equipment from our ambulances and the future of our First
Responders was put in doubt. Only time will tell whether standards will
fall as a consequence. If they do, lives in Staffordshire will be lost
unnecessarily and the Government will have blood on its hands."