“While they’re cutting cancer services at Ipswich Hospital, government bureaucrats at Suffolk PCT seem perfectly happy to shell out for a new website complete with portraits of their ineffectual board.  It’s not only a disgusting waste of our money, it is grossly irresponsible as we enter the greatest global depression for a century.”

Ben Gummer, the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Ipswich, has today released details of Suffolk Primary Care Trust’s spending on their new website and portrait photographs of board members.

The figures, obtained by Ben under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that the PCT spent £3,525 redesigning their website and £409 on professionally taken portraits of board members.

In total, this £3,934 could have paid for 34 initial outpatient meetings with a consultant in Ipswich Hospital’s maxillo-facial surgery team – the same service just axed by the PCT board.

Ben said: “The vanity of Suffolk Primary Care trust is staggering.  While they’re cutting cancer services at Ipswich Hospital government bureaucrats at Suffolk PCT seem perfectly happy to shell out for a new website complete with portraits of their ineffectual board.  It’s not only a disgusting waste of our money, it is grossly irresponsible as we enter the greatest global depression for a century.

“It may not seem like much among the billions spent by the NHS every year, but the money the PCT has spent on their portrait photographs would alone pay for 9 breast cancer mammograms, and taken together the cost of these projects would have financed 34 initial consultations with Ipswich Hospital’s head & neck cancer surgery team – a department that this same PCT has just axed.

“No doubt the PCT will claim that their website is important for “engaging with the public” or some similar, meaningless, phrase.  Well, I have something to tell them: the public wants them to spend our money on healthcare, not squandering it on “engagement”.  And to the board I say this: at a time when many people locally are worried for their jobs, those in comfortable board positions should show a little humility, ditch the photo sessions and get a grip on the bureaucrats they are supposed to control.”
 

11th April 2009