Daniel Rogerson (North Cornwall, Liberal Democrat)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is fair to say that different trusts have taken different views. For example, the Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, which covers Derriford hospital, has recently undertaken a review, and has introduced much cheaper shorter-stay parking for visitors, which I welcome. The trust consulted widely before doing that. Unfortunately, probably because of the financial pressures that we have discussed, in Truro the situation is different. I do not want to drag the Minister too far into the specifics, but the barrier system introduced there means that people who are visiting for a long period, such as those who are visiting a sick child in the hospital, may pay for 24 hours of parking; however, if they leave the car park, going past the barrier, during the day and come back in the evening, they have to get a new ticket to get back in, although they have paid for 24 hours. That really adds to people's costs, and if anything can be done to look into that, it should be done.

We have heard a little bit from my hon. Friends the Members for St. Ives, and for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy), about the issues relating to the new health care provision that is to be allocated to the Falmouth and Camborne constituency. The model is a walk-in surgery for harder-to-access groups. Of course there are issues to address; we have migrant workers in Cornwall, and anything that can be done to make sure that we have adequate provision for everybody is all to the good. However, that proposal will divert resources into setting up a facility that, as my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives said, is really aimed at an urban area. There may well be a solution that would have worked better in a rural area.

My constituents in Bude-Stratton and Camelford have been waiting for a long time to get decent medical centres in their area. Bude-Stratton is one of the most remote towns in Cornwall. It has been pretty near the top of the list for a new medical centre for a while. It has outgrown its older premises, and campaigners in the area, such as Mrs. Candy Baker, have long fought to make sure that the primary care trust is aware of that. It is below Camelford on the list, and I have arranged a meeting, to be held in a few weeks' time, at which representatives from the local improvement finance trust company—Community 1st Cornwall—community groups and, I hope, the PCT will come together to talk about that situation. However, we have done that before, and we are not that much further forward. Of course, in those communities, there may be land and planning issues that delay matters, but the resources that are being put into the sort of centre that my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne spoke about may well have helped to overcome some of the problems, and might have taken us further forward in health care provision.

My hon. Friends the Members for St. Ives and for Falmouth and Camborne have raised crucial issues about accountability, which is not just about people having confidence in the system as a whole, but about their being able to influence where those resources are used and how they are spent locally. My hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne and I are on the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill Committee, which has had great discussions about the use of petitions. Upper gastrointestinal surgery, to which both hon. Friends have referred, is an example of an issue on which people are petitioning anyone whom they can think of, because they are not quite sure where the accountability lies. Despite having gone through the processes, and having become far greater experts on health funding than many hon. Members in this House—campaigners become experts during the course of their campaign—those campaigners will probably feel that they do not have the influence over decisions that they would like. That is a problem for us all.

My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives mentioned midwifery services. The situation is exactly the same in North Cornwall. As the father of three children under the age of five, all of whom were born, by Caesarean section, in the Royal Cornwall hospital in Truro, I am well familiar with the services, and the excellent work that the staff there do. However, looking at the period covering those three deliveries, I have to say that I have noticed that the staff are perhaps a little more stretched than they were when my eldest son was born in 2004.

Community midwifery services have played a fantastic role. Arwen Folkes has driven forward the "real baby milk" campaign in Cornwall, and I think that it is being rolled out in other trusts across the country. She very much welcomes the opportunity to work alongside midwives to provide that service. Sure Start benefited in North Cornwall from having a midwifery service, but it has had to be withdrawn because of the overstretch in midwifery. I hope that that issue can be resolved.

Finally, I refer to mental health. We could spend a whole evening discussing that. The Cornwall Partnership Trust has had to deal with problems relating to learning disability, but it is now moving beyond them. I have had the privilege of seeing a number of new facilities that it has opened, which is good, but the community services in particular are extremely overstretched. The fundamental problem is that resources have had to go into the Royal Cornwall hospital at Treliske. Until the financial situation is resolved, the partnership trust will not be able to deliver the sort of community mental health services that we would like to see.

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