Sometimes challenges seem to come all at once, and they rarely make a convenient appointment in your diary! Ever since the announcement last month that Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes integrated care board (our health authority), were not going to proceed with the health and care hubs in Leighton Buzzard and Houghton Regis and the Clipstone Park GP surgery, I have been working overtime to get these decisions changed. I’m pleased to be able to report a slightly more optimistic state of affairs.
I organised a public meeting on the 9th of February for our health authority, the leader of Central, Bedfordshire Council, and one of our longest serving, and most respected GPs and myself to respond to this issue. At the meeting, the health authority told us that nothing was off the table, and that it was still their intention to provide health and care hubs.
That was a very welcome clarification, as was the news that a significant piece of land owned by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care off Vandyke Road can be used to provide the capital to pay for health facilities in Leighton Buzzard and Linslade. I am told that this land has lain dormant since the 1980s. It was only last week that legal advice was received enabling the value from it to be released for local health facilities. We need to make up for lost time and I will be urging all parties to come up with proposals promptly, as a result of this good news.
In Dunstable we have had the very unwelcome news that one of our best loved hotels is now being used for asylum seekers. This hotel was the location of choice for many local people for weddings, birthday celebrations and other important life events. People who had booked for these events are understandably, particularly upset and I get that and will do everything I can to help. I know the financial difficulties the hotel was facing and I am doing everything I can to help the hotel to reopen to the public next year. If it does so, we will need to support it, especially the local business community.
Much loved hotels in the heart of their communities should not be housing asylum seekers. Local people have given a warm welcome in their own homes to Ukrainian refugees because it was a properly organised government sponsored initiative with widespread public support.
The arrival of small boats across the channel in an unplanned manner, not coming through legal immigration routes is none of those things and cannot be allowed to continue. It is not fair to the British people, and neither can we look after people properly who cross the channel in this manner. The government is working around the clock to bring forward, legally compliant legislation that will swiftly detain those who arrive here illegally and remove them from the UK. This legislation is long overdue, and I apologise for its delay in being brought forward.