Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves visits ARU Peterborough
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00:00Peter Pritchard-Groff, Peterborough is one of the fastest growing cities in the UK, what is it your government's doing to ensure that medical facilities such as doctors, dentists etc keep pace with that development in Peterborough?
00:14Well it's fantastic to be here with the local MP Andrew Pate and also our mayoral candidate Anna Smith today at the local university where we're training up the midwives who I met this morning.
00:26Some of whom have come from the local colleges and others who are retraining later in their career and that's possible because of the investment that this Labour government is putting into our health service.
00:39As well as reductions for the last five months in the national waiting list we've also seen reductions here in Peterborough. Andrew do you want to say a bit about what's happening locally?
00:49Yeah I'd really like to pay tribute to Rachel and the government for guaranteeing funding for our new community diagnostic centre. Residents can already see the hoardings up on Wellington Street.
00:59When that's open later in the year that's going to give us 24-7, 7 days a week access to diagnostic tests, blood tests which firstly keeps people out of the hospital but speeds up treatment.
01:10Alongside the new NHS emergency dental appointments which are starting this month, the deal with pharmacists that have come about, we're beginning to turn the corner. We've always said it would take a long time but working with the government, the mayor and our mayoral candidate and locally we can begin to fix the NHS.
01:27We're really proud that for the last five months we've seen waiting lists at Peterborough Hospital come down. This has always been a difficult challenge. The inheritance of this government has been incredibly difficult.
01:36But when people begin to see their appointments coming through quicker, the new building going up on Wellington Street and the ability to speak to a GP or get an NHS dental appointment for their child, we begin to see the green shoots coming through.