AN MP has questioned why the Government did not act sooner after she raised concerns about care at her local hospital in light of a damning report.

Maidstone and the Weald MP Ann Widdecombe (Con) made her comments the day after a Healthcare Commission report exposed failings in the management of two outbreaks of the superbug Clostridium Difficile (C-diff) at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in 2005 and 2006.

Ms Widdecombe said that during an Opposition Day debate on healthcare in the House of Commons on January 23 this year, she had raised her specific concerns about Maidstone Hospital.

She recalled what she saw were a catalogue of errors told to her by her constituents and concluded her speech saying that the “discipline and the ward sister” were the crux of preventing such problems.

In response, the then Minister of State, Andy Burnham MP, had said: “She described some unacceptable conditions – if they are true – in her trust.”

He went on to say that “if the people in the trust need to read those comments, I hope they will.”

In response to the Healthcare Commissions’s report Miss Widdecombe said she believed that government targets did have a role to play in the outbreak at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust.

But she said: “I am now even more disappointed by the scarcely energetic response of the minister earlier this year.

“I raised serious concerns about the problems, which my constituents and the people of Mid and West Kent have had to endure since April 2004.

“Lessons have to be learned to ensure that such an outbreak never occurs again and I hope that in future ministers will respond with slightly more vigour to claims raised before them in the House of Commons.”