Commenting on the news that Princess Alexandra Hospital will have to make savings to repay a debt of between £6.5 and £7 million over the next two years, Harlow's Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesman Lorna Spenceley said:

"It's hard to believe that savings of this size will be achieved at our local hospital with no negative effects on the services available to Harlow patients. Government ministers are in denial about the financial crisis in our NHS. They constantly tell us that frontline services are being protected despite repeated announcements of hundreds of job losses in hospitals such as PAH. The Government's only strategy seems to be to hope that the problem will go away of its own accord - meanwhile wasting more and more precious cash on unwanted health service reorganisations instead of patient care."