IT is polling day in the crucial Copeland by-election today and Labour has rightly put the NHS on the ballot paper.

The future of the West Cumberland maternity unit and accident and emergency department is under threat, mirroring fears of cuts and service pressures right across the country.

All over England, accident and emergency services are struggling under the pressure, despite a relatively mild winter, and ambulance response times are regularly dipping below critical levels. In this context, it is easy to see why a proposal to downgrade A&E and maternity services at West Cumberland Hospital has met with such outrage from the local community.

What the government apparently fails to understand is that the geography of places like Cumbria means we simply cannot consolidate services in the way that big cities can. If crucial services are moved north to Carlisle or south to Lancaster it means that patients are forced to travel many miles on bad roads to access the healthcare they are entitled to. Is this really the ordeal we want to put expectant mothers through?

There was a glimpse that the government might understand the problem when the transport secretary popped up to inspect the A595 last month and discovered the real effect of years of underinvestment in our roads. A report from the IPPR North think tank this week found that over 50 per cent of the transport spending in the country goes to London, with spending in the capital over three time per head what is invested in the North West. The transport secretary seems to have no intention of getting serious about this regional divide, so it is no surprise that our road network continues to lag behind.

But the reality is that even with significant road upgrades, we should not be asking patients to travel these distances in the first place. A solution has to be found that keeps services close to the community in south and west Cumbria. That means investing properly in training new staff and making it attractive to move to areas like ours. It also means investing in proper social care so that vulnerable elderly people can be looked after at home, which is better and cheaper, rather than having to use expensive hospital beds.

But most of all what our NHS needs is proper support and funding from the government, rather than a further round of cuts. In the last 10 years one in five hospital beds have been cut across the country, leaving us with the second lowest ratio of beds to population in Europe. Staff are working incredibly hard, but are being asked to perform miracles on a daily basis just to keep the show on the road. The idea that the NHS can sustain the government’s planned cuts without a serious effect on patients is just not credible.

Amid the national NHS crisis, it was heartening to see University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust performing so brilliantly in the latest Care Quality Commission report. The massive team effort to turn the trust around in the last few years has been fantastic to witness and the current success is a real testament to the dedication and professionalism of the staff that work there. The fact that the maternity unit is now rated as outstanding, following the long campaign for improvement, is a particularly important step and hopefully a sign that the problems of the past are behind us.

Having spent the night at Furness General Hospital recently and spoken to staff there, I know that maintaining this progress will require central government to step up. The prime minister may have refused point blank to talk about local NHS services when she visited Cumbria last week, but her government will need to come up with some answers fast. She may not want to talk about the NHS, but people in Cumbria do and it is the people who make the political weather, not the politicians.

In Copeland today, people have the chance to vote Labour and send the government a message to protect our NHS. Please use it.