Save our NHS

“Drop the Bill, Save our NHS” says Labour

To get your vote he said: "I will cut the deficit not the NHS"

Labour’s campaign against Andrew Lansley’s “reforms” of the National Health Service is the lead story in the party’s latest ReadingBanner, which is now being distributed door-to-door.

Labour Leader Jo Lovelock says: “We promised at the elections last May that we would stand up for the NHS, and we have taken that campaign onto the streets and into the Council chamber.  The Health & Social Care Bill is intended to break up the NHS, to make services compete rather than co-operate, to open the door to ever-increasing privatisation, and to hide decision-making under a cloak of commercial confidentiality, ending any pretence at transparency.

“Every poll shows that the public is overwhelmingly against the Bill, as is virtually every professional body of doctors, nurses, midwives and the rest.  It beggars belief that the Government is pushing stubbornly ahead with this legislation, and has the wholehearted support of Reading’s two Tory MPs, and that local Tory and LibDem Councillors, too, put loyalty to the Coalition before the interests of their constituents and voted to support the Bill in the debate Labour forced on Reading Council.

“Those Councillors need to be sent a strong message on 3 May that the people of Reading value their National Health Service and value the huge investment in our hospitals from the last Labour Government, and know that the Tories just cannot be trusted with our NHS. Nor can the Liberal Democrats– even though they could support Labour MP’s and kill this Bill tomorrow, they seem determined, as ever, to put their alliance with the Tories first. We don’t need political meddling with the NHS and we especially don’t need it now!” 

  Reading & District Labour Party Media Release 27 February 2012