East Worthing and Shoreham Labour Party

Improving our NHS - a goal not a football - reply to Mr Loughton

I apologise to Mr Loughton for the disappearance of any articles referring to him on our website.  I can assure him, it was not deliberate and nothing has been ‘removed’. As opposed to the MPs’ own site(s) made possible by the very generous parliamentary allowances we hear so much about, our website has been developed and maintained for free, during busy AS levels, by our Youth Officer, and is in almost permanent development.  Hence the occasional ‘lost’ article and navigational puzzle. 

For the record, I like many others went on the first KWASH rally/march in Worthing very much as a supporter. But there it became obvious that the campaign was already becoming a magnet for anti-government protest, and would soon become compromised by being run as a party political campaign by the Conservative Party.  Our Chairman, Peter Berry, also an early supporter as Mr Loughton says, quickly came to a similar conclusion though he and all our members are passionate supporters of our local NHS and shared the deep concerns about the wisdom or workability of the proposals.

At the Consultation meeting at the Shoreham Community Centre, we witnessed Tim Loughton’s platform ‘rant’ - his word, not mine - and saw how thoroughly unhelpful the politicisation of the campaign could become.  With Mr Cameron’s visit and promise of ‘a bare knuckle fight’ over ‘every hospital closure’ it was obvious that the only reason for inviting our Secretary of State to come down was to jeer at his refusal.  To be fair, I wouldn’t expect the MPs to ignore an open goal, but nor should we accept our Health Service being used as their football. The MPs were rightly concerned for the good of the community, but just couldn’t resist making political capital. This resulted in a campaign whose only obvious aim was to stop the clock and prevent progress.
The contradictions are laid out in the KWASH letter. On the one hand we have an ‘ageing and growing population’ - i.e. a deteriorating demographic - with ‘notoriously bad transport links’ - which are unlikely to improve - while on the other hand maintaining that there’s no reason to change the status quo!
To be crystal clear, we completely agree with and congratulate the thousands, from all political allegiances and none, who got behind the KWASH campaign. The very great majority were in it for the good reasons, determined like all of us to protect and improve our health service and they succeeded in keeping the issue alive.  But the form the campaign took contributed little to the objective discussion that was needed to achieve a balanced decision.  We took the view that we could contribute more working behind the scenes, without publicity, with the means at our disposal. I feel we have been vindicated by events.