Teresa Murray acts on Rochester NHS cuts

Looks like the Medway Conservatives are running scared of the campaign to safeguard the Rochester clinics which have been closed with little notice by the Primary Care Trust.

Some might say we have struck a nerve.

With news of substantial NHS cuts being overseen by the Conservative government it comes as no surprise that services are being rationalised.

Despite the public displays of anger on the matter the only public statement from the Conservatives can be found here

The 'independent' petitions, being heavily advertised by the Conservatives, are of course welcome and this blog would urge people to support as many petitions as possible to safeguard these services. Tory suggestions that support for one petition detracts from another are baseless.

To claim that political parties should not be petitioning people also ignores basic democratic principles. Petitions can be submitted by any interest group.

Labour will campaigning hard over the next month to oppose the Conservative funding cuts to the NHS which we believe has led to this decision.

Cllr Teresa Murray is happy to make public her correspondence on the matter with the Primary Care Trust:

Healthletter

Meanwhile, we have had no website statement from the MP on the closure of the clinics in Rochester, despite requests from this blog to try and allow constituents to see that work has/had been carried out.

Much confusion rained last night as a former Conservative indicated the MP opposed the closure whilst another said he was looking for postponement.

A welcome letter has been sent to this blog which indicates our MP is calling for a full postponement of the decision. Given this could be private correspondence, I may not have permission to see or indeed publish this document but am happy to publish in full if given permission.

To get to this stage required much tenacity on the part of this blogger. When pressed on the matter the office aide to Mark Reckless stated that:

'Do you think an MP is going to broadcast every single issue that he's working on?'

This blog then clarified how people were supposed to know what our MPs position was on such a public and pressing issue, if he had not advertised a position;

The reply;

'A simple call to Mark's would have confirmed the matter was in hand.'

A helpful aide then but the public expect better. I work office hours.