Andrew George Welcomes Health Campaigners
Local MP, Andrew George, welcomed health campaigners when they marched from West Cornwall Hospital to his Constituency Office this morning (Friday 20th May 2011) to present him with a petition opposing NHS reforms.
Mr George, who is a member of the Health Select Committee, has refused to support the Government over the Health and Social Care Bill and has been campaigning for a major u-turn in policy.
He said: “I am pleased that the Penzance Anti-Cuts Alliance and Save Our NHS Cornwall have come together to organise this event and that they are supporting the stance that I have been taking since the Government first launched their NHS proposals last summer.
“Unless the Government widens responsibility for the local management and commissioning of the NHS to a broader group of clinicians and community representatives rather than merely GPs and that they withdraw proposals for the wholesale marketisation of the NHS then the Health Bill will be dead in the water. As far as I am concerned it must either be scrapped or radically changed. Opening most of the health service to a predatory private sector would result in the destructive fragmentation of a service which should be more (rather than less) integrated.”
Mr George criticised the Government’s Health Policy from the first moment it was launched as a White Paper last July.
He challenged the Prime Minister about the proposals and attacked the plans in his speech at the second reading of the Bill in January and refused to support the Government, promising to vote against the Bill if it wasn’t radically altered before third reading.
Mr George has spoken with the event’s organisers and is pleased to receive the national petition, which has over 700,000 signatures and 6,000 local signatures. The petition was presented to him at the start of his casework surgery in his Constituency Office in Mennaye Road at 10.30am.
Mr George plans to present the petition to Parliament next month and will urge Ministers to listen to the concerns of the public.
