AN OPEN LETTER TO CRAIG MACKINLAY MP
Dear Craig,
Labour created the NHS in the teeth of opposition from the Conservatives, who voted against the creation of a universal health service more than 20 times.
Your party has trashed the NHS; since 2010, when the Lib Dems and Tories came to power, the amount of NHS money being funnelled into private hands has more than doubled to over £9bn. A third of NHS contracts now go to private companies, and their failures have wasted millions of pounds of public money. That’s millions of pounds that could have been spent on caring for patients, or paying nurses properly.
But now I’m asking you to undo that damage. On behalf of every patient and NHS worker in South Thanet, on behalf of everyone whose family has ever been cared for here, I am asking you to support Labour’s amendment to the Queen’s Speech, so that the NHS will be brought back into the hands of the public – not corporations like IMH and Virgin Care, who sued the NHS.
We know what Boris Johnson thinks about the NHS – he has written about how having free healthcare is morally dangerous. He is desperate to do a free trade deal with Donald Trump – who said our NHS would be “on the table” in any such deal.
I hope you’ll do the right thing. Vote against your Party and its disgraceful record of selling off our NHS. Vote for what we both know everyone here in Thanet, Sandwich and the villages wants: that the health service is kept safe in the hands of the people.
Yours sincerely
Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt
Policy Officer, South Thanet Labour Party