Why this is a party issue

Published: 26th March, 2010

• LAST week’s Tribune was full of letters from local Labour candidates, including someone who is in fact the Labour parliamentary candidate for Tunbridge Wells in Kent but who also wants to be a Labour councillor in Islington (No place for party politics in campaign to save A&E, March 19). They all seem to want to wash their hands of Labour’s responsibility for proposals to close the accident and emergency department at Whittington Hospital and to run down NHS services in London.
Of course, they don’t want the rest of us to view the campaign to oppose closures at the Whittington as “party political” – that’s odd because, in the past, Gordon Brown and Labour claimed credit for the slightest “improvement” and said they were the “only party who could be trusted with the NHS”.  Stranger still how they now deny the proposed closure is anything to do with them, but instead blame the “NHS bureaucrats”, as if the tail was wagging the dog.
It’s really very simple – everyone knows that it’s the Labour government that has run the NHS for over a decade and the Labour government that now has to answer for the threat to Whittington Hospital.
BRENT MARTIN
Elthorne Road, N19

• IT was with unease that I read your letters page last week and saw the spectacle of the Labour Party deciding it needed to campaign against itself. We have already had the sight of Labour politicians voting for post office closures while protesting at the closure of post offices within their constituencies.  
Islington Labour Party is claiming it wants to defend the Whittington while at the same time being part of the governing party that has decreed the need for the budget cuts which are leading to the potential closure of the A&E department.
Councillor Janet Burgess wrote last week: “Differences of opinion are great and the debate should be welcomed.” That would be acceptable if it were not for the fact that the difference of opinion of which she speaks is that our local A&E should close, which is not something anyone with any interest in this area would want. Given the significant health inequalities locally, there should really be no debate at all.  
FIONA SCOLDING
N19

• A STREAM of readers, David Shaw, Councillor Janet Burgess and Gary Heather, have bemoaned political sniping over the Whittington scandal.
Of course, we must all unite in supporting every effort to keep our A&E and maternity services. I’m sure we all hope that Defend the Whittington Hospital Coalition continues its great work and that we will win.
Nevertheless, we cannot shelve political discussion. In fact, we have arrived at this position because there hasn’t really been any political dialogue. We are sleepwalking into signing the NHS away to private contractors. 
As far as I can see, all the parties share a broadly similar agenda. The Tories and the Lib Dems would probably see it contracted out faster than New Labour. I’m waiting for traditional Labour to put its own government on notice by coming out against this whole privatising agenda in the NHS. I’m absolutely certain that the public would support it.
Defending our services at the Whittington is not an isolated struggle. It’s one small battle in a long war to keep the NHS from dying the death of a thousand cuts.  The threat to our local services is just the latest in a long line of closures up and down the country. That’s why we must question the policy, root and branch, and apportion blame, regardless of party.
RICHARD ROSSER
Highbury New Park, N5

• AT a well-attended meeting of Islington Pensioners’ Forum, Fiona Weir, director of planning and performance at Whittington Hospital, made it clear that the question of the closure of its A&E department would be a decision of Islington Health Authority and not the government.
It is a pity, therefore, that the Lib Dems are using the issue as a local election opportunity to attack the Labour Party, when the active opposition was instigated by Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn and fully supported by the Labour leader of the council opposition, Councillor Catherine West.
This proposed closure is not a political football for the Lib Dems to play with, but a matter of huge concern to all residents and indeed reaches out to residents of Haringey and Camden.
ANNETTE THOMAS
Islington Pensioners’ Forum