Parties must "face facts" over Kingston Hospital, say MPs (From Surrey Comet)

Parties must "face facts" over Kingston Hospital, say MPs

Letter from Edward Davey and Susan Kramer, MPs for Kingston and Surbiton, and Richmond Park

Sir, Faced with documentary evidence proving our claim that major health services at Kingston Hospital, such as accident and emergency and maternity are under threat, we had hoped our opponents would desist from undermining our campaign and come on board.

Unfortunately not.

Bizarrely, Conservatives, Labour and Green candidates have joined forces to claim we are "scaremongering", just as we published the damning evidence from NHS London's South-West London Strategic Plan.

These show Kingston Hospital would lose not just its A&E and maternity, as we claimed, but also its inpatient paedatrics, in one in three of the options currently being considered.

Indeed Kingston loses major health services in 16 out of 18 options.

Rather than face these facts, our opponents quote from NHS sources and a Government minister to justify their claims - yet these are the same people who wanted this kept secret until after the election.

We wonder that these Tory-Labour-Green candidates would have done if any of them had been the local MPs, and had been briefed by four local chief executives and a senior clinician about the threat to Kingston Hospital?

Would they have kept silent, and colluded with the NHS to keep these plans from local people?

That would have been both irresponsible and a dereliction of duty.

However, our main consideration now is to ensure local people get the truth.

That's why we've published on our website everything we've seen - from the internal NHS papers to a British Medical Association report, London's NHS: On the brink, that warns of similar threats across London and of the danger of all this secrecy.

With BBC London and the Evening Standard uncovering yet more evidence of threats to hospitals around the capital, we hope people will recognise the dangers our local health services face.

Whatever your political persuasion, please back this campaign before its too late.

Edward Davey and Susan Kramer MPs Kingston, Surbiton and Richmond Park