Zac Goldsmith: 'Hospital campaign exaggerated for political purposes'

4:35pm Wednesday 27th January 2010

By Chris Wickham

Zac Goldsmith has expressed concern the campaign to save the accident and emergency and maternity departments at Kingston Hospital may have been exaggerated for political ends.

The Conservative candidate for the Richmond Park parliamentary seat said he and fellow Tory candidate Helen Whately, who is fighting for the Kingston and Surbiton seat currently held by Edward Davey, would fight to protect the hospital if there was a threat.

On Monday, Richmond Park MP Susan Kramer and Mr Davey revealed they had met high-ranking officials and been told NHS London plan to close A&E and maternity units in south-west London.

They said a shortlist of two options included the closure of the departments at the Galsworthy Road hospital.

Gavin Marsh, clinical director of healthcare for south-west London, denied any hospitals were to close but would not give assurances about specific departments and a pre-emptive campaign was launched to try and stop the closures.

The NHS has confirmed a review of departments in the area is under way but repeatedly stated no decisions have been made.

Mr Goldsmith said: “The hospital has been under a NHS London review for many months, along with a number of other hospitals, and since the launch of that review, nothing seems to have changed.

“My fear is that the Lib Dems have exaggerated a problem in order to create an election opportunity. If so, they will have needlessly frightened vulnerable members of the community into believing they will lose a valuable service.

“We are all fed up of Labour, and I won’t defend them, but we’ve had enough of fabricated threats from politicians.

Mr Goldsmith said if there was a plan to close departments at the hospital the Conservative Party would “campaign with every ounce of their energy to protect it”.

He added: “Nothing can happen to the hospital before the general election, and if the Conservatives win, David Cameron has repeatedly promised ‘we will stop Labour's forced closure of A&E and maternity units’.”

Ms Kramer said: “Ed Davey and I were told about this by five separate people in four separate meetings, a mixture of chief executives and senior clinicians.