Campaigners to stand up for '˜starved' NHS

The team will be joining campaigners across Britain as part of the National Campaign Action Day in a bid to ‘stand up for the health service’.

Party members will be distributing leaflets across Mid Sussex and will be talking to members of the public.

Pam Haigh, chair of the Mid Sussex Labour Party, said: “We are fighting for the future of our NHS and against the destructive impact of Conservative austerity policies, which have been deliberately engineered to roll back the public sector and undermine the fabric of social support in every area of our lives”.

Members of the Mid Sussex Labour Party believe the pressure on funding in the NHS has ‘direct consequences’ for nearby residents.

Party member, Greg Mountain, said: “We have seen growing waiting times at accident and emergency departments in both Haywards Heath and Brighton hospital sites and there are ever growing delays for patients needing a hospital bed.

“Some patients cannot be released because cuts in homecare support budgets mean they have nowhere safe to go.

“Locally we face great uncertainty on how our local hospitals will be administered in the future.”

Mr Mountain added that it is time to ‘stand up’ for the heath service, before it is ‘deliberately starved into the hands of private sector profiteers.’

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust (BSUH) was placed in special measures in August and in in financial special measures in October.

The trust, which runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital, the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital and the Sussex Eye Hospital, was put in special measures because of concerns over the quality of care.

“This means the trust was unable to live within its budget and needed to find ways to improve financial performance at the inevitable cost of patient care,” Greg said.

He added: “The proposal of a closer link with Western Sussex Hospitals is just a sticking plaster over the crisis of under-funding which winter will only make worse.”

Residents in Mid Sussex will find members from the Labour Party team from 10am near The Orchards Shopping Centre in Haywards Heath, in Middle Row in East Grinstead and in Church Road in Burgess Hill.

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