KOSHH Party candidates urge everyone to rock the vote!

The Keep Our St Helier Hospital Party (KOSHH Party) candidates urge everyone who is eligible to enrol to vote so they can participate in the May 22 local elections.

“The deadline for registering to vote is May 6 and we encourage everyone who is serious about saving St Helier Hospital to register,” says David Murray, KOSHH Party candidate for Wallington South, in the Sutton local elections. “This is a great chance to tell all the main parties that the hospital is the biggest issue facing Merton and Sutton.”

If you haven't yet registered to vote, click on this link - it is quick and easy to be part of this country's tradition of democracy. The KOSHH Party urges all voters in Merton and Sutton to think very carefully about who to support at the ballot box.

David Ash, KOSHH Party candidate for Raynes Park in Merton, is disappointed by the Merton Liberal Democrat manifesto for the forthcoming election. “There is not a single mention of St Helier Hospital in the Liberal Democrat’s Merton manifesto,” he says. “We agree that policies about safe streets, strong communities, heritage preservation and open government are important but without a commitment to preserving vital health services, such as St Helier Hospital, this rhetoric is meaningless.”

He adds: “Nobody voted for the top-down NHS reorganisation that David Cameron promised would not happen, nor for the sneaky contracting out of hospital services that is already happening at St Helier Hospital and all over England. You cannot trust the government or NHS England or the local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to ensure services at St Helier and across the whole of the NHS remain free at point of need.”

Sandra Ash, KOSHH Party candidate for Wimbledon Park in Merton, says she is still waiting for an explanation from Conservative councillor, Oonagh Moulton as to why she thinks St Helier Hospital’s services are safe: “Given that the CCGs have said they intend to use the same flawed financial and clinical reasoning they used to justify the proposed downgrading of St Helier Hospital under the failed BSBV plan, it seems inevitable they will again come to the same flawed conclusion.”

Frances Cornford, KOSHH Party candidate for Sutton West, says: “We want all political parties running for office in these local elections to make a public commitment to preserving St Helier Hospital's services. We want cross-party support for our hospital at a local government level - this is the only way for our councillors that are aligned with the major parties in Sutton and Merton to send a strong message to their colleagues in Westminster.”