Catherine receives the petition from Lisa Smeaton

Newcastle North MP, Catherine McKinnell, formally received a petition on Friday from local health campaigners opposed to the Coalition’s proposals for NHS reform.

Organised by campaigning website ’38 Degrees’, the petition was presented to Catherine outside the RVI Hospital by her constituent, Lisa Smeaton of Melton Park. Almost 400,000 people have signed the petition nationally, including over 500 people living in Newcastle North.

Catherine said:

“I know that many, many people are incredibly concerned about the Government’s proposals for the NHS. I have received an unprecedented number of e-mails and letters from constituents on this issue, who believe the Coalition’s plans are unnecessary and will fundamentally alter the NHS as we know and love it.

“I fully share my constituents’ concerns as I believe the Government’s proposals dangerously undermine the basic principles on which the NHS was founded, and they also threaten to create massive instability in the provision of frontline services – all at a time when the NHS in England is seeing its funding squeezed and frontline staff are already being cut.

“I was really pleased to be able to meet up with Lisa on Friday to formally receive the 38 Degrees petition, and to be able to reassure her that I will continue to oppose this top-down, reckless and unnecessary reorganization of the NHS. Ministers may like to think that the problem with their proposals is that people don’t really understand them properly. They couldn’t be more wrong – my constituents fully understand both the intention and implications of the Coalition’s plans and that’s why they are opposed to them.”