All parties must unite in new year to save A&E

“There is, he says, too much focus on the bad news in life. It’s great to be good, he tells us, and boring to be bad” AS part of the Conservative group I met representatives of the Hands of HRI campaign this week.

As a group I think we were slightly worried that they did not want us to join in their campaign. However they have made it clear that the elected representatives of the people should be very vociferous in their support of the campaign, no matter what party they come from.

In the new year Kirklees Council ought to make it clear that the idea of removing accident and emergency services from a borough the size of Kirklees is totally unacceptable. If the new housing comes with the Local Development Plan, and if the university expands at the rate it is doing, then upward of 500,000 people may, in the future, be travelling outside of Kirklees to go to accident and emergency.

In January, the campaign will celebrate its first anniversary. They have done a magnificent job making people aware of the issues involved in knocking down our hospital and moving a lot of services, not just A&E, to Halifax. I hope that councillors from all parties can join together in the campaign for this just fight. There should not be any party political posturing on this.

The only problem I and others see is those from the extreme left, who have piggy-backed on to the campaign to throw as much mud as they can at the Government. I was glad to hear that the campaign leadership were not happy about this either. They were also of the opinion that this element had proved divisive and unhelpful to their efforts.

The new year ought to bring a renewal of Hands of HRI. I, personally, am happy to endorse them and look forward to using the democratic process to support them.