Mike Fieldhouse secretary of the #SaveSouthendNHS campaign responded to the newly launch Love Southend NHS campaign

“There is no substance at all to the phony campaign – Love Southend NHS – that the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, joined MP James Duddridge & Cllr Moyies in launching last week. It is nothing more than a cheap publicity stunt attempting to cover up the dreadful crisis that the NHS is in as a direct result of nearly eight years of chronic underfunding and poor planning by this government.

NHS staff do an incredible job under huge pressures from under-staffing whilst the government has cut their pay in real terms. Morale within the NHS is at an all-time low, they need much more than hollow platitudes from politicians holding hastily-made signs and a few heart-shaped red balloons, to fix this crisis.

Mr Duddridge’s statement the he wants “to show the NHS and Social Care staff that we love what they do and support them.” is laughable (1). If he truly cared he would have put pressure on Mr Hunt over the last eight years to scrap the cap on nurses’ pay that has seen their income fall by over 14% in real terms during that period, and properly fund the NHS. He would also have supported the junior doctors last year when they felt they had no other option, for the first time in their history, but to take strike action against the new NHS contract that was eventually imposed upon them.”

Reference:
James Dudderidge – http://www.echo-news.co.uk/…/15997794.New_health…/