A London GP has promised to send a ‘powerful message’ to the Government over its NHS reforms if she is elected as a candidate in the forthcoming European Parliament elections.
Dr Louise Irvine, a GP in GP in New Cross, south east London, and chair of the ‘Save Lewisham A&E’ campaign, announced she will be standing for the National Health Action Party in the European Parliament elections on the 22 May 2014.
Dr Irvine said the NHS was under threat from an impending EU-US trade deal and the Government’s policies of ‘top down reorganisation, cuts and privatisation’.
She said: ‘I want to use this election to raise awareness of the imminent danger posed to the NHS by the EU/US trade agreement which will allow American companies to carve up the NHS and make the privatisation process irreversible.
‘I also want to alert the public to the gravity of the threat to the NHS from this Government with its programme of cuts, hospital closures and privatisation and to send a powerful message to politicians in Westminster and Brussels that people will not stand by and let their NHS be destroyed.
‘If elected, I will strive to ensure that EU regulations don’t adversely affect the NHS and are always in the best interests of the health of British people. The health of the nation spans all areas of policy from the environment to the economy.’
Dr Irvine was one of Pulse’s ‘true heroes of general practice’ in 2013 for her headline-grabbing campaign to prevent the downgrading of Lewisham Hospital’s A&E department last year, that culminated in a victory at the High Court.
