Tory election lies - already!

2.16.45pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 16th Apr 2007

Cllr Nigel Quinton has led the Liberal Democrats in defence of the new hospital and heads one of the Action Groups on the cross party Hospital SOS taskforce.

We have already seen a Tory election leaflet that (amongst other questionable statements) claims that "Conservative councillors and candidates, working with Grant Shapps and neighbouring MPs, are spearheading the Hospital SOS campaign".

This is deeply offensive to those of us who are at the forefront of the campaign, but are certainly not Tories, and it's downright misleading to boot!

No-one is going to deny that our MP has been vocal in his support for the QE2 - although noticeably not so much for the Hatfield Hospital - but what have the council and councillors done?

It was the LibDems that brought this issue to the fore in September last year, getting unanimous cross party support for their council motion asking that the council make Hatfield hospital a priority. What did the Tory administration do? Well first they took two months to get a cross party "health working group" set up. Then the Tory member on the group failed to show up and had to be replaced.

Then in December, they decided to have another council motion - quite why we were never sure, as it essentially repeated what we had said in September - talk about going through the motions!

Now they claim their councillors and candidates are "spearheading the campaign". Well, to be fair, three (out of 32) of their councillors, Mandy Perkins especially, are active on the campaign, and ONE of their candidates is part of the SOS taskforce, but to say they are spearheading the campaign is way out of line.

In contrast, all three LibDem borough councillors are part of the taskforce, and have made real contributions to the campaign, not that we would seek to say we are doing more than our fair share in supporting what we had hoped would be a truly cross party campaign. We acknowledge, even if the Tories won't, that local Labour politicians have also played a part in this campaign.

It is very disappointing that as soon as election time approaches, all semblance of cooperation disappears and it's back to "me me me" politics.