My commitment to the NHS and the founding socialist values that underpin it has been extensive. My mother works in a hospital in an administration role. Furthermore, in over 21 years of Labour Party membership and also as a trade union member I have championed the NHS as a CLP & branch concomitant office-holder, campaigner and election agent in General & Local elections; supporting MPs, councillors and parliamentary & local government candidates in their steadfast defence of the NHS against Conservative and Coalition cuts & competition reforms. In 2015 I was agent to Justin Madders, who was elected my local MP on an increased Labour majority and subsequently became a Shadow Health Minister, his position to this day.
When working as Commons assistant to the MP for Halton, Derek Twigg, I liaised with trade unions and health sector professionals in supporting Derek and his shadow ministerial colleagues to oppose the infamous Lansley Health & Social Care Bill – especially at Commons committee stage during which we achieved an unusual ‘pause’ in the Bill’s passage through Parliament. As such, I was one of the first individuals to begin to appreciate the horrors of that legislation in terms of its implications for accountability, marketization and fragmentation – with all the ramifications for our cherished NHS, public health and social care provision we see today.
A decade ago at Labour’s Spring Conference in Birmingham, I helped staff the stall of the affiliated societies that includes the SHA.
My current roles include Secretary of the Cheshire Branch of the Socialist Health Association that I recently helped to establish with fellow willing volunteers and the support of current members of Central Council, and writing in this capacity as its nominated branch delegate to Central Council. I am also the Chair of Cheshire West & Chester Local Campaign Forum with our all-out borough elections taking place in 2019, as well as the secretary of Ellesmere Port West Branch Labour Party and Cheshire Co-op Party Branch.