A DOCTOR turning to politics hopes to mend more than broken bones next year.

Dr Helen Salisbury is standing for the National Health Action Party in Oxford West and Abingdon in next year’s General Election.

The seat is currently held by MP Nicola Blackwood, who overturned Liberal Democrat Evan Harris’s 7,863 majority in 2005, but with just a 176-vote majority in 2010.

Dr Salisbury, of Dr Kearley, Dr Chivers and Partners at Jericho Health Centre, now hopes to win the seat on an NHS ticket.

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Chief among the 50-year-old’s concerns is use of private providers using NHS money, a legacy of the “Internal market” of the 1990s.

Dr Salisbury said: “This is my first exposure to politics.

“I am really worried about what is happening to the NHS, it is fragmenting into lots of different pieces that don’t communicate with each other.

“They are being run by private sector companies who have to make a profit on their return.

“People are very supportive and everybody is worried, all the nurses, doctors I work with don’t like the way things are going.”

Dr Salisbury, who trains Oxford University medical students and previously worked in London hospitals, is concerned private firms will “take the easy things” like cataract operations.

Yet she said people “are really lucky in Oxfordshire” as Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, which makes most budget decisions, is “trying to keep things within the sector”.

For example, plans were shelved earlier this year to ask private firms to tender for adult mental health services in favour of existing NHS providers to work together.

The mum-of-two, at the centre since 2002, said of other concerns: “There is a lot of pressure on GPs, there is quite a lot of effort to move services into the community which is a good thing but there isn’t the extra resource coming to GPs.”

Other candidates for the seat have also placed the NHS high on their agenda.

Miss Blackwood said: “As the daughter of parents who worked in the local NHS for many decades, I know exactly how vital our health service is and how dedicated our NHS workers are.

“That’s why I’m relieved the Chancellor increased NHS funding by £2bn in this autumn statement and why I will do whatever I can to fight for our local NHS services in practical ways, not play party politics with it.”

Liberal Democrat Layla Moran said: “I am reaching out to residents across the constituency who have told me they are worried about the strain on the NHS.”

Pointing to a party pledge to boost funding by at least £1bn a year, she said: “I am very critical of the Government's reforms and should I be the MP I’d work to ensure that the focus is always on quality of care, not on profit.”

Green Party candidate Larry Sanders said: “The Green Party has long been fighting against the break-up and privatising of the NHS.

“Signs of crisis are everywhere: A&E chaos, cancer and stroke treatment delays, shortages of doctors, nurses and hospital beds.

“We welcome Helen and the NHAction Party to this campaign.”

Labour candidate Sally Copley said: “I come from a family of NHS workers and am completely opposed to privatisation of the NHS. Labour has already committed to much needed additional spending on the NHS, part funded by a mansion tax of course, as well as to repealing the dreadful Health & Social Care Act.”

The UK Independence Party’s Alan Harris did not comment.


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