In a letter to the editor, Rob Loughenbury makes the case that the Conservatives are the true friends of the NHS.
"Following your coverage of the ongoing excitement about Chorley hospital, it is worth examining the claims by Ed Miliband’s Labour Party and its union backers that the NHS is facing cuts.
The NHS budget has risen, in real terms, every year since the coalition was formed in 2010. Funding for the NHS continues to be ring-fenced. There are no NHS cuts. There will be no NHS cuts under this government.
The rising NHS budget seems to have escaped Chorley’s Labour MP, who must have been over-tired when he wrote about NHS cuts in your paper recently. Indeed, the last cut to the NHS budget was agreed by Labour in the dying days of the Gordon Brown - Ed Balls administration.
Meanwhile, Mr Hoyle’s backers in Unite are grumbling about the outsourcing of non-care services. They might reflect that Mr Hoyle voted consistently in support of the Health and Social Care Act (2003) which paved the way for Foundation Trusts to do exactly this.
Today there are 6,000 more doctors and 6,000 fewer managers in the NHS than when Labour left office. More doctors with more resources for their vital work. This is something to celebrate."