Sue pledges to fight for the Royal Surrey County Hospital until we win

12.33.52am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 28th Nov 2006

Sue Doughty speaking at the NHS Rally in Guildford High Street

Speaking at the biggest NHS rally ever seen in Guildford, Sue Doughty, Parliamentary Spokesperson for Guildford, committed herself and her team to the fight to keep the A & E department and the whole of the Royal Surrey Hospital.

She said, "I believe that hospitals are to save lives and not to save money. Going ahead with these proposals is risky and undoubtedly put lives at risk. We are in danger of having a desert where there is no decent hospital for many miles around. We will fight alongside the other political parties to make sure that the government fully understands the extent of our concerns.

"Like many of you here today I have spent time in A & E, in my case deeply worried about my husband who had been taken very seriously ill. But as we all know, our local hospital is the best place to be.

"Our hospital used to be zero - in waiting times and all the other targets. Now it is a hero. Not perfect but one of the best in the country.I want to keep it that way.

"I want to keep the children's ward which only recently opened. I want to keep the cancer unit, with fantastic staff and good equipment and new techniques which means that being diagnosed with cancer is not the end of all hope. We wont give up hope on the cancer unit and we won't give up hope on the hospital.

"These proposals are nonsense. They are a joke - a sick joke. I just don't get it. Can someone really be proposing that if you have a heart attack or if you have a stroke it will take you much longer to get to hospital for urgent treatment, if you make it in time at all.

"The real joke is that we thought that hospitals are there to save lives. The NHS thinks that they are there to save money. This thinking has to change and we will change it.

"We have been told that people want choice - to choose the hospital they go to. What absolute rubbish. We don't want choice, we just want a really good hospital locally. It's what the people of Guildford want - and it's what I want for local people.

"We are going to fight every step of the way on this. Make no mistake. And with your support we will win."