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Conservative MP and former health minister Dan Poulter has defected to Labour in frustration at the worsening NHS crisis.
The MP for Suffolk Central and Ipswich North, with a majority of 23,391 at the last election, has indicated he is not planning to stand at the next general election.
The defection was revealed in an article on The Observer website, in which he said working as a mental health doctor in a busy hospital A&E over the past year had shown him how desperate the NHS situation had become.
“Working on the frontline of a health service under great strain left me at times, as an MP, struggling to look my NHS colleagues, my patients and my constituents in the eye,” he said.
He recalled seriously ill patients suffering long waits for treatment often hundreds of miles from their homes, adding that the “chaos of today’s fragmented patchwork of community addiction services” had put more pressure on already-stretched A&Es.
“The mental toll of a service stretched close to breaking point is not confined to patients and their families. It also weighs heavily on my NHS colleagues who are unable to deliver the right care in a system that simply no longer works for our patients.”
He said he had resigned from the Conservative Party to focus on his work as a doctor and to support Keir Starmer.
“I can well remember when I first qualified as a doctor and began working in the NHS in 2006. At the time, patient care had been radically improved and transformed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s Labour governments, following many years of Conservative neglect and under-investment.
“…I have come to the conclusion that, once again, the only cure is a Labour government.”
Dr Poulter criticised the Tories for “putting the politics of public sector pay ahead of ending strikes…
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