But Green candidate Dr John Hunt is not impressed
John Hunt , Green Party PPC for Brentford and Isleworth commented on last Sunday's hustings "Last night Elizabeth and I attended the hustings in Hanworth organised by the Pakistan Welfare Association Hounslow in association with the Hounslow Muslim Forum.
"Ann Keen put in a rare appearance: the only time she's shared a hustings since I first stood against her five years ago. She neglected to discuss health: or whatever she may have been doing during her years at the Dept. of Health as " Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health Services". She also failed to explain how she claims to oppose a third runway at Heathrow, yet votes FOR it. Her response to a question from the audience about the expenses she and Alan claimed for years failed to convince.
"The DoH list of her ministerial responsibilities includes (amongst others): patient safety; employment models and contracts; education and careers; nursing policy; and professional regulation. Yet the patient experience does not improve, and complaints by the families of deceased patients are still fielded by cowardly chief executives who refuse to acknowledge that failures occurred and need to be corrected. Employment models encourage staff to have multiple jobs, working hours in defiance of both letter and spirit of the working time directive, damaging their own health and the health of the patients for whom they are supposedly caring. Nursing education is crap, with senior lecturers who don't know one end of a thermometer from the other, (never mind where to stick it), patently not interested in teaching even the basics properly. And the response of the Nursing and Midwifery Council to nurse Margaret Heywood for blowing the whistle on shameful practices was not to praise her, but to strike her off! If Ann has ever done anything to attempt to counter any of this, she has kept very quiet about it, and refused to mention it last night."
May 5, 2010