SNP wants apology for ‘misleading’ Labour health pledge
Scottish nationalists will today demand that Labour retracts a “misleading and inaccurate” letter sent to Scottish voters about its health pledges.
The letter from Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott uses Labour’s pledge that no one will wait more than 18 weeks for hospital treatment, which applies to England.
The SNP is angry because Scottish Labour revealed last week that its target for treatment is 36 weeks – double that for England.
Only later in Mr Prescott’s letter does it say: “Scottish pledges are similar to the pledges everywhere else in the UK.”
SNP depute leader Nicola Sturgeon will today hand deliver a letter for Tony Blair to Labour Party headquarters in London to ask for a retraction of Mr Prescott’s statement.
On Saturday Mr Blair criticised the Conservatives for a misleading letter regarding local MRSA statistics, describing their campaign as “nasty and unscrupulous”.
Conservative leader Michael Howard later apologised for the mistake. “We sent out a letter and it referred to the MRSA rates in the local hospital trust when it should have referred to the local hospital trusts,” he said. “And that was a mistake and I’m very sorry we made that mistake.”
But today it is Labour’s campaign tactics that are coming under scrutiny and Mr Blair who is being asked to apologise.
In her letter to Mr Blair, Ms Sturgeon writes: “Given your criticism of Michael Howard’s misleading claims about MRSA, I am writing to ask you to practice what you preach, apologise for the misleading information in Mr Prescott’s letter and to write personally to every recipient of it setting out the true waiting time target for Scottish patients.”
SNP leader Alex Salmond said: “On the economy and health Labour ahs been caught red handed focusing on English success and pretending it applies to Scotland.”
