Calling Health Minister Left-Wing only demonstrates Mrs Robinson’s Desperation, says UUP man
UUP MLA and member of the Health Committee, John McCallister MLA, has expressed his disbelief that the DUP’s Health Committee Chair Iris Robinson has - yet again - sought to defend the Finance Minister Peter Robinson’s under-funding of the National Health Service.
Mr. McCallister said, “one would have hoped that by this stage Iris Robinson would have had the integrity and courage to put the NHS first, rather than continue her ill-tempered and frankly ridiculous defence of Peter Robinson’s under-funding of the NHS.
“To call Health Minister Michael McGimpsey ‘left-wing’ because he is defending the NHS demonstrates Mrs. Robinson’s desperation. The fact that all mainstream British political parties believe in properly funding the NHS has obviously gone unnoticed by the DUP. Perhaps I can explain things in simple terms for Mrs. Robinson and her colleagues. To defend our NHS is not left-wing. It is a mainstream British value.
“That the Chair of the Health Committee is putting partisan interests before the NHS is shameful. The new Northern Ireland that Mrs. Robinson has suddenly and not before time decided is a good thing, needs and deserves a NHS funded to the levels secured for our fellow citizens elsewhere in the UK. Of course, I do not expect Mrs. Robinson to agree - after all, she has decided that defending the NHS is a left-wing stance. It therefore falls to an Ulster Unionist Health Minister to remind the DUP that the NHS is a UK-wide, British institution that should be funded to UK-wide levels”.