Jeremy Hunt is in his fifth year as Secretary of State for Health and uncertainty has hung over the future of A&E at King George Hospital throughout that time.

During this period, Wes Streeting and Mike Gapes have spoken in Parliamentary debates and Cllr Jas Athwal, the Labour leader of the council, has written to persuade him to reverse the closure decision.

Alas, he didn’t allay our fears on those occasions.

Instead, he cynically chose the heat of a General Election campaign to make an announcement about its future.

In a move that can only be considered about the electoral interests of the local Tory party, he stated that King George Hospital A&E will not close for the foreseeable future. Whilst local Tories are jubilant at the election stunt, the people of Redbridge will be wondering what this means for our health services.

Does the phrase ‘foreseeable future’ mean the decision is reversed or not?

Why didn’t he make a more definitive statement clearly reversing the closure decision?

Why didn’t he tell local NHS managers that he had reached this decision and was announcing it last Friday?

Why should we believe these assurances? Last time Lee Scott obtained then they were not honoured and as a year after his election as MP the then Tory Health Secretary signed off the closure plans.

Why has the Tory Health Secretary allowed precious NHS time and money to be spent on plans to review and implement closure if he was planning to reverse the decision all along? (Our local NHS has a committee with management consultants commissioned and undertaking such work).

Will he return any such monies spent on reviewing the closure plans so that they can be spent on frontline services?

Why has the Tory Health Secretary left such uncertainty to hang over such a key local service damaging staff recruitment and therefore threatening patient care throughout the last four-and-a-half years that he has been Secretary of State?

And why didn’t the Tory Health Secretary come and announce what he would be doing to address the underfunding of our CCG; the enormous £55million savings the BHR CCGs are having to make; the fact we have the lowest GP to patient ratios in London; the fact we have lowest GP practice nurse to patient ratios in London; the situation where we have the fourth lowest Public Health Grant in London; the matter of quality of care as we have one hospital trust with a CQC rating of requires improvement and the other in special measures?

The truth is the Tory Health Secretary and the Redbridge Tory party think our local health services are a game to be played with for their electoral advantage.

This is a dangerous approach as we all know that our local health services face very serious challenges.

We need politicians who show vision and leadership to help us fix them, not game players.

The Tory Health Secretary and the local Tory party have clearly failed that leadership test and in doing so have once again failed the people of Redbridge.

Cllr Mark A. Santos Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Health Redbridge Borough Council