Labour politicians' letter to Jeremy Hunt

You've been spending a lot of time talking about the Welsh NHS recently. We will hazard a guess that you will be talking about it again today. Therefore we are writing to you in the hope that your contribution is well informed. Sadly, a number of things you, Grant Shapps, Michael Green and the Prime Minister have said recently have been completely wrong. No wonder you are now asking your officials to write to us to check your facts! You just can't get the staff.

A few miles to the north of here is a town called Wrexham. It is a nice big town, with a university, a football club and a hospital. Judging by some of your recent comments, what you won't know is this: patients from England get treated in that hospital every day. Everything from a nasty fall, right up to upper gastro-intestinal (GI) cancer surgery. We just want you to know that we are fine with that. There are some things we believe in over here - the union, solidarity and the NHS are three of them. So for the 20,000 English patients registered with Welsh GPs, we say that's fine.

The 30,000 English patients who use Welsh A&E services? That's fine too. It would be nice therefore, when Welsh patients are treated in England, if you and your Tory colleagues would refrain from calling them health refugees. Because that's offensive, Jeremy.

One thing though. A few miles east of here is the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust, which our constituents will need to access from time to time. The Trust is currently classed “High Risk” – we’d be grateful if you could have a look at that.