Vince Cable

Many residents have received a mass produced letter from Michael Howard saying that there have been 166 cases of MRSA in the local (Richmond and Twickenham) trust. In other parts of the country Conservative candidates have had to apologise for spreading seriously inacurate information about MRSA. The Conservative candidate should explain where he got this number from or withdraw it and apologise for exaggeration and scaremongoring.

Vincent Cable said "I recognise that there is an issue of hospital hygiene and MRSA and started - with some success - campaigning for improvements seven years ago, long before the Conservatives started to use it as an election issue".

"It is crucially important, while recognising the issue, not to panic people, particularly the elderly, by giving them false information. In our local Trust area, we have the Teddington hospital which, as Far as I am aware does not have MRSA. Most residents go to West Middlesex, which does have MRSA though the incidence is falling - running at 29 a year (September 2003 to September 2004) most of those being Hounslow residents. Some go to Kingston where the rate is 31 a year, again mostly non-residents of this borough. It is difficult to see how much more than 25 to 30 borough residents can have been affected all told: too many but far less than the Conservatives claim".

"The Conservatives are also in a very weak position to lecture on this subject since they introduced outsourcing of cleaning, often without adequate quality control, and got rid of Matrons who set standards on the wards - nor did they collect any figures on MRSA or even acknowledge the problem."

"I await with interest the Conservative candidates explanation of the numbers".