Protecting our NHS

Iain Donaldson has for the last 17 years worked in health research at the University of Manchester on a collaboration of the three Manchester hospitals and the Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust.

Iain knows the hard work that all the teams at our hospitals and working in our communities do to keep us healthy and to ensure that when things go wrong we have the support we need. "I am particularly grateful to the team at North Manchester General who for me and thousands like me living with sleep apnoea provide life changing equipment and help. Sleep apnoea is much more common than we realis and can be a debilitating and dangerous condition if not treated. It is, like many, an unseen disability that would not receive such good treatment without out NHS."

When the last Labour government privatised our hospital buildings under their PFI schemes Iain and the Liberal Democrats opposed the privatisation because the money we are now paying in interest to private financiers could instead be being invested in our health services. We have lost so much provision, particularly with the closure of mental health services in Central Manchester and the impact that has had here in the North, in order to fund the PFI.

Iain added "The project I work on deals with mental health, and I know how important it is that we get funding and provision for mental health services on a proper footing in this country, which is why I welcome the Liberal Democrats committment to spend a large chunk of the money saved by not exiting the EU in our mental health services."