Parking charges at Milton Keynes University Hospital are a tax on serious illness and Labour’s Hannah O’Neill has backed the National Labour Parties’ commitment to end these parking charges.

Labour Parliamentary Candidate for the Milton Keynes South constituency, Cllr Hannah O’Neill, said “I have long thought it wrong that patients and their families have had to pay increasingly expensive parking charges.”

What is clear is that Milton Keynes University Hospital along with hospitals across the Country is being underfunded. So hospitals have used parking charges to raise income. Hannah O’Neill believes the NHS should be properly funded to meet the growing demand of the new city and the challenge of an ageing population.

She added, Our local hospital is struggling from under-funding at the hands of Theresa May’s Conservative government, but the gap should not be filled by charging sick patients and anxious relatives.”

She continued, “I understand the Milton Keynes University Hospital Chief Executive receives a huge number of complaints about parking charges. Here is why. If you have an elderly husband or wife in hospital, after, say a fall at home, or a Hip operation, then the financial pressure of high parking charges adds to the worry and for many low income senior citizens it is a charge too far. It especially hurts older people.“

Cllr O’Neill concluded, “We can do better. We can do better and be fair. The Labour Government in Wales abolished hospital parking charges in 2008. I believe it would be fair and right to abolish this unfair tax on the seriously ill in Milton Keynes.”