Sunday 11 April 2010

General Election - Labour, how low can you go? - Cancer scare.

Labour are being accused of sending out 250,000 targeted leaflets to women who are suffering - or who have suffered from - breast cancer. The leaflets are designed to scare women into believing that voting for a Conservative government would endanger their lives. It should be noted that the Conservative party are the only party promising to ring fence the NHS budget. Does this mark an all time low in political campaigning? How did the Labour party get hold of the personal information required to target these women? Have the data protection laws been broken? These questions need answering and an apology should be made immediately.

Responding to the news that the Labour Party has been caught sending alarmist literature on breast cancer to cancer sufferers, Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said:

“It is shameful that the Labour Party, knowing that we are the only party that is going to increase investment in the NHS, have decided to deliberately scare patients and misrepresent what we have said. I’m actually rather shocked that they are trying to target breast cancer patients and alarm them by making up stories about what the Conservative Party would do.

I think Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, should write to every woman Labour sent these cards to and apologise and withdraw these claims.”

At a meeting of Conservative bloggers I attended a short while ago, Eric Pickles warned that Labour would fight a very dirty campaign, even so, I didn't think that they would sink this low.

5 comments:

CherryPie said...

They also have those claims on the leaflets they are dropping through the door. At least the one for my prospective labour candidate does.

Daily Referendum said...

CherryPie,

My Mother-in-law is 75 and had breast cancer twenty years ago. At 75 she is vulnerable and easily frightened. If she were to receive one of these leaflets I feel she would be influenced by it.

It's very very dirty.

CherryPie said...

I wasn't too impressed with the non personalised one that came through my door.

My Dad is nearly 80 and currently undergoing Chemotherapy, so I felt very annoyed by it.

Unknown said...

The questions I ask, that no one else will, are the following;

Is it really possible that information about breast cancer suffers is out there in the public domain allowing for this kind of targeted mailshot?

If so, how is it the Labour Party has been in power 13 years and allowed this kind of information to be publicly available?

Again, if this kind of information is publicly available, what else is publicly available which will allow companies to target me so specifically?

I am fully aware that councils sell all their data on to companies to allow for targeted mailings, but who else is allowed to sell data?

These are the questions? Labour simply says it is using information that is publicly availible, so think about it? How safe have they been with your Data, and do you honestly what to have to give them more, re ID cards?

Guess what? No reporters will ever dig deeper into this story to find out the truth.

Cate Munro said...

Beyond the pale and utterly beyond comprehension. Like you I knew they'd scrap dirty - but THIS is beyond disgraceful. Show's how desperate they are. Words really fail me.