Richard has campaigned on many things over the years, but health issues are a recurring theme. Richard comments: "my involvement in health campaigns has arisen through the government making such a hash of the way it spends the vast sums of taxpayers' money on the NHS. There is just so much that needs fixing!"
Bishop Auckland Hospital
Standing as a Parliamentary Candidate in 2005 for Bishop Auckland, Richard drew attention to the downgrading of services at Bishop Auckland Hospital - a process which has continued more recently.
Richard has consistently backed keeping services at the hospital.
Teesdale Ambulance Service
Richard has been a leading figure in the campaign to improve the poor emergency Ambulance service in Teesdale, where in the upper dale DL12 postcode area, a dismal 5.7% of Category A emergency calls are responded to with the target 8 minutes. He has championed the case for improvements through several public meetings, and meetings of Durham County Council's Health Scrutiny Committee.
Commenting in October 2008 on the Primary Care Trust's latest decisions, he said "It's not everything we wanted- the PCT have refused to base the daytime (12/7) Ambulance at the Middleton station, which remains theoretically open, but in practice closed. But they have said that the Paramedics crewing the daytime ambulance will be working in the upper dale throughout the day shift.
They have agreed to provide a round the clock 24/7 ambulance and the daytime 12/7 ambulance, which is a huge improvement on the original offer of a single paramedic in a car. Provided they live up to assurances that these ambulances will only go out of the dale on emergency calls, then this plan should be welcomed as a success for the campaign. The Category A response time target of arrival within 8 mins for the DL12 area should increase from the present 5.7% to 48%. That's a big improvement.
The focus now moves to monitoring the implementation of the plan, and I will be ensuring the County Council's Health Scrutiny committee keeps on the case, as it has done throughout. I would like to pay tribute to everyone who has supported the campaign, by attending public meetings, and writing letters, and especially Margaret Dent without whose dedication and tenacity we would not have succeeded. We shouldn't have had to fight this hard, but it's gratifying that we have got a result in the end."
 | By summer 2009 the new vehicles were 'in place and in use'. The photo shows an ambulance on standby at Folly Top. |
NHS
Over recent years Richard has held street stalls, taken part in marches, and tries in other ways to influence decision and policy makers on health service matters. He says "No one doubts that the Labour Government has put huge sums of money into the NHS. Yet they have wasted much of it on gimmicky initiatives, poorly negotiated contracts like IT provision and GP remuneration, and poor manpower planning - British trained doctors can't get jobs.
The result of all this is that all too often at the point of service delivery, resources are inadequate or inappropriate. As so often in life, it's not what you spend it's the way that you spend it that gets results."
Highways
Richard is a former member of County Durham's Highways Committee, and is a committed advocate for better roads and transport links in the North East and Yorkshire.
He campaigned to 'fix the A66'- which was partly dualled last year on the border of his county division. He would like to make improvements to the A65 Skipton to Kirkby Lonsdale road. He supports the dualling of the A1 in Northumberland, and would love to end the congestion on Newcastle's western bypass, and conquer the Marton Crawl in Middlesbrough.
He says "the North East as a region is least able to cope with inadequate infrastructure because of the distances we have to travel to the population centres of England, Scotland or the continent. Our business and commerce needs improvements in order to be able to compete effectively".
Campaigns
