Today and tomorrow MPs will be voting on whether to pass the Hospital Closure Clause 119.

This Clause would mean that the government could close any hospital near one that has difficult finances without any significant consultation.

It was drafted following the governments' failure to overturn the ruling on Lewisham Hospital and once again places St Helier Hospital at real risk.

Carshalton and Wallington Labour Party launched a petition asking Tom Brake to vote against this Clause and gathered more than 1050 signatures in just 24 days.

We Lobbied Tom Brake MP last Monday at the Houses of Parliament to urge him to vote against this Clause, not least because he claims to support our local Hospital. We suspect that despite this he will once again do the Tories bidding.

Despite running their election campaigns in 2010 with pledges to fight for our hospital, both Tom Brake and Paul Burstow have done little in government to honour this.

Burstow was one of the authors of the Health and Social Care Bill, which brought about the whole expensive BSBV debacle.

Not a single question has been raised by either of them in the House, and they and our councillors have been absent from many public meetings surrounding the future of our highly regarded hospital.

Instead of pledging money to fight for St Helier Hospital as Merton Council have done, Sutton Council have blown our money on publicity campaigns for rubbish collection in the borough.

Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden Siobhain McDonagh has secured and Adjournment Debate on this Clause. It is noticeable that the Mitcham and Morden Labour Party (both Siobhain and their Councillors) have done more to keep our hospital than the elected representatives in the borough that houses St Helier Hospital.

In the lastest turn for the future of our hospital, we have had it confirmed that £215 million earmarked for improvements to our hospital under the last Labour Government has now been returned to the Treasury, and finally the misleading sign at the front of the hospital was removed an hour before the advertised time last Saturday.

Protesters from Sutton and Merton attended, but neither MP was there and the only Sutton Councillor to attend was Cllr John Keys of the Labour Party.

Why have our MPs and Councillors failed to fight for our hospital?

Brake and Burstow have made it perfectly clear that they are more loyal to the Tories than to their own constituents.

We will be watching very carefully how they perform during the Clause 119 Debate and Adjournment Debate, and of course how they decide to vote. We hope the people of Sutton will remember these betrayals at the polls on 22 May this year, and 8th of May next year.

We deserve better than this.

Bonnie Craven Wandle Valley Labour Action Team