The car parking issue is not "safe." It affects patients, visitors and staff members who also have to pay. It is very relevant to hard working Coventry families who face an extra unfair tax to visit sick and sometimes terminally ill relatives. As has been highlighted, many get to spend less hours with a loved one due to these steep charges or face severe financial hardship.

But as our party has pointed out, it is the fact that Walsgrave is a privately owned hospital that has contributed to this problem. Private firms have 'piggy backed' in on this basis to make money. Of the £2.7 million that has been reaped in parking charges, none will go to improve healthcare at Walsgrave. They have been pocketed by these firms as profit. This is where Mr Nelmes "misses the point."

The real burden here is that of the PFI contract, invented by the Tories and turbo-charged by New Labour. Since 1992 when I presented the start of the biggest petition in Coventry against the closure of Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital, Socialists have argued for publicly funded renovation and rebuilding on our two former hospital sites.

Instead we got a new sub-regional hospital away from the city centre; cost estimated at £174 million, built for £350 million, then mortgaged back to us until about 2043. The final bill plus profit for the private companies mortgaging our hospital back to us will be £3 billion.

Don't you think that this is the real drain on NHS resources, Mr Nelmes? We do, which is why our party calls for all PFI contracts to be ripped up and for the NHS to be run by those who provide it and those who use it.
Don't say this cannot be done. If our taxes can be used to nationalise the mistakes of the gambling of failed bankers, then we can take back what we already own.