NORTH Lancashire MP David Morris has hit back after pollsters suggested his Morecambe and Lunesdale seat was under threat because of constituents' fears over health privatisation.

Mr Morris claimed the Survation polling organisation, which conducted a survey in his constituency, was a ‘left wing think tank with Labour party members on its staff’.

Survation conducted the poll of voters about health privatisation in 13 ‘battleground’ constituencies and said that 74.7 per cent of respondents in Mr Morris's opposed including the NHS in any privatisation policy. 

The pollsters said the findings suggested Mr Morris could be in danger of losing his marginal seat at the next election.

But the MP rejected the analysis, saying he ‘would like to see their full questions data for these results as I fear they will be politically weighted’.

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“I am against all privatisation of the NHS and in fact privatisation of the NHS was higher under Labour than this government,” said Mr Morris, who won Morecambe and Lunesdale with a majority of just 866 votes in the 2010 election.

“My constituents in Morecambe and Lunesdale have been well informed of my various NHS campaigns against Labour lies in the area. Recently there have been three major campaigns on the false closure of the A&E at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, job losses which did not happen and most recently that the pharmacy in Lancaster was to be privatised.

“All of these negative campaigns by Labour, have happened against a backdrop of more staff being employed by the trust and £150 million being given to our trust to improve their services.

“In addition to this funding, I was able to secure, a new same day health centre in Morecambe, a new £25 million health centre in Heysham, £1 million for GP services to improve availability of doctors out of hours, and four new wards at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary.

“All of this is on top of the work I have done with the new trust team and the Department of Health, sorting out the various issues the trust had as a direct result of Andy Burnham MP approving Foundation Trust status when he shouldn’t have.”