LABOUR has become embroiled in a row about the use of personal data after sending cancer patients alarmist mailshots saying their lives could be at risk under a Conservative government.
Cards addressed to sufferers by name warn that a Labour guarantee to see a cancer specialist within two weeks would be scrapped by the Tories. Labour claims the Conservatives would also do away with the right to be treated within 18 weeks.
| And how are those "rights" working out under Labour? I've been reading lots of stories about potential patients dying while waiting for that first appointment. |
Cancer patients who received the personalised cards, sent with a message from a breast cancer survivor praising her treatment under Labour, said they were "disgusted and shocked", and feared that the party may have had access to confidential health data.
| Vote Tory, guys, it's the only way to stop such behaviour. |
Labour sources deny that the party has used any confidential information. However, the sources admit that, in line with other political parties, it uses socio-demographic research that is commercially and publicly available.
Demographic research is not generally ever issued with individual names and mailing addresses attached to the data points. |
Many of those receiving the cards have undergone cancer scans or treatment within the past five years.
- In the Labour constituency of Sherwood, Nottinghamshire, two of a group of eight women friends received the breast cancer card. They are the only two to have undergone cancer treatment. One of them, Phyllis Delik, 80, described it as "callous" and "despicable". The second woman, Shirley Foreman, 58, who received the card a fortnight after undergoing surgery, said: "It is bad taste after what I have been through."
| Too right, ladies. Vote Tory. |
- In the marginal east London constituency of Poplar and Limehouse, the card was sent to a 44-year-old television producer who had a potentially cancerous lump that turned out to be a cyst. She appeared to be the only person who received the mailshot among 50 neighbours. She said: "It's crude and insensitive."
- A card was sent to a woman who has died of breast cancer. Her 33-year-old husband was so upset that he sent a message to the Facebook page of Diane Dwelly, the woman whose case is featured in the mailshot, accusing her of being a pawn for the Labour party.
| Or an innocent bystander whose name and story were somehow extrapolated from a demographic research report without her permission. |
This weekend Dwelly, 48, from Rugby, admitted she had "probably been used by Labour". She believed her photograph had been taken for use in a magazine for the National Health Service, not as part of Labour's election campaign.
| Your identity was stolen, Ms Dwelly. Vote Tory. |
The cancer cards are part of a wider postal campaign targeting various groups. Others are aimed at parents whose children attend Sure Start centres, pensioners and the owners of small businesses.
Labour has so far sent out 600,000 cards. It plans to distribute 4.5m during the election campaign.
| Figure about three million will be disgusted. To them we say, vote Tory! |
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