Under the new qualifier, if you can walk from your vehicle to the other side of the road, you probably won't qualify for Higher Mobility Allowance! My Motability vehicle is my contact with the outside world. I can't use public transport, and would therefore be dependent on the goodwill of others. Many thousands are in this position, and would be trapped in their homes or deprived of the allowance under the current legislation. I have a degenerative condition of the spine. As things currently stand I would not qualify for the higher mobility allowance because it is deemed that by walking 20 metres you have sufficient mobility and therefore do not qualify. This is obviously not true. My condition means that it can be difficult to walk those distances. But under the rules as they stand I would not qualify. This will have a huge impact on my life, my wife and children. I was eligible for an adapted car, but under these news rules it may be that I don't qualify. There are countless people like me, facing losing mobility assistance and becoming prisoners in their own homes. The government must rethink this rule change.

Those who cannot afford £75,000 can defer payment until after their death, and nobody would be forced to sell their home in their lifetime. But once the bill is settled by disposal of the property, many ordinary families will be left with little to show for what their relative has worked for all their life. In Liverpool, where the average home is worth around £132,000, there would be just £57,000 left over after settling the contribution to care costs. Stephen Burke, head of charity United for All Ages, called it “the dampest of damp squibs”. He added: “It is a con of the worst sort. There are fairer and better alternatives. The Government could have raised the capital threshold of paying for care to £200,000.” Labour peer Lord Warner, who sat on the Dilnot Commission, said members thought the cost cap should have been £50,000 at most. He added: “At that level, it would mean on average no-one would have to dispose of more than about a third of the value of their housing assets.” Shadow Care Minister Liz Kendall said the package was a “small step forward” as the assets people could own and still qualify for help had increased five-fold from just £23,250. But she added: “It won’t be fair for people with modest homes.”

Under government changes to the NHS, local Councils have become responsible for certain health services, and for overall scrutiny of others. We people of Southampton are therefore calling on Southampton City Council to defend our public NHS from the invasion of private services. Please note that for the Southampton City Council to view a signature as valid, the signer should either live, study or work in the area of Southampton City Council. For most of our lifetimes, the NHS has been a public service giving free healthcare whenever we needed it. Now it is being broken up and privatised piecemeal under government reforms. Already in Southampton over a dozen private companies are competing for contracts to provide health services. This will fragment the NHS and make it more difficult to provide joined-up treatment for patients. Private providers have shareholders to please so they will tend to think about putting profits before patient care. Their contracts are not made public because of commercial confidentiality. All providers, even those who already work with the NHS, now have to tender competitively for contracts. Not only is this an expensive process which will be easier for large companies with big budgets, but also it will waste money that could have gone on patient care.

Carers usually carry on looking after other(s) until they drop. Carers services help stave off this for very modest sums. If they cannot care as they are doing, the financial costs fall on the NHS, Derby council etc. Carers are twice as likely to go to their GP's as the general population. Carers are adults as well as children and it's estimated there are 5,000 of them just in Derby. We need your help to demonstrate the community supports this campaign by 4th January when the Derby City Consultation closes.

I believe the only way forward to address this justly is to stop NHS investigating itself and make Trusts accountable- financially! Therefore my suggestion is a fully Independent complaints system funded by a Complaints pool. The PHSO process currently costs over £30m per annum to investigate less than 2% of complaints brought to it..that 98% left unresolved! Funding for Independent Complaint Resolution could come by scrapping the ineffective PHSO process, we would save £m's and each Trust paying into a Complaints Pool (with Trusts failing at local resolution (first stage of complaints process) to pay in substantially more.) I feel there will be a willingness to keep costs low, implementation & learning lessons may be the real winners.

Given the health risks associated with the presence of asbestos in public buildings, we believe parents and guardians across Wales have the right; to know if asbestos is located in their school to know whether, where asbestos is present, it is being managed in line with the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 to access that information easily online.

Cystic fibrosis is a life limiting condition affecting the respiratory and digestive system of sufferers. There is no cure at present only medical treatments to alleviate symptoms, fight infections and digest food. These medications need to be taken several times a day. Prescriptions now cost over £7 per item. CF patients should not have to pay for medications that keep them well and alive.

The LCP is under scrutiny because there are claims that the withdrawal of food and water and the administration of strong painkillers is speeding up the dying process. This can all happen without the consent or even the knowledge of the patient or their family. Each year nearly 130,000 patients are put on to the Liverpool Care Pathway. That’s around 356 deaths per day. A national audit by the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute Liverpool and the Royal College of Physicians into the Liverpool Care Pathway found that last year, in 44 per cent of cases when conscious patients were placed on the pathway, there was no record that the decision had been discussed with them. That means that around 57,000 patients weren't informed that they had been put on the pathway last year. Our Story My mother Elise Devine was put on the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) at the Gosport War Memorial Hospital, after recovering from a kidney infection. There was no justification for this - which a Jury concluded 7 years later at her inquest. A visiting doctor, who had spoken to Elsie just before she was administered unjustified Morphine, noted in the medical file that she was “happy with no complaints and waiting for her daughter”. Her son Harry sat in the lounge area and chatted quite happily with his Mother, not knowing the LCP regime had already commenced by means of a Fentanyl patch (135 mcg morphine), which had been hidden under her clothes. He kissed his Mother goodnight and said I will see you tomorrow. The next morning she was comatose with more drugs that had been administered by a portable syringe driver which was put into her back and placed under her pillow out of sight. The LCP commenced without Elsie or her family's knowledge or consent, no one has justified why our Mother was placed on the LCP which subsequently ended her life in 2 days, and neither Harry nor I ever spoke to our dear Mother again. What we need to do Currently, there is no legal requirement to get consent from a patient or family member before a patient is placed on the LCP. The NHS website states that “while legal consent is not required to place a patient on the LCP, the fact that the plan is being considered should always be discussed with a relative or carer and, if possible, the patient themselves”. This needs to change. Please sign the petition to ensure that a law is enforced to protect us and our loved ones. A document is needed to sign to show that we agree and understand why we, or our family members, are being put on the terminal pathway and that we have given consent. We shouldn't have to fight for justice after death; the law should be there to protect us when we are alive. This affects all of us at some point. We all have the right to say goodbye to our loved ones. Please make this happen for all our sakes.

THE RIGHT TO LIVE saving lives not lining the pockets of the big pharma companies

Approximately 1,000 young people (aged between 1 year and 30 years) die suddenly and without medical explanation every year in the U.K alone, leaving families with one burning question-WHY? A new test known as Genetic Autopsy can provide answers for up to a third of these families (up to fifth of S.I.D.S (cot death) cases) and,in some cases, can highlight the potential for death in siblings/family members. We want ALL families affected by Sudden Unexplained Death to be offered this test to provide answers and reassurance.

On September 1st, the Grainger Medical Group GP Practices in Benwell, Newcastle were handed over to the private healthcare company Care UK. This followed a tendering process that was obscured from public view, with patients at the practice only finding out that their GP was being tendered out after the contract had been awarded to Care UK. Care UK have a poor track record of providing GP style health care services. In the past they have lost 6,000 X-ray records, and turned away a patient from an urgent care centre, who in fact had meningitis, because of the terms of their contract. Staff at the practice have resigned in protest at the decision. The Council has the power to scrutinise the tendering process, yet did not look at the bidding process. This is a serious error of judgement and does not bode well for the ability of supposed scrutinising bodies to play their role in an increasingly privatised NHS. With the passing of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, private providers will become increasingly common place in our NHS. It is important our elected representatives hold them to account.

Based on US Figures we have 370,000 suffers, on Dutch 342,000 yet less than 20,000 have been diagnosed. Although this condition is incureable if the correct treatments are given within 3 months of the onset long term remission can be acheived but after a year it is too late to get any sort of remission