Plaid Cymru Challenge Conservative Maternity Service Campaign ‘Leadership’ Leaflet Claim

Plaid Cymru have challenged a Conservative candidate’s claim on his election material that he ‘led’ a campaign over maternity services at the Maelor.

Wrexham’s Conservative candidate Andrew Atkinson’s election leaflet, pictured above, states “Andrew led the successful campaign to save Wrexham Maelor maternity services…” a claim that has been branded ‘shameless‘ and a ‘total lie‘ on social media.

A query was also raised yesterday on the Wrexham.com Forum thread where people are discussing what they do with election addresses (Read, bin, wipe and burn being some suggested uses).

Carrie Harper, Plaid Cymru’s Wrexham candidate for the Welsh Assembly, said: “Plaid Cymru have campaigned to protect the special care baby unit in Wrexham for 7 years. We also handed in a 10,000 strong petition to Betsi Cadwaladr officials to protect our maternity services.

“We’ve been very active in trying to put local views and concerns to the Health Board but we would not claim to have ‘led the campaign’.

“I’m aware that Andrew helped to collect petition signatures in town on a few Saturdays but to claim he led the campaign is stretching the truth to put it mildly , I’m not sure why he’s put that in his leaflet as the wording isn’t really accurate.”

Conservative candidate Andrew Atkinson stood by the wording and claims, saying: “We had a great result on the maternity services campaign and although the hard work on this is far from over, I’m proud of what I achieved with the phenomenal support of the people of Wrexham. I wasn’t involved in the same campaign as some others that covered all of North Wales but rather focussed solely on Wrexham.”

“I spent countless hours collecting signatures in and around the town centre including many of my Saturdays. With a great team we collected many signatures for the petition and distributed hundreds of letters for residents to send to the health board.”

“Unfortunately this has been made into a political tool by the same political party that didn’t want to work with me on this as they wanted to do their own thing. I attended their public meeting that turned out to be a political meeting with their signs and banners everywhere.

“I’ve bent over backwards to keep this campaign non-political and lead a campaign that delivered for the people of Wrexham and I will let them be the judge.”

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