While we should all praise Dorset County Hospital’s hardworking staff for keeping our local A&E unit within target wait times during 2014, we must not be complacent.

Recent figures show that it has begun 2015 outside of those targets.

Last week, just seven NHS trusts nationally met the target to see 95% of A&E patients within four hours, a target that itself is lower than the 98% target that the previous Labour government measured itself by.

Whatever David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt say, our NHS is in crisis. It’s a crisis made in Number 10 by the disastrous and unnecessary £3bn top-down reorganisation of the NHS.

Labour has pledged to hire 8,000 more GPs, 20,000 more nurses, to stop the closure of walk-in centres, and end the scandal of cuts to social care services.

This May there is a stark choice for Dorset’s voters.

The next government will be led by either Labour or the Conservatives and our NHS will not survive another five years of David Cameron.

Simon Bowkett, Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for South Dorset