Conservative MP Dan Poulter defects to Labour over NHS issues

Former minister and Conservative MP Dan Poulter has announced that he has defected to Labour.

The MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that he made the decision because the Conservatives were no longer focused on public services and were “failing the NHS”.

Dr Pouter, who is a working medic, said he could no longer look his NHS colleagues and patients and constituents in the eye and stay on as a Conservative

Downing Street has just been told of his decision and is yet to respond, the BBC reports.

Dr Poulter said. “I found it increasingly difficult to look my NHS colleagues in the eye, my patients in the eye, and my constituents in the eye with good conscience.”

He also suggested the party had stopped valuing public services, saying: “The difficulty for the Conservative Party is that the party I was elected into valued public services… it had a compassionate view about supporting the more disadvantaged in society.

Dr Poulter will take the Labour whip until the general election, when he will not be running again as the MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, he told the Observer.

He also told the newspaper the Conservative Party “feels like it has become a nationalist party of the right”, having seen a “rightward drift” since David Cameron’s premiership.

“The health service has ceased to be an area of priority for the Conservative Party, and that is now showing in the strain on the front line and the deterioration of care for patients,” he said.

Mr Streeting said on social media site X: “Proud to welcome Dr Dan Poulter MP to the UKLabour Party.

“As a frontline clinician, he’s seen the damage that 14 years of Conservative government have done to our NHS.

“Delighted to have his support and look forward to working with him, especially on mental health reform.”

The defection is a significant blow to Mr Sunak less than a week before council and mayoral elections in which the Tories are expected to suffer heavy losses.

It marks the first time a Conservative MP crossed the floor to Labour since Christian Wakeford did so in 2022.

Additional reporting by Press Association.