The Labour Party’s campaign to see Angela Harrison elected as the next MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey has already started with the minimum of fuss.

Instead of a formal launch, introductory leaflets are being delivered by Royal Mail to every house in the constituency and have been dropping through people’s letterboxes since the election was called last Tuesday.

Miss Harrison said: “We want to get out and meet the voters, not spend time posing for cheesy photos for the local press.

"We have been campaigning daily for months now and we will continue with our planned programme.

“Voters need to know what we are really about here in Sittingbourne and Sheppey.”

Miss Harrison has five main priorities:

• 1. To fight for jobs and good jobs locally. These are not threatened locally by a National Insurance rise that is not due for over a year. The greatest immediate threat is a savage cut in public spending this year, cutting demand and sending the fragile recovery into a double dip recession.
• 2. I am pledging to work with the local National Health Service, to provide better GP and dental services and to keep up the improvements in the care of chronically sick patients. Whilst providing more choice we must keep the Health services’ founding principles to treat all equally and free at the point of delivery.
• 3. We must continue to work for improved education and that can only be done by keeping to the principles of public service provision, treating all as equally important and not risking fairness and opportunity for all by playing with the Tories’ ill thought out plans for “free” schools, schools I am afraid that will run in the interests of those with power and wealth.
• 4. I will work with the local Council and housing associations to try to help reduce the shockingly long housing waiting list in Sittingbourne and Sheppey, with the provision of affordable housing that is agreed in the Swale Housing Strategy, but which the local Tory Council fails to reach.
• 5. As MP I will fight for a decent resolution to the issue of care for older citizens, a vital issue that has been muddied by cheap political opportunism by the Tory Party. The return of a Labour Government is, also, the only way to guarantee the Winter Fuel allowances and free TV licences, and income guarantee that have been introduced by the Labour Government since 1997.