Steve Brine's petition to help the Naomi House hospice in Sutton Scotney has garnered more than ten thousand signatures.
The Prospective Conservative MP for Winchester started the e-petition on the No.10 Downing Street website last year after it emerged that the hospice was in danger of losing £5.7 million invested in a failed Icelandic bank.
The website petition – which closed on January 12 2009 - combined with ‘offline’ signatures collected in Naomi House shops takes the total to 10,568.
Naomi House announced before Christmas it was cutting outreach service for local families as a result of the crisis and said this month (January) that the future of its in construction Jacks Place @ Naomi House was now in jeopardy.
Mr Brine has also written to Harriet Harman, leader of the House of Commons, to clarify her remarks on BBC’s Any Questions programme that the Government would not abandon charities left in trouble by the Icelandic banking crisis. He invited her to sign the petition before it closed to the public.
Steve Brine said: “Along with many local people I was pleased and relieved to hear her reassurances when she visited Winchester for the Any Questions programme last year. Since that time, I as well as MPs from all sides have sought to clarify what she meant but the response from Government has been disappointing and non-committal to say the least. “As the petition closes I hope Ministers will recognise that more than 7,000 local people have expressed a clear desire for ministers to help Naomi House before services at the hospice are affected even further and the local NHS is left struggling to fill the gap."
The Prospective MP visited the hospice with Basingstoke MP Maria Miller (pictured) who has worked tirelessly inside Parliament to press the Government for answers and even held an ‘adjournment’ debate just before Christmas to press the Minister Angela Eagle MP. He added; “It was a good meeting (on 16 January 2009) with Professor Khalid Aziz and we explored various options for the next stage of the campaign."