This week David Cameron came to Gloucester and talked about the need to have ‘honesty and integrity’ in politics. But by the following morning I was receiving phone calls from frightened and vulnerable disabled elderly people due to the most disgraceful and dishonest piece of literature imaginable, put through Gloucester letter boxes by Mr Cameron’s local candidate for the general election.

It states: “Government plans for a National care Service will be largely funded by scrapping the Disabled Living Allowance (DLA) currently given to disabled pensioners. Richard Graham says ‘this will mean over 1,500 people in Gloucester would lose £60 per week.’”

This disgraceful leaflet goes on to say a further 3,120 city residents who receive Attenders Allowance (I presume he means Attendance Allowance) worth £75 a week are at risk too. 

It’s a tissue of lies designed to frighten the vulnerable in to voting Tory. The truth is this; the government has introduced the Personal Care at Home Bill. The Bill will make it possible for those with the highest care needs to receive free personal care in their own homes.  The Bill guarantees free personal care for the 280,000 people - including those with serious dementia or Parkinson’s disease - with the highest needs.

It is completely wrong to claim that we are funding any aspect of our care reform proposals by cutting people's benefits. All of the proposals are funded through efficiencies and reprioritisations in the Department of Health and in Local Government.

This is what the health Secretary said in a recent letter to me: None of the free care provided by this change will be funded, as David Cameron has claimed, from cuts in people’s benefits, either Disability Living  Allowance or Attendance Allowance. This claim is politics of the worst kind – intentionally misleading some of the most vulnerable in our society about their benefits.

I believe our senior citizens deserve the best, that is why we will create a National Care Service, in the same way we created the NHS.

As was the case in 1945 we will make the right choice and the Conservative Party will once again be on the wrong side of the argument. And Mr Cameron, a little honesty and integrity wouldn’t go amiss.

Parmjit Dhanda MP

Member of Parliament for Gloucester