6000 signatures and Petition handover Wednesday 7th September 2016

On Wednesday 1st September whilst I was in a meeting with Shona Robison, Cabinet Secretary for Health, we reached 6000 signatures!! How amazing is that? Numbers are still rising which is just incredible. Please continue to encourage others to sign and share as we want as many signatures on the petition as possible for the official handover next week. We do expect the media to cover this event. The petition will be handed over to Miles Briggs MSP at 1.30pm outside the Scottish Parliament building. If you can make it please come along with as many supporters as you can persuade to come with you. We will congregate near the ponds from around 1pm, please aim to be there by 1.15pm at the very latest. Feel free to bring your own banner but please avoid pale colours (ink) as they can’t be read from a distance or on TV. Miles Briggs MSP motion asking for the centralisation of Cleft Surgical Services to be halted will be debated that same day at 5pm. His motion has support from every party except the SNP. If you wish to watch the debate in person, you can obtain a ticket on the day, although I would recommend that you pre-book a ticket (they are free) to guarantee entry to the viewing gallery. (See link attached) We may have some sort of demonstration before the debate as we will have the banners etc. from the petition handover earlier in the day. The exact nature of this has not been decided on as it is unlikely the media will attend both events and the MSP’s will already be in the Debating chamber for other debates. I will give more information next week. I am pleased to say that when I met with Shona Robison on Wednesday she was adamant that she has not made her decision yet and is still gathering information to assist her in doing so. I was able to give the reasons why we are opposing the centralisation and provided information; documents etc. that I believed supported our arguments. Our discussion was very frank and open and I was given the opportunity to cover every single point I needed to. I believe I was given a very fair hearing. Despite these comments, if you still have the will and energy, it will help our case if you write to your own MSP asking him/her to sign our petition and to support and attend the debate on Wednesday. Thank you for your continuing support. Kind regards Evonne P.S. Just noticed and delighted to see Rory Bremner is supporting our petition. (Yippee a famous person has got behind our petition) will all our twitter fans please retweet his post?