AN NHS campaigner has announced he will be standing in next month’s General Election.

University psychology lecturer Carl Walker has been named the National Health Action (NHA) Party’s prospective parliamentary candidate in East Worthing and Shoreham.

It is the second time Dr Walker has stood for the party against Conservative candidate Tim Loughton.

Dr Walker is a principal lecturer at the University of Brighton and carries out research into community mental health.

The NHA Party was launched in 2012 by doctors, nurses, health workers and ordinary people in protest at the then coalition government’s NHS reforms and creeping privatisation.

Recent developments, including the controversial sustainability and transformation plans (STPs) which could lead to hundreds of millions of pounds being slashed from NHS budgets, have increased concerns.

Dr Walker, who is married with two children, went to school in Shoreham and now lives in east Worthing.

Both of his children were born in Worthing Hospital and Dr Walker said his family had received great health care from the hospital trust and GPs.

He said: “I am passionately committed both to a public NHS and to challenging those whose contempt for democracy means they will ignore the needs and desires of their electorate in order to seek profit.

“That’s why I stood in 2015. Now things are very much worse.

“NHS England’s STPs, combined with falling government spending per head on the NHS is reshaping the service.

“What’s left when they have finished will look more like the USA’s Medicare, a second class system for those who can’t afford to pay.

"I have watched mental health services being reduced to inadequate levels.

"Now the other services are following that route.

“That’s not the NHS I want.”

Dr Walker is a member of the NHA party’s national executive committee and is its spokesman on mental health.

He also supports education and has raised awareness of the problem of putting mental health professionals in job centres.