A LEADING Labour Councillor has hit out at "bigoted" and "insensitive" comments made by the council's Health lead.

At last week's council meeting, the Executive Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing, Cllr Susan Baines took part in a debate about the NHS.

When speaking about demands on the NHS, she said: "We have allowed the NHS to be violated by ourselves in terms of our wants.

“'I want a baby', 'I want to change my gender', 'I want bigger boobs', 'I want to look different'. 'I want, I want, I want' and the list goes on.

"The NHS as it is can simply cannot cope with the plethora of meeting everybody's wants."

Shadow Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing Cllr Sue Haworth took exception to Cllr Baines' comments and suggested the Labour Group share her concerns.

She said: “Labour do not support this view one iota. We find this view really disrespectful of peoples personal health issues and quite frankly it is coming across as rather bigoted. These personal in nature health matters are not one of the major demand pressures in the National Health Service. It is nothing short of insensitive and discriminatory that these matters are singled out for mention by Cllr Baines.

“Demand pressures in the NHS and fiscal sustainability are well set out by both NHS England and the Office for Budget Responsibility. There is no evidence that these issues in particular are a notable part of the demand pressures in the NHS in England overall or in the devolved NHS in Greater Manchester.”

“What we have here is an Executive Cabinet Member for Wellbeing not in possession of the full facts on what are the clear demand pressures on the NHS."

The Bolton News has approached Cllr Baines for comment.