The Tooting Labour Party must be well and truly rattled judging by the flood of hysterical letters from party members in defence of Sadiq Khan's frankly indefensible comments about the MRSA and C Diff superbug problem at St George's Hospital.

Over the past three years, 116 patients at the hospital have died prematurely from these superbugs.

This is a matter of deep public concern and one that is above party political considerations.

Yet Mr Khan and his supporters feel that any public analysis of this issue by the council's health scrutiny committee is an outrage. According to them, the hospital's management should be allowed to deal with it behind closed doors without any outside examination, inquiry or accountability.

The committee's sole concern is to find out why these deaths occurred and what is being done to ensure they do not happen again.

Mr Khan and his supporters say this is unacceptable.

Sadly they seem more concerned with protecting the reputation of health ministers and NHS managers than representing patients' interests. The way they are seeking to obstruct our inquiry into this issue is disgraceful.

Mr Khan seems to have forgotten that councils were given a legal responsibility to monitor local NHS services in 2003.

This is a serious responsibility so we make no apology for trying to do this important job properly.

COUNCILLOR IAN HART

Chairman health overview and scrutiny committee