By Matthew Barrett
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This morning, the Bradford Telegraph and Argus carries the news that Marsha Singh, the Labour MP for Bradford West since 1997, will be resigning from Parliament due to ill health.
The Telegraph and Argus describes Mr Singh's undisclosed illness as "critical" and reports that he has been absent from Parliament for eight months "after he became seriously ill last July". Mr Singh is quoted as saying:
"I have been increasingly ill over a period of time last year and had a very serious illness and was admitted to hospital. I thought I had overcome that, but obviously that wasn’t the case and I have been back into hospital both in London and here. It was maybe wishful thinking on my part but I thought I would recover quickly and get back to work, until eventually with medical advice it became clear that it was going to take a lot longer to recover, if I ever fully do. I haven’t ruled out work completely for the future once I get out of the kind of critical stages of my illness. I have come to a very painful conclusion to announce my retirement because I’m in the job to serve my constituents and, if I can’t do that I don’t deserve to be paid for the job. They don’t deserve that and I can’t let them down."
We will report more details on the future by-election in due course, but for now we should send our best wishes to Mr Singh and hope he makes a good recovery.
Hat-tip to LabourList.