Tory Eastleigh candidate angers doctors with state school comment Tory candidate Maria Hutchings campaigning. A letter signed by doctors said they were proof that her assertions about state schools were not true. The Conservatives have been forced on to the defensive in Eastleigh byelection campaign after doctors signed a letter condemning its candidate for suggesting the local state schools were not good enough for her son who wanted to become a surgeon. A letter from cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, another surgeon and six named GPs states: "As GPs and surgeons who all started their education at state-funded schools, we are proof that Maria Hutchings' assertions are not true. Speaking on the BBC Politics show on Sunday, the Tory chairman, Grant Shapps, dismissed the controversy saying: "Every parent wants the best for their child, and whether that's Nick Clegg or Ed Miliband or Maria Hutchings or myself ... I think it's perfectly reasonable to look for the best option for your children. Hutchings in an interview had said her son was "very gifted, which gives us another interesting challenge in finding the right sort of education for him - impossible in the state system. He wants to be a cardiorespiratory surgeon. A Labour shadow cabinet minister has distanced the party from a 1998 book by its Eastleigh candidate, John O'Farrell, in which he implied he wished Lady Thatcher had died in the Brighton bombing, and that Britain had lost the Falklands war. The shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, said: "John O'Farrell is a comedian who, in bad taste, has written a book about this in the 80s and 90s. I'm sure if you asked him now whether he agreed that, that you know he would say no. In his book Things Can Only Get Better, O'Farrell wrote: "In October 1984, when the Brighton bomb went off, I felt a surge of excitement at the nearness of her demise and yet disappointment that such a chance had been missed. Mike Thornton, the Liberal Democrat candidate, also came under attack after he confirmed that as a local councillor he had voted for 5,000 new houses on green spaces in the constituency. At a hustings - the first of the byelection - when challenged, he replied: "Of course I voted for them ... We need the building." The Tories said the key claim of the Lib Dems' campaign is that the party would "protect our green spaces." Although the Conservative housing minister, Nick Boles, has been calling for the construction of more homes to drive down prices and meet aspiration, Shapps said that Thornton's showed the Liberal Democrat campaign was in turmoil, a remark that was then simultaneously tweeted by a large number of Tory MPs. The Liberal Democrat campaign also rounded on Hutchings' claim to be a local candidate, pointing out that in 2006 she tried to get selected in Mid Norfolk (September), Stevenage (October) and Basildon (November).