She was the oldest of three children to the agricultural labourer Robert Henry William Palmer and his wife Doris Maud, née Hunn.
[2] Her parents lived at 22A High Street in Caister-on-Sea at the time of her birth and later operated a post office and stationers in the town.
New resources were dedicated to healthcare for homelessness people, those suffering from mental illness and for women exercising their right to selection as a consequence of her campaigning.
Another focused dioxin leak affecting thousands of people in and around Seveso in Northern Italy in 1976 and another was about the inadequate healthcare prisoners received.
[3] The obstetrician Wendy Savage was suspended from her post at the London Hospital Medical College in 1985 on incompetence grounds.
[3] Leighton was a major role in supporting Savage and wrote three articles for the New Statesman in which she interviewed several people in Tower Hamlets.
She helped the company retain its franchise after a rival bid was made from a consortium led by Mersey Television but resigned in 1992 after the chairman David Plowright was ousted by Gerry Robinson.
[1] Leighton's last campaigning success came in 2006 when she ensured the merger that made up the Great Yarmouth and Waveney primary care trust was not taken up at the time into the bigger economies for scale sought by the government.
[3] She still remained actively involved in the running of Halesworth Health in spite of the diagnosis of brain secondaries in February 2012 which left her unable to walk.
The day before her death, a fingernail which had been painted with an elaborate pattern broke and Leighton insisted a nailbar be found to ensure its could be repaired.
Leighton requested that no funeral services be held for her but agreed for an informal gathering where her friends and relatives remembered her life at Southwold beach.