At this years Conservative Party Conference, in Blackpool the then Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Dr. Liam Fox MP, unveiled the Patient’s Passport – fairer healthcare, with no one left behind. I have a keen interest in health and am a Member of the Health Select Committee; I believe that the Patient’s Passport is a radical idea and one that will provide a fair deal for every single person in Britian.

At the moment Britain currently has a two-tier health system. The choice of hospital is only afforded to those people who pay their taxes and then pay again for private healthcare or to those who have already been failed by the present system. The rest have no choice whatsoever. The Patient’s Passport will make choice universal, extending to all patients. It will allow patients to have their treatment paid for at any NHS hospital. As capacity in the voluntary and private sector builds up, they will be able to take all or part of the cost of their NHS treatment to the voluntary or private hospital of their choice. 

These proposals would reduce the cost for people who pay for their own operations from their savings or who take out private medical insurance. Therefore those people who pay towards the cost of their own healthcare, still pay their taxes like everyone else whilst saving the NHS’s resources and cutting waiting lists. I believe that they should be rewarded and not penalised.

By empowering people to use the NHS and other providers of healthcare side by side, we will attract new resources into healthcare in Britain. As we make it possible for more people to have treatment beyond the NHS, the non-NHS sector will grow.

I believe that these proposals, which will be further developed by Tim Yeo MP, the new Shadow Secretary of State for Public Services, Health and Education and Andrew Lansley CBE MP the new Shadow Secretary of State Health, will bring about a better National Health Service. There has never been such a radical review of the working of the UK healthcare system as the one which we the Conservative Party are now undertaking.

The people of Essex, and the British people as a whole, deserve nothing less. It is our, the Conservative Party’s, task to now go out and convince them that it is these marvellous radical proposals that will create a system geared to meet their healthcare needs, and appropriate to the environment in which they live.

It is only the Conservative Party Patient’s Passport that will provide a fair deal for patients.