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Issue of the day: NHS funding
Party spokesmen debate their plans for investment in the NHS.
Labour: Health secretary John Reid
The NHS is being restored to good health: more doctors, more nurses, better facilities. Waiting times are coming down and the survival rates for the biggest killers are improving. The revolution in quantity of care must be matched by a revolution in quality of care, with equal access for all and no charges for operations. That means new types of health provision, more say for patients in how, where and when they are treated, and tackling ill-health at source.
Today’s Conservatives want to do what not even Margaret Thatcher would countenance – introducing charges for hospital operations so that those who can afford to pay thousands of pounds can push ahead of those who cannot.
As well as ending the founding principle of the health service, this would take more than £1 billion out of the system to subsidise those who can afford to pay. For the rest of us, the Tories would abandon waiting-list targets and allow a return to the 18-month waits that were their NHS legacy.
The choice is forward with new Labour to a health system with patients in the driving seat, free to all and personal to each of us. Or back with the Tories to longer waits, and to a health system where treatment depends not on your condition but on your bank balance.
So our aim is an NHS free to all of us and personal to each of us. We will deliver through high national standards backed by sustained investment, by using new providers where they add capacity or promote innovation, and most importantly by giving more power to patients over their own treatment and over their own health. We promised to revive the NHS; we have. In our third term we will make the NHS safe for a generation.
Conservatives: Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley
The Conservatives will take action to clean up hospitals and cut waiting lists – to deliver the standard of healthcare patients have the right to expect. Our approach is to let those who know best run the NHS, and listen to those whom the NHS serves.
Patients deserve the peace of mind that they will be helped to get better in hospital - not pick up new illnesses. Matrons will be given the power to shut down dirty wards for cleaning and withhold payment from cleaning services if standards are not met.
Our next priority is to cut waiting lists. Conservative proposals will help expand capacity for NHS patients. We will spend more, give hospitals the freedom to invest, focus resources on frontline services and give independent providers the right to supply to the NHS. Patients will have access to treatment at any independent hospital which can perform their operation for NHS prices and to NHS standards.
NHS treatment will remain free, as now, whether provided in an NHS or independent hospital. If patients choose private care, not NHS care, they should not be punished but helped
A Conservative government will invest an additional £34bn a year in the NHS by the end of our first parliament, over and above the level that we inherit from Labour. We will support those who work in the NHS. Hard-working doctors and nurses will be set free from targets and unnecessary bureaucracy and inspections.
At the election voters face a clear choice: dirty hospitals, long waiting times, more central control and more waste from Mr Blair, or cleaner hospitals, shorter waiting lists, more choice and value for money with the Conservatives.
Liberal Democrats: Health spokesman Paul Burstow
The Liberal Democrats will free the NHS from government meddling to let staff get on with the job of treating patients. We will support the NHS with the investment it needs to deliver quality healthcare.
We will provide a faster service. We will tackle the hidden waiting lists before you get a diagnosis. Some patients are waiting over a year for essential tests and scans. We will tackle the scandal of expensive NHS scanners standing idle by allocating additional funding to the NHS locally so it can be invested in training, new working arrangements, and recruitment and retention of key staff needed to operate them. We will offer diagnosis by the quickest practical route, public or private, so NHS treatment can start more quickly.
We will provide a fairer service. We will cut unfair charges for eye and dental checks. We will extend the range of long-term conditions which qualify for exemption from prescription charges following an independent review.
We will concentrate on keeping people healthy, not just treating the sick, and give people more control over their health. We will give people more control over their healthcare.
The Liberal Democrats will support the health service with the funding and freedom to give patients the quality of care they deserve.
The above texts are edited versions of articles which first appeared in The House Magazine.
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