I pledge will do all I can to protect the NHS
Let me state this clearly so it cannot be misunderstood. I support the NHS, I am fully behind a universal, “free at the point of care” Health Service, paid for out of taxation. Indeed, I have refused to take up the offer of private health insurance in a former job (ironically a large supplier to the NHS) as I felt it would be a betrayal of my personal principles. Where I differ from Labour, the Greens and others on the left, is that I put getting the best care possible and value for tax payers money ahead of out of date ideology.
If elected as MP for Bassetlaw,
and to keep it providing the best possible care to everyone. I will also do all I can to protect the principle of “free at the point of care”.
This doesn’t mean that the NHS should not change and that how it delivers on that principle cannot be improved. The one constant in the NHS is change in how it provides services to meet the changing needs placed on it.
We are all living much longer and the conditions & diseases older people suffer from are presenting new challenges. Also, healthcare is developing, new treatments and procedures are being available, tests that were a few years ago only just becoming possible are now commonplace. However many of these developments are not as cheap as the simpler, less complicated (but less effective) tests & treatments that were all that was available even in the recent past. In addition, because of the economic situation, the nation has to be careful how taxes are spent, we need to find new and better ways to face those challenges and make sure that we, the tax payers, get best value for our money.
Because of this we need to be open to allowing ways apart from just the state-owned “in-house” NHS to provide these services. This is not privatisation of the NHS, it is extending something that has been part of the NHS since in inception. GPs have always been private partnerships working with the NHS to provide a service. Opticians, including big chains run by multinational companies, have provided eye checks & NHS funded glasses from the start of the NHS.
To make sure we the tax payers get value for our money, there should be two tests for any private sector provider,
The care of patients must be as good as, if not better, than the in-house NHS equivalent can give. This must include data protection and the sharing of relevant data with other care providers (something the NHS is not particularly good at) so that continuity of care is maintained regardless of who provides any one service.
The cost to tax payers is less than the in-house NHS equivalent and there are no hidden subsidies or “sweet-heart deals” such as the Labour Government made with some providers (and have now been made illegal by the Coalition). The calculation of cost should include the element of training & career development that the NHS provides but isn’t usually accounted for in the pricing of these services by those who commission them
The NHS and whoever provide services in it must remain publicly funded and publically accountable. While there may be some on the far right of the Conservative party (and indeed in UKIP) who want to scrap the NHS, I along with most people in the UK want to keep it. I have no problem with any provider that passes these tests working with the NHS. Indeed, sometimes it is the new providers that can put into action better ways of working the NHS often finds hard to do and the “in-house” providers can learn from this.
The biggest threat to the NHS today is the constant running down of the NHS and what it is achieving by Labour (and some Trade Unionists) for political point scoring, “weaponising the NHS” as Ed Miliband put it. In fact by doing this, Labour are making the case that actually helps the right wing Tories to do what they want, that the NHS isn't working and should be really privatising.
No one is claiming the NHS is perfect and cannot be improved but, in spite of what Labour claim, it is providing a wonderful service and far better than it was in the time that many in Labour & the Unions want to return it to. The fact is that satisfaction with the NHS is rising with the second highest level of satisfaction ever recorded and dissatisfaction at an all-time low. We need to build on the successes of the NHS and continue to improve it, the last thing it needs is an ideologically driven set of reforms that will turn the clock back to the days of long waiting lists, rationing of treatments and no choice.
