Last night I was featured on ITV Calendar with three other parliamentary candidates discussing the NHS. Healthcare is the reason that I first decided to stand for parliament. The NHS is important to me and having lost my father through catching a hospital infection following a routine operation, I have seen how things can go wrong, however at the same time my mother had a knee replacements last year and had excellent care so I know when things are good too. Therefore to me personally it is about ensuring continuity of good care throughout the country.
Political parties need to stop using the NHS as a political football, Labour claim they are the party of the NHS, however it was the Liberals under Beveridge who came up with the concept, it was voted through parliament under Winston Churchill (A Conservative) and it was ready for whichever party formed a majority after that election some seventy years ago, to put these changes that had been voted upon in place, that party happened to be the Labour Party, My point being that all parties have been involved in the process of founding our NHS. But it does not belong to politicians or political paries, it belongs to the British people. “While the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party quickly adopted Beveridge's proposals, the Labour Party was slow to follow’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beveridge_Report
There is so much rhetoric from the Labour Party that the Conservatives are privatising the NHS and there has been cuts in this parliament to the NHS, these are complete untruths. The Labour Party bring out this false rhetoric every election. Untruths must stop. No wonder there is a disconnect with the general public when untruths keep being banded around.
The truths are that;
Labours Failings NHS
• Labour ran Wales cut their NHS budget and haven’t hit their A&E targets over the last four years
• NHS privatisation under Labour- Independent providers made up of 5% under Labour
• Labour Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham said we were irresponsible for protecting the NHS budget
• The biggest threat tour NHS is having a Labour government and them losing control of our countries finances again
• Labour costings; Labour cannot meet their promise on public spending, They have promised a GP appointment within 48 hours and costed £100 million for this, but according to official treasury costing the actual cost will be £1.4 billion
• Andy Burnham Shadow Health Secretary wants to write to evey one in the UK about the NHS and polices just as Nye Bevan did. Official Treasury figures show this will cost £10 million
Facts about our NHS
•582 more doctors in Yorkshire & Humber under this government than under labour since 2010
•We are hiring more doctors, nurses and midwifes to look after patients;
9,000 more doctors, 2,000 more midwifes and 7,000 more nurses working in the NHS since we took over in 2010
•Reducing the number of managers so that money goes on the frontline and now have 6,000 fewer managers
•Our government has Increased the NHS budget by 12.7 billion over this parliament
•We the Conservatives will continue to make real term increases if we are elected in May
•The chancellor has announced an extra £2billion funding every year for frontline NHS services
•Funding treatments such as the £1.6 billion Cancer Drugs Fund which already has helped more than 60,000 people
•Bringing back named GPs for the vulnerable elderly
•Nearly eradicated mixed sex wards, protecting patients dignity
•Hospital infections have halved since we came into government
•We are holding an annual review on patient safety, which will be the first of its kind in the world
The only way that we can continue to have a strong NHS is by having a strong economy and this is why it is important to elect the Conservatives into government for another term.