Labour keep up NHS attacks on Tories


by Chris Barnyard    
2:53 am - August 18th 2009

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The Labour Party continues to use the NHS as a line of attack on Conservatives after a week of bad press for the latter, thanks to Dan Hannan MEP.

Today health secretary Andy Burnham writes in the Guardian that there were “three substantial dividing lines” between Labour and the Tories.

The first concerns national targets and standards. Andrew Lansley says the Tories would scrap Labour’s three flagship waiting targets: 18 weeks, four-hour A&E and the two-week cancer target. This would be a backward step. Now that these targets have been achieved, Labour will turn them into enforceable rights for patients. They will be minimum standards below which performance should never be allowed to slip. Removal of these standards, as the Tories propose, would inevitably see a loss of public accountability and a return to postcode variation.

The second dividing line is on NHS pay. Andrew Lansley drops heavy hints that the Tories would reintroduce local pay bargaining. mistake. National pay structures bring a stability to the system in terms of recruitment and retention.

The third area concerns national accountability. The Tories have proposed handing over the day-to-day running of the NHS to an independent board. This would be a major change in NHS governance – a major gamble with a structure that broadly works and it is by no means clear that it would bring any improvement in performance.

For a party that has promised a “bonfire of the quangos”, turning Britain’s best-loved institution into the biggest quango in the world – responsible for a £100bn budget and 1.4 million staff – is an idea that has had dangerously little scrutiny to date.

Unsurprisingly Hannan’s response to criticisms of his appearance on Glenn Beck has been to say that his critics were wrong. What else did you expect?

Meanwhile the Press Association reports that former health minister Lord Darzi was touring the US media defending the NHS.

He and Tom Kibasi, an honorary lecturer at Imperial College London, wrote an article in the Washington Post setting out “facts” about the NHS for American readers. They said fear was playing a major role in how the NHS was being discussed in the US. “The myth-making ranges from the misleading to the mendacious to the downright ludicrous,” they said.

“Bizarre allegations of “death panels” denying care to the elderly, doctors unable to make medical decisions and “socialised medicine” fill newspapers, airwaves and the blogosphere. These are, without exception, categorically untrue.”

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About the author
Chris is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He is an aspiring journalist and reports stories for LC.
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Reader comments


1. Martin Coxall

Far be it from me to advise Labour’s no doubt formidable strategists.

But…

Is it really a good idea to keep giving David Cameron a platform to talk about his love of the NHS, given that so far all Labour’s bickering has achieved is a 2pt jump in the ICM Tory poll position?

DO NOT GIVE DAVE FREE REIN OF A NEWS CYCLE. IT WILL ONLY HELP THE TORIES.

2. Mark M

Ours is a small country, where one can fairly easily arrange travel. Thus, providing a patient is given full choice over which hospital to go to, it doesn’t matter too much if the targets are removed and replaced with hospitals reporting various waiting times.

For instance, if I am told by my doctor that I need to see a knee specialist I would simply compare hospitals to find the best place to go (a bit like a confused.com for hospitals). As people will choose the best place to go, if a hospital wants patients (and payment) it will need to be a good hospital. If you have different hospitals competing for patients you will improve standards across the board. Even better, the improvements will be in areas the patients want, not just some measure that the government decides patients want.

3. Richard

Labour are understandably milking this for all its worth but it’s beginning to look like desperation now.

4. the a&e charge nurse

Not even Hannon wants the American system.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100006578/the-nhs-row-my-final-word/

While in Chicago health centres are being shut down
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100006578/the-nhs-row-my-final-word/

The right have opened a can of worms allowing NuLab to finally have their day in the sun – who can blame them for biting back?

5. Span Ows

Ironically enough all the above comments are right!

1. Nobody thinks the American system is better (…but it does have higher survival rates in certain key areas)
2. Labour and the Left are beginning to sound desperate but you can’t blame them for milking this issue as they have had very few things “to really go at” lately (especially when the Kaminski and Coulson “smears” flopped)
3. the NHS is overall a good thing but everyone knows at least one bad story/anecdote despite knowing that by far the greater number of good news never sees the light of day (no media interest)
4. David Cameron IS BELIEVED, and rightly so, by most people when he speaks genuinely about the NHS.

All in all it’s summer/silly season/not a lot of news/ whatever…I suspect that the more Labour push this the more media will find bad stories about the NHS to bash them with…the lady that gave birth in the street (despite the rights/wrongs/details of that story) is just the first.

6. Soho Politico

Looking at the caption on the Guardian piece, I can’t believe that, having had almost a week to think about it, the best message Burnham can come up with on the dividing line between Labour and the Tories over health is ‘national standards vs localism’. The electorate just don’t have strong enough feelings about the respective merits of central vs local control over public services for this to be an effective piece of political framing. It’s been obvious throughout the fallout from the Hannan affair, but Burnham can’t do political strategising to save his life.


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  1. Liberal Conspiracy

    : Labour keep up NHS attacks on Tories http://bit.ly/gcWDy

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  2. vastrat

    Liberal Conspiracy » Labour keep up NHS attacks on Tories: National pay structures bring a stability to the syst.. http://bit.ly/mJjYo

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  3. Liberal Conspiracy

    : Labour keep up NHS attacks on Tories http://bit.ly/gcWDy

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