The NHS usually plays a starring role in general elections. But in this one there’s more interest in hung Parliaments than health check-ups
The National Health Service has barely had a look-in during this election. Sure, it limped into a few national headlines at the beginning of the week with claims about cuts from the nurses’ annual conference and from the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
But it did not set the world on fire or start any real discussion, although Prime Minister Gordon Brown accused broadcasters of ignoring the ‘issues’ and of being obsessed with leaders’ debates and hung Parliaments.
The problem is that these things have been far more interesting than much of what the parties have to say on health and other policies. The three main parties’ manifesto pledges on the NHS are really rather pedestrian. There are no big ideas and, apart from disputes over the use of the private sector and social care, there is not much between them. They all want more choice, more public involvement, less bureaucracy and decent GP opening hours.
Another problem – at least for the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats – is that Labour remains the party that the electorate trusts most to look after the NHS. A recent Ipsos Mori poll did show Labour only nine points ahead of the Tories on this, compared with 47 in 1997. But, hey, in the days of hung Parliaments, that surely must count as a decisive lead?
For all that, when health has raised its head at recent elections, it has not been good for Labour.
Remember Sharon Storer, the woman who harangued Tony Blair over cancer care in the 2001 election? Or the mother who, in 2005, caught the then prime minister off guard by having a go at him about how difficult it was to book an appointment with a GP? It probably still sends a shudder through Labour apparatchiks. Perhaps in this election, and particularly after Brown’s ‘bigot’ gaffe, no news about the NHS is good news for Labour.
This is not to say there haven’t been rows. There was one over social care and whether there should be compulsory contributions (Labour’s idea), voluntary payments (the Conservatives) or an independent commission (the Liberal Democrats), although that was largely over and done with before the election proper got under way. And pensioners’ benefits were raised during the second leaders’ debate. But that was more to do with Conservative leader David Cameron accusing Labour of playing dirty tricks by claiming the Tories were going to take those benefits away.
Where the NHS is making headlines is in the marginal and target constituencies and this comes back to the claims of cuts at the Royal College of Nursing congress. The LibDems and Conservatives have set up ‘Save our NHS’ campaigns, both stood in front of maternity units earmarked for closure (or not, depending on who you listen to), and made hay.
And what can Labour say? The NHS is facing a funding crisis and £20bn has to be saved by 2014. Ministers insist this can all be done through efficiency savings and have promised to protect frontline spending, but nobody is quite sure what this means. Mental health, physiotherapists, health visitors? Are they safe? Are they frontline?
Added to this, the NHS is in the midst of reconfigurations or reorganisations, with the emphasis on super, specialist units on one site rather than several units dotted across health authorities. That means ward closures that are not necessarily cuts. But try explaining that distinction to Mrs Bloggs, whose maternity unit is about to close its doors.
A couple of weekends ago, Nick Clegg went back to the maternity unit in Kingston, southwest London, where his last son was born. The local LibDems are claiming that the unit is going to be closed down as part of the reconfiguration in London. But the Tory candidate, who hopes to take the Kingston seat from the LibDems, has described this as ‘scaremongering’.
Pot and kettle, quite frankly. Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley has spent days in his battle bus travelling around marginal constituencies making much of closures, even promising to call a moratorium on them regardless of whether they have been part of a reconfiguration process.
Health Secretary Andy Burnham has accused both the Conservatives and the LibDems of indulging in ‘old-style grubby politics, playing on people’s fear of change in the NHS’.
If Lansley and LibDem health spokesman Norman Lamb were not so polite, their response would probably be ‘Sticks and stones, mate! Sticks and stones!’ It is an election after all.
Victoria Macdonald is social affairs correspondent for Channel 4 News
