As a society we are judged by the way that we care for the vulnerable, the elderly, and those suffering from illness. Britain can be proud that in 1948 we led the world in laying the foundations for a universal health service, available to all regardless of wealth.
And we continue to lead the world today. Earlier this year the Commonwealth Fund rated the UK NHS best in the world overall, as well as in a number of specific categories.
In this Government, Liberal Democrats have protected health spending, and will continue to do so. But when we are spending £52bn a year on debt interest, we can only protect the NHS by re-ordering our public finances.
Over the past four years, the Liberal Democrats have played a central role in putting our national finances back in order. The economic crisis of 2008 presented a direct threat to our ability to adequately fund services like the NHS. This year the UK economy is expected to grow faster than that of any other major economy in the world, and this would not be happening without the Liberal Democrats in Government.
As Liberal Democrats we believe that as well as building a stronger economy, we must also work to create a fairer society. This means access to good quality health and care services for all, free at the point of use.
And to sustain our NHS for the future it needs investment and improvement. We have a rapidly ageing population, and increasing numbers of people living for longer with multiple chronic health conditions. We need to join up care around people’s lives, putting patients in the driving seat and providing better care in communities, closer to home.
We have announced today that we will table an amendment in Glasgow which will commit the Party to providing an extra £1 billion of real term funding for the NHS in the years 2016/17 and 2017/18 in addition to our existing commitment to protect funding in line with inflation.
This is a fully-funded commitment: it will be matched with measures to limit tax relief on pension pots for high earners, by adjusting dividend tax for additional rate tax-payers to reflect recent cuts in corporation tax, and ending the misguided Conservative policy of “shares for rights”.
We have also said that extra funding for the NHS will also be our priority in the Coalition negotiations for this year’s Autumn Statement.
Our announcement shows that the Liberal Democrats are the only party who are committed to building a stronger economy and a fairer society. The NHS is one of our proudest achievements as a nation. We must ensure that it is able to make the changes required to continue to provide excellent care in the years to come.
* Norman Lamb is MP for North Norfolk and was Liberal Democrat Minister of State at the Department of Health until May 2015. He now chairs the Science and Technology Select Committee
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In which my great great grandmother's brother stuffs a ptarmigan
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Reform inadvertently lose their majority
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Roland
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Nonconformistradical
9 Comments
Norman – you say this is fully costed.
That is not the view of FPC member (or senior policy maker if I were a journalist) who describes this as “loosely costed – to put it mildly”
And goes on to say:
“The thrust of the announcement is to commit to a further £1billion real terms investment in the NHS each year until the structural deficit is eliminated, paid for by three tax measures: an increase (unspecified) in dividend tax on additional rate taxpayers, a further tightening of the cap on pension tax relief and scrapping the Tories’ ‘shares for rights’ scheme.
Except the latter two are already in the paper [that is to say they are in the pre-manifesto so are presumably part of funding for other commitments like raising the threshold and a big increase in pupil premium].
Therefore the proposal takes a chunk of the already relatively small amount of money the Lib Dems plan to raise from the wealthiest in order to balance the books, and spends it somewhere: leaving more to be found from cuts which as Mark Pack and I have pointed out will disproportionately fall on local government and welfare.”
Those are serious critcisms from a credible source. I hope you will address them.
No mention of Mental Health again
Matt, Nick Clegg majored on Mental Health in respect of this proposal today. But Hywel’s criticism is more valid. David Laws said today on the BBC that the Lib Dems are giving more detail of costed spending plans than any other Party in respect of the deficit.
Claiming that we are addressing 10 per cent of the problem compared to three or one per cent is not chillingly convincing at this time. In the face of such collective vacillation by three supposedly ‘responsible’ parties, are we surprised that anti-politics candidates have been doing so well, recently?
All three ‘main’ parties have now made meaningless commitments to the NHS without explaining how they will address the massive (£30 billion) flunding gap caused by an ageing population and more expensive treatments. All three parties know that major changes will be needed, probably that hospital will need to close, and that local services will be lost. But they are not being honest with the public. The coalition has, through the Lansley bill, already passed the enabling legislation to allow the ‘reconfiguration’ to take place. No mention of any of this from Norman Lamb.
Interesting speech by Southport MP John Pugh just now.
His description of the Lansley Top Down Reorganisation of the NHS was “MAOIST DECONSTRUCTION”.
Sounds about right.
Except it’s not just LaLa’s destruction is it? As reported here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17447992), the Tories weren’t alone in their rejoicing at this terrible bill coming into force.
John Broggio,
The compulsive urge to ‘reorganise’ the NHS in an expensive, pointless (except for suppliers of headed stationary) and confusing manner appears to be endemic among Secretaries of State for Health among all parties and the last Labour crew was not immune. Forcing NHS Trusts to pay private firms for services even if they were not provided and the destruction of Community Health Councils for their sins of pointing out defects come to mind. It is a disease which makes Ebola seem mild in comparison – and which has probably killed of more people to date.
Good speech by John Pugh.
It is clear that the last thing the Health Service needs is another major re-organisation. The motion the conference has just passed endorses the policy paper which seeks to moderate the provisions of the Lansley Bill by enhancing the role of the Health and Well Being boards, by removing the need for services to be tendered if CCGs are happy with them, and by ending the role of the Competition and Markets Authority in health.
I don’t think it goes far enough, and it is not clear how Health and Well being board will have more influence. I do not think it provides sufficient local safeguards, and would have preferred to see reform to the membership of clinical commissioning groups (CCG). The latter is necessary to remove some of the conflicts of interest that GP controlled CCG have with private companies established by GPs. I would need a legal opinion to clarify whether removing the role of the Competition and Markets authority makes this problem worse.
Nevertheless it is a step in the right direction. I would like to believe that Norman Lamb shares the criticism of the Lansley Bill, and that in future the Liberal Democrats will not give the Tories such a free ride on health matters.
Is there an answer on Gareth’s point?