subject: Labour Ruins The National Health Service [print this page] The Labour Government is no longer trusted with the National Health Service (NHS) because the public believe that it has wasted money since 1997.
A recent poll has shown that only one in five voters have seen any improvement in the National Health Service despite a doubling of budgets,
It just goes to show that throwing money at a black hole is not an effective way of improving service in an efficient way.
Of the people polled over 65% believed that evening and or week end cover from Doctors who are General Practitioners (GP's) has decreased under Labour.
Indeed there have been reported cases where locums from outside of the UK have been used with disastrous results.
A large majority of the voting public have requested that GP's should take back the responsibility for the care of their patients at week ends and in the evening rather than simply subcontracting this service out to an agency which is what happens at the moment.
The overall verdict of the poll is Voters believe that Labour has wasted billions of pounds on bureaucracy and that the Conservatives have the best chance to get things back on a more efficient basis so as to ensure the long term viability of the NHS.
My father is 92 years old and recently I have had direct experience of the NHS at all levels. I have made it a policy to ask the Registrars and Consultants how they are finding things and they all answered with one clear voice to say that there are far too many accountants, managers and paper work and not enough of the frontline troops.
The results of this survey have been interpreted as evidence that the policy of David Cameron to put the Conservative support for the NHS as a key centre point in his election strategy is beginning to reap big dividends.
The poll suggests that the Labour Party's claim to be the party of the NHS has been damaged beyond repair since 1997. The main architect of the NHS and a great politician Aneurin Bevan would be turning in his grave to see what a mess New Labour have mode of his inspiration.
Labour's health manifesto in an attempt to try and regain the high ground promises the right to NHS care at home including end of life care and home births.
In the survey some credit has to be given to Labour as 19% stated that they had seen some improvement which they regarded as a significant improvement so that is a real result. The sting in the tail though is that some 56% believe that whilst there has been an improvement it is not sufficient enough to warrant the increased price. Basically the improvement that has been seen is not regarded as value for money.
Another rather disappointing statistic is that 18% think there has been no real improvement what so ever so from this you can deduce that 74% which is a clear majority do not believe that the Labour government has secured value for money for the tax payer.
The survey revealed that of those that had used the evening or week end service they were less than satisfied. This is where changes had been introduced by Labour which allowed GP's to duck out of the responsibility for dealing with patients outside of office hours. In some cases this responsibility has been subcontracted out to private companies sometimes using doctors who did not understand English. Of those that had used this service since 2004 60% had said the service had deteriorated.
The obvious question that has to be asked is which party the Conservatives or Labour will improve the NHS.
As Labour have had some 13 years but have achieved only a very small improvement having spent massive sums of money I think it is time for a change and the Conservative party needs to be given a chance.
