David Cameron has promised voters that if conservative win this years general election, all of England’s hospitals will provide “a truly seven-day NHS” by 2020. Cameron has stated that he believes all hospitals should provide top-level treatment on the weekends, starting with emergency care. Therefore, conservatives are planning to provide full weekend hospital care in England – in exact accordance to the NHS’s own five-year plan.
However, in a government which has had to make huge spending cuts over the last few years, this promise has people wondering how this is economically viable. Although these statements are more concerned with politics, this promise is more of an attempt to neutralise Labour’s election strategy.
Labour said that the Conservatives plans for extreme spending cuts could be a threat to the upkeep of the NHS. Ed Miliband has put the NHS at the forefront of Labours election campaign and has promised to cap the amount of profit private firms can make from the NHS in England. This sudden competition over who will lead the NHS into better times has come about during the spring forum, and so far it seems that Labours most popular idea revolves around their plans for the NHS, which might explain Miliband’s reasoning behind putting the NHS at the heart of their campaign.
Cameron launched an attack on Labour at the forum in Manchester, reminding voters that Labour are the only party who has made cuts to the NHS, saying: “There is only group of politicians in the UK that has cut the NHS and that is the Labour party in Wales and they should be ashamed of what they did.”
In order to back his idea’s for the future of the NHS, Cameron warned that according to official studies, patients were “more likely to die” if they were admitted at weekends.
Cameron added: ”For years it’s been too hard to access the NHS out of hours. But illness doesn’t respect working hours. Heart attacks, major accidents, babies – these things don’t just come from nine to five,”
“With a future Conservative government, we would have a truly seven-day NHS… Already millions more people can see a GP seven days a week but by 2020 I want this for everyone, with hospitals properly staffed especially for urgent and emergency care, so that everyone will have access to the NHS services they need seven days a week by 2020 – the first country in the world to make this happen.”
The Liberal Democrats argued that the plans are pointless as the NHS already had plans to ensure that hospitals and doctors surgeries in England will be open seven days a week. UKIP also had something to say about the plans and said that the Conservatives had “degenerated the NHS beyond all recognition” during their last five years in government.
Despite this, David Cameron is putting up a fight and has made promises of protected real-terms increases in funding and an extra £2 billion a year. Labour has said it will spend £2.5 billion more than its opponents.
Out of all of this, it is clear the battle has already begun for those all important votes. Politicians know that the NHS is of huge concern for the British public, and might well be playing to our weaknesses. We will have to wait until the results are in on May 8th before we can judge how likely it really is that any of these promises will be kept.
**This is not one of my final pieces of work to be marked- I have written half a dozen news reports on topics and have chosen three reports which I will be submitting for my FYP. This is not one of them.**
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