Blair on offensive over NHS
The next few months are “absolutely critical” for the NHS and politicians and health workers must “hold our nerve” to see the reforms through, Tony Blair has said.
The prime minister admitted there were still “tremendous challenges” but said the health service was improving overall, particularly in waiting times for key treatment such as cancer, heart disease and stroke care.
Mr Blair used his monthly press conference today to hit back at recent bad headlines about the health service, and to regain the initiative from the Conservatives, who polls suggest have become the most trusted party on the NHS.
A Healthcare Commission report last week revealed 200 NHS trusts were performing weakly, and figures yesterday suggested more than 620 operations are being cancelled every day because of management cock-ups.
But today the prime minister rejected the operations figure, saying cancellations had fallen significantly since 1997, and that the commission report had actually shown major improvements across the NHS.
Speaking to reporters in Downing Street this lunchtime, he also took issue with claims by the Conservatives – backed up by employers’ group the NHS Confederation – that 20,000 jobs are being cut from hospitals across the country.
“This is a figure we don’t believe is compulsory redundancies at all, which is what most people think of as job cuts. The vast majority is either posts that are unfilled or people who will be redeployed,” he said.
“As far as I can see the [real job loss] figure is far short of that.” He suggested the number of compulsory redundancies in the NHS could be “a few hundred, not 20,000”.
His comments followed a brief presentation by NHS chief executive David Nicholson and chief medical officer Liam Donaldson on the state of the health service, where they said new technology and treatments inevitably meant changes to the NHS.
And Mr Blair stressed that although the NHS did have financial problems – trusts had deficits of £520 million last year – any cuts were “not so much [down to] financial management” as “structural changes to the way healthcare is delivered”.
He cited a patient who had had three pacemakers fitted in the past few years. The first required a general anaesthetic and he was in hospital for several nights – the most recent, a few months ago, took just an hour and a half.
However, shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley warned today’s presentation was a “last ditch attempt to claw back some credibility for Labour after their failure to manage our NHS”.
He said: “In 1997, Tony Blair claimed there were only 24 hours to save the NHS. But nine years on people are campaigning across the country against [Gordon] Brown’s NHS cuts, which are undermining frontline services and staff morale.”
