Plan for a better NHS
Thank you, John, for introducing our discussion on health this afternoon.
I’m delighted to have our health team on the stage. Let me introduce them.
Stephen O’Brien, who leads on social care and the medical profession.
Mark Simmonds, who leads on primary care and pharmacy.
Anne Milton, who leads on nursing, midwifery and mental health.
Mike Penning who leads on urgent care, ambulances and dentistry.
In the Lords, Freddie Howe and Ian McColl, the former Professor of surgery at Guy’s Hospital, do a great job.
Under David’s leadership, we are leading the debate on health reform and are now more trusted with the future of the NHS.
They are a strong team. And they’re fun to work with too.
Ladies and Gentlemen, please join me in thanking them for all their hard work.
This year, we have celebrated the Diamond Jubilee of the NHS. David and I really enjoyed taking, ‘ Britain’s Got Talent’ to entertain staff and patients in the Evelina Children’s Hospital.
And at Guy’s Hospital, we met some of those who were working in the NHS on the 5th July 1948 – its first day.
My father was one of those. David met him and asked him what he and his colleagues thought about the NHS on day one.
My father, who was then working in a pathology department in North London, said he and his colleagues were really looking forward to the NHS, because they hoped to get away from all the bureaucracy in the London County Council.
You might say: “Everything changes and everything stays the same”.
But something very important did change.
No longer would families fear that illness would make their family destitute. We realise that we’re all in this together.
The values of the NHS are just as relevant today as they were in 1948.
If you doubt it, just look at how important it is to U.S Presidential candidates to reform their health services, so that they can achieve universal coverage; to reduce the 47 million uninsured Americans.
As they reduce inequalities of access in healthcare.
We must not move towards inequality of access.
So we will, for the first time, entrench in statute the principles of the NHS, in a constitution which gives the NHS the long-term stability it so badly needs.
NHS staff are fed up with endless, pointless reorganisations. But are they happy with the NHS as it is?
A survey this year, conducted for the Department of Health showed that the staff of the NHS are committed to what the NHS stands for.
The majority said they would speak highly of the NHS, on this account.
But the same survey went on to ask about the NHS as it is now. How different the answer was. More than half of the doctors and nurses in the NHS said they would speak critically of the NHS as it is now.
NHS staff value the NHS, but fear for its situation today.
I share the concerns of the staff working in the National Health Service.
They want their service to live up to its values and to its full potential.
They want to see positive change.
They want to cut the bureaucracy and form-filling. They know we need reform. They want to be empowered to provide the best possible care for patients.
They want to make our health service world-class. And so do we.
It is an ambition we share: for our health care to be the best in the world.
If we are to achieve this, it’s time for change.
We have for a generation thought that the NHS is the envy of the world.
For equity it may be.
But for outcomes it is not.
Why are avoidable premature deaths in this country 10 per cent higher than in Germany and a third higher than in France?
Why are there two-thirds more deaths from lung disease in this country than the European average?
Why is the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor wider now than a decade ago?
Why have deaths from MRSA gone up four-fold in the last decade in this country, while the Dutch and Danish keep MRSA levels at rock bottom?
Why are fifteen per cent more cancer patients alive five years after diagnosis in Sweden, than in Britain?
Why is Britain the leading centre in Europe for cancer research, yet one of the last places where our NHS patients have access to new cancer medicines?
Why is a drug like cetuximab, for bowel cancer, available in every other European country, but denied to patients in this country?
I am determined all of this will change. And we have a plan for change.
A plan for improving the NHS.
A plan that puts you – the patient - in the driving seat.
One that empowers you to choose the GP best for you. That gives you the information you need to make that choice.
Allowing everyone to register with the GP practice they want– be it near your place of work or home.
Our plan means enabling people with long-term conditions to control their nursing and social care through a personal budget.
It’s a plan that gives you the choice of any hospital that can guarantee quality care at NHS prices.
Through the empowering force of choice, NHS professionals will become accountable for the quality of care delivered to their patients.
And we will ensure that the voice of patients is listened to through the creation of a national consumer voice: HealthWatch – alongside National Voices, a new organisation speaking up for the voluntary sector in health.
In this plan, scrapping targets and bureaucracy will free up resources to frontline care.
No longer will patients wait in ambulances outside hospitals because of A&E targets.
No longer will half of our nurses say that patient care isn’t their hospitals’ top priority.
We will take nurses away from form-filling and put them back at the bedside.
Instead of seeing NHS productivity drop by two and a half per cent per year, we will see rising productivity deliver faster access to healthcare, raising standards and improving outcomes.
Eight years ago, Tony Blair said we would match European levels of spending. That’s happened. But we don’t match European health outcomes. Yet that is what we must achieve.
At the heart of our NHS improvement plan is a simple proposition:
If responsible professionals have the freedom to respond to informed and empowered patients, services will improve.
We will end Labour’s political targets that distort clinical judgements.
As a consultant said: “you end up treating the clock, not the patient”.
And our pricing proposals for drugs will mean we get value-for-money and access to the latest cancer drugs in the NHS. Patients who need life-extending drugs should expect the NHS to provide comprehensive care, not leave them to pay for top-up drugs.
We will give GPs power and budgets to purchase care on behalf of their patients.
Through an independent NHS Board, evidence-based standards will lead the purchasing of care.
Hospitals and community healthcare providers will get greater freedom.If they meet safety and quality standards, within NHS prices, they will be able to offer services to meet patient demand.
So top-down pressure to shut local maternity and A&E services will be ended. We are already winning our battle against cuts to those services.
At the Horton Hospital in Banbury, and at Eastbourne, our arguments have won. At both hospitals, consultant-led obstetric services will be retained.
We will carry on the fight to ensure people will get the choice and local access they expect.
And because we will put power and responsibility back in the hands of GPs, no longer will it be possible for top-down plans to impose distant, impersonal polyclinics, undermining trusted family doctor services.
So let us resolve again today to keep campaigning for a local say over NHS services.
For community hospitals, for GP-led services, against Labour’s cuts and top-down polyclinic plans.
CHOICE, DIGNITY AND SAFETY
Today, I can tell you how our plan will empower patients to deliver the standards that patients have a right to expect.
Labour’s flawed target culture has treated patients like numbers; we will treat patients as individuals. We will give them dignity and respect.
Labour promised to abolish mixed-sex wards, but failed.
Labour promised safety for patients on mental health wards, but failed.
Labour promised to tackle infections, but failed.
Last year, there were over 8,000 deaths associated with Clostridium Difficile. Almost three times the number of deaths on our roads.
We know that single rooms and isolation facilities are essential to combat infection, and yet last November, the Health Protection Agency reported that three-quarters of hospitals had problems due to lack of isolation rooms.
Most of the hospitals opened in recent years don’t even have the 50 per cent of single rooms the Government said they should.
We also know that over a third of patients would prefer to be in a single room when in hospital.
I am determined that the NHS will be equipped to meet standards of dignity and safety, and provide real choice to patients – the kind of choices which private patients take for granted.
So today I am announcing that within five years, under a Conservative Government, every patient will be given the opportunity to choose a single room when booking an operation in hospital.
Every hospital will have the single rooms they need to isolate infected patients.
All mothers in maternity care will have access to a single room.
All mental health patients will have single rooms.
No patient will be in mixed-sex accommodation.
What does this mean?
It means a quiet night for mothers and their babies.
It means safety on mental health wards.
It means privacy for patients.
It means protection against cross-infection.
It is a major step forward in combating infections like Clostridium-difficile.
It means we care about the care we give to the people of this country.
Labour’s endless promises just amounted to more bureaucracy and less delivery. The number of managers is rising twice as fast as the number of nurses. Costs rising and productivity falling.
And Labour Ministers ignoring staff and then taking credit for the hard work of de-motivated and demoralised NHS staff.
We will get responsibility, resources, reward and results at the front line.
This contrast between Labour failure and Conservative delivery is not new.
PERORATION
Back in 1979, when I was at University, I went to see Margaret Thatcher speak at Exeter Guildhall.
I had never heard anything so simple and so clear.
She made three promises:
To restore the value of money;
To break the power of the Unions; and,
To make Britain great again.
And she achieved all three.
In doing so, she unleashed the energy, enterprise and innovation of British business.
Today, once more, this country will need a Conservative Government to take Britain from Labour crisis to Conservative recovery.
Like 1979, it will require the revitalisation of our economy.
It will require sound finances and sound money.
But, thirty years on, it will require more.
Last year, David defined our vision equally clearly:
To give people more control over their lives.
To build stronger families and a stronger society.
For a safer, greener, healthier Britain.
These challenges are every bit as vital as Margaret faced thirty years ago.
These define our mission. They give us direction.
At this conference, we are showing how, together, we can make that journey. With detailed plans for change.
After 1979, we released the energy and enterprise of British business – After the next election, we will release the energy, enthusiasm, innovation and enterprise of those working in the NHS.
To realise the full potential of our NHS.
Quality services.
Security for every family in need.
An example to the world.
Making our healthcare the best in the world.
That is my mission.
It is our ambition as a future Government.
It is a vision we and the NHS share
and one we can deliver together.