Fight For The NHS

Kevin Maguire writes:

The pledge by Labour’s Andy Burnham to repeal the privateers’ charter that is the Health and Social Care Act is cited as a good reason to vote Labour.

A good friend, a trade unionist who beat cancer, said she could cry when she sees what’s happened to the NHS.

Under the controversial law passed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, health in England is carved into bite-sized pieces ready to be digested by profit-hungry companies.

Chunks of our greatest institution, a life-saving service free when we need it most, are being gobbled up by speculators with pound signs in their eyes.

Other reasons cited to vote Labour next May include capped energy bills, abolition of the Bedroom Tax, a higher minimum wage, curbs on zero hours-zero pay contracts, jobs for the young, regulated private rents to end Rachman rip-offs and plans to build 200,000 new houses a year.

And a Labour MP listed to me the reasons to stop David Cameron’s Conservatives, with protecting trade unions from draconian shackles the top of his high pile.

But it is the crisis in the NHS which may scupper Tory plans to fight the next general election on the economy.

The battle line is the Tories pointing to national statistics to show economic growth and Labour encouraging voters to ask themselves if they are better off in 2015 than 2010, which most won’t be.

Yet it is the NHS that may prove Labour’s trump card. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is failing to neutralise it as an issue as waiting lists mount and services decline.

The Beast of Bolsover nailed it – as he so often does – in Parliament by reminding voters the Tories might be in charge of the NHS but they can’t run it.

Hunt blaming every problem on the last Labour Government of four years ago is a political smokescreen blown away by calamities in accident and emergency units, GP surgeries and care for the elderly.

All are cataclysms on the Tory Health Secretary’s watch and his shouting “Stafford Hospital” might cheer bovine Con MPs but it doesn’t assuage the concerns of patients waiting more than four hours in A&E or a week for a GP appointment.

Ed Miliband should focus on the NHS when he speaks on Thursday at the launch of a policy wonk ­Condition of Britain study by the IPPR think tank.

The document is billed as the most important study on the state of Britain since the 2008 financial crash and he needs to translate it into the language of voters if it’s to hit home.

Miliband is handicapped by his failure to communicate the truth the banking crisis created the deficit. Labour’s hobbled by the public believing, wrongly, that the deficit somehow triggered the crash.

He’s also proved inept at defending the best of the last Labour Government’s record. That failure is curious when he sat in the Cabinet for part of it. But the NHS is his home turf.

Ideologically, the Cons have always been uncomfortable with publicly delivered universal health care. The Tory mishandling of public services is also evident in the passports fiasco.

Unison leader Dave Prentis will make the case for strong public services in Brighton tomorrow. My advice to Miliband is listen and embrace his points.

Because the NHS, as Prentis and Burnham recognise, is an issue that might win him the election. The Tories commit a strategic mistake by putting all their eggs in the economy basket.