Nhs

The Tories will protect the NHS budget, David Cameron will announce in his speech to his party conference today. Extracts of the Prime Minister's speech, which he will deliver in Birmingham later today, include a promise to 'protect the NHS budget and continue to invest more'. Cameron will repeat George Osborne's argument that 'you can only have a strong NHS if you have a strong economy', and will also mention his own personal commitment to the health service, saying: 'From the country that unravelled DNA, we are now mapping it for each individual. Cracking this code could mean curing rare genetic diseases and saving lives. Our NHS is leading the world on this incredible technology. 'I understand very personally the difference it could make.

Today, David Cameron will pledge that if he’s re-elected he’ll give everyone access to a family doctor seven days a week. He will say:- “People need to be able to see their GP at a time that suits them and their family. That’s why we will make sure everyone can see a GP seven days a week by 2020. We will also support thousands more GP practices to stay open longer, giving millions of patients better access to their doctor. This is only possible because we’ve taken difficult decisions to reduce inefficient and ineffective spending elsewhere as part of our long-term economic plan. You can’t fund the NHS if you don’t have a healthy, growing economy.

Breaking the unions Sir: By the time this letter appears we shall know whether the land of my birth has separated from the land of my life. I hope not. But is there not an uncanny parallel between the rise of the Scottish desire to quit England and the English desire to quit Europe? The same arguments about control from a city outside the nation; about elites and technocrats dictating to and imposing upon a sturdy independent people; the belief that outside the union (with England, with European partners) a radiant future beckons; endless columns, pamphlets and books explaining why rule from London/Brussels must be overthrown; and a charismatic, one-liner leader worshipped by his followers and given uncritical support by the BBC and other media.

‘Let me get this straight,’ I said, looking my Slovakian friend in the eye. ‘You are going to go back to your own country because the healthcare here is no good?’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Is no good. Is terrible. I leave job and go home and sign on. I get treatment in Slovakia.’ I shook my head like a wet dog as if this might rouse me from a rum sort of surrealist nightmare. But it wasn’t a dream. It was true. My Slovakian friend, who seems sane enough, has decided to leave Britain in search of a better life in Bratislava. I don’t know her that well, it is true. She’s a friend’s lodger. We have become acquainted over the months she has been living in his house in Surrey and she seems nice enough.

Nothing matters more in British politics right now than keeping the country together. The polls in Scotland show that no one can be complacent about the result on the 18th of September. One thing that has helped the Nationalists to close the gap in Scotland is a serious of alarmist predictions about the NHS. They have seized on some of Andy Burnham’s overblown rhetoric to claim that the NHS south of the border is about to be privatised and that this will have a knock-on effect on Scotland. Given this, a period of silence on Mr Burnham’s part until after the referendum would be most welcome.

My first act upon returning from my holiday was to sign the online petition to have the supremely irritating children’s cartoon figure Peppa Pig banned from television. I have always found the creature half-witted, arrogant and sinister, and the tune which accompanies her exploits is both grating and didactic. Further, even allowing for the usual anthropomorphic licence employed by cartoonists, this Peppa does not remotely resemble a proper pig, and her snout is worryingly two-dimensional. She gave me hours of misery when my daughter was a toddler, although not quite so much as Balamory — a programme which made me feel physically unwell.

There have been some splendid rumours about my health. According to the most exotic, I was cas-evacked from a hill in Scotland, flown to St Thomas’s by private plane and then tested positive for Chateau Lafite. The truth is more banal — and much more reprehensible. I had neglected an infected foot: what an idiot. Finally, it came out in revolt. By the time I did turn myself in to Tommy’s, I was not far from being seriously ill. That has had one advantage. I think that it put me off the booze. The medics were pumping me full of antibiotics and I was determined to co-operate. One or two rakes have offered to smuggle in a bottle of hooch; I adamantly declined. Nothing would come between me and the cure. More-over, I did not feel like a drink.

Sometimes I have a quiet time as a voluntary hospital visitor. But recently I’ve witnessed a lot of distress from people of all ages and types. The other week I saw an elderly Middle Eastern man bent over a bin in a ward corridor, crying almost uncontrollably. I asked him the problem and he stuttered out that he had been watching his daughter sleeping, and he believed she was going to die. I went off to find a nurse as I felt I didn’t know enough about his situation or hers to help. The nurse wouldn’t tell me anything due to patient confidentiality. I returned alone to the man and tried to sympathise. He managed to say that his daughter had food poisoning. I didn’t think that sounded too bad, but he added that his wife had died of it.

Sometimes I have a quiet time as a voluntary hospital visitor. But recently I’ve witnessed a lot of distress from people of all ages and types. The other week I saw an elderly Middle Eastern man bent over a bin in a ward corridor, crying almost uncontrollably. I asked him the problem and he stuttered out that he had been watching his daughter sleeping, and he believed she was going to die. I went off to find a nurse as I felt I didn’t know enough about his situation or hers to help. The nurse wouldn’t tell me anything due to patient confidentiality. I returned alone to the man and tried to sympathise. He managed to say that his daughter had food poisoning. I didn’t think that sounded too bad, but he added that his wife had died of it.

We are used to political parties trying to claim credit for any positive development that happened during their time in office. The Labour Party’s current stance on healthcare is the exception to this rule. It represents the rare phenomenon of a party denigrating one of the best bits of its legacy. In the mid-2000s, the Labour government managed to inject a dose of competition into the once sclerotic provider-centric NHS. If shadow health secretary Andy Burnham is now positioning himself against the entry of private providers into the NHS, he is really positioning himself against one of his party’s biggest achievements.

For years, Secretaries of State for Health have studiously ignored one of the most corrosive regulations to the NHS: the European Working Time Directive. Although the EU is not supposed to have any remit over health, this 'health and safety' directive limits junior doctors' hours to an average of 48 hours per week, with added ECJ judgements imposing compulsory immediate compensatory rest time should hours be breached – and 'on-call' time classed as work, even if the doctor is fast asleep. This rigid imposition is neither healthy, nor safe; with junior doctors complaining that it has led them to do illicit work to get sufficient hours of training in, unpaid, less supervised, resulting in them being more tired and less trained.

If anyone thought Stephen Dorrell would take a break from talking about health after standing down as chairman of the House of Commons health select committee, they were quite wrong. The Spectator finds him in his Portcullis House office preparing to give a speech to the think tank Reform — his first since quitting the post — on how to make the health system better at delivering social care. He has no intention of leaving the NHS alone, even though he’s no longer leading the group of MPs whose job it is to scrutinise health policy. But, strangely, he stumbles when asked if he’s proud of the NHS. ‘Pride is a funny thing,’ he says carefully.