Sense reigns, as the Tories redefine their health spending pledge

Streeter

Crap, they're starting to sound like Gordon Brown already!

King Prawn

Well they can make a start to cutting the NHS budget by getting rid of the 20,000 odd managers that Labour took on last year and take back the 7% pay rise they received.

Boo

Nice health budget gets its cuts, and its the Lib dems fault

John Ionides

This might be a convenient change in terms of creating wriggle room with tight budget requirements, but it does not change the underlying fact that we were right to pledge an increase in health spending. Given an ageing population this is something that we need to aspire to.

HJ

We could pay medics, including GPs, about what they pay in other European countries where producer interest doesn't reign supreme. That would save the odd billion.

Incidentally, it's not 'health' spending - it's 'NHS' spending. You can spend as much as you like on medical services. It makes relatively little difference to public health as other factors such as diet, sanitation, housing, exercise and smoking are far more important.

Woody

Both parties have policies they want to ditch, mostly because the debt is far greater than I believe anyone imagined at the time they made these policies.
I hope this is the new grown up politics of the future. I don't want this coalition to last for ever and I'm sure both parties supporters don't want it to but we have to have a strong government for the foreseeable future to get us through this mess. I believe the job is to great for one government and at least the flak that the MSM (particularly the BBC) are going to throw at them, can be shared.

cityboozer

The document Alex posted clearly says real terms. You have caught a slip of the tongue.

AP

Except the published agreement now says that health spending will increase in real terms. Presumably you will now update the blog to say how insane the Tories are.

Will J

AP is right: ConHome is reporting it as real terms increases, which I assume is accurate :-(

John Wright

Just back from my local Xray dept, where the waiting room full of outpts had the cental heating going full blast.Almost passed out with the heat.Dont tell me the NHS could not save tens of millions without reducing Clinical Services.

Nick Grady

Having NHS spending increase, either in real terms or otherwise is very worrying. What I wanted this incoming government to address was the imbalance and therefore economic effectiveness, between spending on front line services at point of application against the cost of management. For instance the NHS now has a dedicated authority for head hunting senior posts! In private business the companies HR department would have responsibility alongside the directors for this. Why does the NHS have to have a separate body to oversee this. Particularly worrying is the fact that they have already headhunted a ratio of 3 to 1 for the available or future available posts. This kind of overspend and extended spending for jobs that do not exist is deeply worrying and takes financial resources away from where the money is needed most.
I think the best case for controlling NHS spending came from David Cameron's victory speech outside 10 Downing St yesterday when he indicated - people who can should say "what can I give" - and those that cannot should be afforded a level of help.
This is the mentality that the NHS needs. People need to question what level of care they should be afforded by right and what they should do without because of the lifestyle choices they themselves have made.
The NHS should, like a welfare system, be there to protect those those that cannot protect themselves. It should not be there as a divine right for people to have access simply to squander there lives selfishly in the misguided notion that there is an automatic safety net for their own lack of personal discipline.
People often forget, despite it's changes over the years - it is a free health service - therefore a charity.
Going forward, people should accept responsibilty for there own needs, ensuring those that are influenced by life outside of their own control have the protection of health that a civilised and caring society should afford them.
Labour threw money at the wall in the hope that some of it stuck where it needed to. The Conservative, Lib/Dem alliance needs to ensure that the money goes where it is needed most and inefficiency and waste is properly eliminated.
Cuts do not have to be stringent, but, like the call for Banks to manage their risks in an economically viable and sensible fashion for the benefit of the end consumer, the same is justifiably true to be expected of this new govenment in dealing with the NHS.
It would hypocritical to expect anything less, or indeed, to give anything more.

TrevorsDen

heath commitments are rising faster than inflation and a bit beyond inflation anyway. The NHS had a splurge of spending, some of that will in cur ongoing increased costs. Bringing that back to anywhere near inflation will be terribly painful. The NHS knows this and is planning for it already.