Today’s row about Accident and Emergency has little to do with the issue itself, and far more about one party trying to prove a point about the other. Those rows are the most vitriolic, the most hard-fought, and to the outside world, the most pointless.
The King’s Fund today finds waiting times are at their worst level for nine years. What’s going wrong? Each side has its own theories. But what’s significant is that each side is trying to use this row to steal that coveted ‘party of the NHS’ title. This was abundantly clear from Andy Burnham’s response to the report, written in what appears to be a spitting rage. Normally press statements from any party are just too dull to reproduce in full, but the shadow health secretary’s quotes are worth reading:
‘The revelation that A&E waiting times have hit a ten-year high under David Cameron demolishes once and for all the Tory spin that the A&E crisis has nothing to do with them. David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt have wasted precious time provoking a fight with GPs to distract attention from their own failings. Their arrogance and complacency in the face of a crisis is one of the greatest dangers the NHS faces.
‘That is why Labour is showing the leadership the health service needs by hauling them to the Commons on Wednesday, while the Tory-led Government fails to get a grip on the real causes – front-line job cuts, the disastrous introduction of the 111 service the closure of the NHS walk-in centres and the collapse of social care. Two-thirds of NHS leaders surveyed by the King’s Fund say the Government’s cuts to local authority budgets are hitting the NHS, with more older people left without the care they need at home, and many others getting stuck in hospital beds at the end of their treatment. That is why Labour has said we would use the ‘underspends’ in the NHS Budget to put an extra £1.2 billion into social care over the next two years – relieving the pressure on A&E and tackling the scandal of older people left at home without adequate care. The crisis in A&E proves that you can’t trust David Cameron with the NHS.’
The reason this statement is worth reading in full is that it shows that this row is as much about politics – for both sides – as it is about who is seeing a doctor in A&E in good time. Jeremy Hunt spent most of his response to an urgent question on the subject in the Commons before recess criticising Labour’s failure over the health service; Labour now disputes his reasons for the pressure on emergency units. Andy Burnham chants that you can’t trust David Cameron with the NHS because of his ‘arrogance and complacency’, in spite of ‘Tory spin’, and suggests that you should trust Labour because his party have succeeded in hauling Hunt and Co into the Commons for a debate on the NHS on Wednesday.
Both parties want to be able to say that they are the only ones you can trust with the NHS, and will continue their fight from row to row, like a political version of Super Mario. One level is the Francis Report into the Mid-Staffs scandal. Hunt and Burnham finish their fight there and move up to the next level to tussle over the A&E crisis. They both know that being the party of the NHS, or at least the party voters don’t blame for a poor NHS, is desperately important, and so they’ll keep fighting until one of them completes the game and grabs the ‘party of the NHS crown’. But the fight isn’t over yet, and with each new level, the row will get nastier.
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