There is one important line in Ed Miliband’s Hugo Young lecture which shows the Labour leader is trying to come to terms with some of the difficult questions that he knows he must answer before 2015. Labour knows that it will have to close hospitals to improve services. But it also doesn’t really want to say that, because it makes people angry.
So tonight’s speech, which you can read in full below, includes an announcement that Labour would not close hospitals without involving local people in the decision. Miliband said:
‘I am not going to make promises I can’t keep particularly on this issue. No service can stand still. But if we truly believe in pushing power down to people, we have to accept that we can’t at the same time defend a system where decisions this important are taken in a high-handed, Whitehall knows best way. Indeed, the problem with the current approach is that it creates a dynamic of decisions taken behind closed doors, lacking legitimacy, with little public debate about the real reasons a change is being proposed.
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