Sit down, take a deep breath and steady yourself: we’ve had a change of approach from the Tories on NHS spending. No, they’re not promising cuts. But they are promising, for the first time, a much slower rate of real-terms spending increases. Andrew Lansley has said that he can only guarantee “small increases” in the health budget, adding a simple point that we haven’t heard too many times from his corner:
“We have trebled the amount taxpayers spend on the NHS but we have not seen a real return … We are determined to turn this situation around. The NHS, just like any other organisation in this recession, needs to focus on getting more for less. If Labour’s time in charge has taught us anything, it is that simply spending more money will not necessarily lead to improvements.”
Ok, I still think that real-terms health spending increases, of any size, may be too much for the next government to bear as they deal with Brown’s debt crisis.
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