By Nathaniel Mawson
The Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham is usually full of praise for the National Health Service and rightly so many would claim - after all, it could almost be the national religion and some may even claim that it already is. However, when Burnham starts saying things like "As winter bites, the NHS is facing its toughest time of the year" people stop to listen and begin to worry.
As a Burnham press release puts it “For 105 of Jeremy Hunt’s 133 days in office, the NHS has missed the Government’s A&E target and, last week, for the first time, it fell below 90% for major A&E units". However, as Health Spokesperson Daniel Poulter reminded us "the Right Honourable Gentleman is very good at putting across figures based upon very brief snapshots in the year" rather civil considering he later accused Burnham of misleading the house.
The Coalition is claiming they have put aside £330 million to deal with the problems winter inevitably causes and Poulter claims patients are being seen in a timely manner. However, the Labour Party are claiming that “right now, in A&Es up and down England, there are ambulances stuck in queues outside, patients on trolleys in corridors and people waiting hours on end to be seen".
From the way both parties speak about the National Health Service one could be forgiven for believing they were discussing completely different countries. Shadow Health Spokesperson Andrew Gynne and the Care Quality Commission claim hospitals are running with unsafe staffing levels and 7000 nursing posts have been lost from the NHS. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt also believes it is unacceptable to have unsafe staffing levels but hospitals are doing well and budgets have increased.
How well one believes the NHS is doing seems to be as much an indicator of how one votes as economic policy does. Whether one supports Hayek or Keynes. Whether one believes the NHS is boom or bust. These will, perhaps, be the factors that decide who forms a Government in 2015 and perhaps by then we'll be a little closer to the truth that hangs somewhere in the centre.
