It doesn’t matter who runs the NHS – just so long as politicians don’t

The NHS isn’t safe in Conservative hands; but nor was it in Labour’s. The men and women in Whitehall and Westminster have let us down for years, sometimes with catastrophic results.

It doesn’t matter who runs the NHS, just so long as it isn’t politicians. They have, after all, spent decades demonstrating how uniquely unqualified they are to run anything as important as our National Health Service.

But the health-care reforms that came into effect on Monday could change that. These give local doctor-led groups control over NHS budgets, put local authorities in charge of public health services, including responsible drinking and obesity programmes; and open the door to more involvement of non-profits, private companies and charities. In other words, they potentially offer us a more independent health service, and freedom from political tinkering.

In 1992, I watched my father dying of a long-misdiagnosed cancer in a dirty and chaotic Liverpool hospital. At the time, I couldn’t imagine things could get worse. For more than ten years, a Conservative government had manipulated the NHS to breaking point. Waiting lists had spiraled upwards; ward and hospital closures were commonplace; free dental and eye checks had been scrapped.

But the notion that the NHS would be safe in Labour hands, cherished and revived, was false. Yes, there were improvements after 1997 – shorter waiting times, more patient choice – but not enough to justify the vast sums spent.

It has been Labour’s propensity since the 1980s to use the NHS (and education, for that matter) as a convenient annex of partisan dogma with which to beat the Conservatives. But the NHS is far too important to be a cudgel to win cheap votes.

The horrific failure of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust to put patient care before targets – leaving up to 1,200 elderly people dead –happened under Labour. But it could just as easily have happened under a Conservative government. Or a Coalition government.

So bring on the local doctors, nurses and clinicians, the councils, charities and not-for-profits and yes, even the private companies – our NHS needs you.

Sixty five years ago, Nye Bevan said the NHS would “last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it.” If he was here today, he might think the faithful, after enduring years of political fiddling and rhetoric, have finally been handed new weapons. His only real complaint might be Labour’s failure to have armed them sooner.

This piece first appeared at http://www.speakerschair.com on 3rd April 2013