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|
Preamble |
Chapters
- Salaries and Taxation
- Pensions
- Benefits
- Health and Care
- Education
- Housing
- Employment
- Trades Unions and Labour Laws
- Trade and Industry
- Transport
- Energy
- Environment
- Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and Rural Life
- Crime
- Legal System
- Immigration and Asylum
- Local Government
- Devolution and Regional Government
- Parliament and Democracy
- Media
- Freedom of Information and Privacy
- Northern Ireland
- European Union
- Foreign Policy
- Defence and Disarmament
- Conclusions
|
| Under the Tories, the NHS was commercialised by the separation of purchasers and providers linked by contracts in an internal market. Fund-holding for some GPs made this a 2-tier system. The private health sector was subsidised via NHS training, facilities, etc. and by tax reliefs on private health insurance. Local health policy was passed to unelected Trust boards dominated by business representatives, which were encouraged to contract out services to private providers. Most dentistry left the NHS, charges were introduced for eye tests, and bed numbers in the NHS fell. |
| Labour policy was: |
| 1 |
To end the internal market |
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| 2 |
To end GP-fundholding and the 2-tier system |
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| 3 |
To bring the health service under local democratic control |
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| 4 |
To recoup NHS costs from the private sector |
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| 5 |
To stop the creeping privatisation of the NHS |
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| 6 |
To restore the NHS as a service free at the point of use |
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| 7 |
To stop the loss of hospital beds (?) |
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| 8 |
To ban all tobacco advertising |
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| In fact under New Labour: |
| 1 |
In effect the internal market was first ended then reinstated, with more complex contracts adding new costs in lawyers' fees, etc. |
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| 2 |
GP fundholding was also ended then reinstated and foundation hospitals threatened the reintroduction of a 2-tier system |
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| 3 |
Unaccountable trusts took even more powers, e.g. over care homes |
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| 4 |
Nothing was done to recoup NHS costs from the private sector, though some limits were set on private work by NHS doctors |
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| 5 |
Privatisation speeded up, with NHS patients treated privately for profit, NHS hospitals built and run by private companies, private sector management brought in and trusts forced to place contracts privately. Meanwhile NHS equipment lay idle and NHS facilities were threatened with closure |
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| 6 |
Previous charges remained and were uprated, and new charges were added, e.g.for most children's orthodontic work and pensioners' foot care |
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| 7 |
Bed numbers continued to fall, stabilised after 2000, then fell again because of budget deficits |
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| 8 |
After early fudging tobacco advertising was finally banned |
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| In addition: |
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Community Health Councils were abolished, though praised only a few years earlier |
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The elderly in residential care homes continued to pay for their personal care despite the recommendations of a royal commission |
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All patients were supposed to be offered the choice of state-paid private treatment |
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Total health spending rose at well above inflation rate |
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We have had the largest ever hospital building programme |
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