Tories defensive on health
Anne Perkins and Nick Watt Friday April 12, 2002 The Guardian
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown yesterday capitalised on a leak from Liam Fox, after the shadow health secretary said he aimed to "persuade the public that the NHS won't work and can't work."
Mr Blair said the "big dividing line on the NHS" was now clear. "Do we build up our NHS through investment and reform? Or do we run it down, charge people for care, force people to go private, as the Conservatives want?"
But in an apparent concession to critics who accused him of pre-empting the Wanless inquiry findings on the long term funding of the NHS, the chancellor told MPs that he would include an analysis of international comparisons of the impact of different systems of health funding when the report was published next week.
The disclosure of Liam Fox's remarks at a Tory fringe meeting last month dealt a blow to Iain Duncan Smith's campaign to champion vulnerable people. Dr Fox and Mr Duncan Smith were forced on to the defensive yesterday morning as they toured a GP's surgery in Camden, north London.
The remarks were leaked on the eve of Mr Brown's final appearance in the Commons before next Wednesday's budget, giving the chancellor an open goal to attack the Tories on health. He derided Dr Fox's plans for more private insurance and "self-pay" - paying for private care when it's needed - and claimed that any privatisation would be rejected by the public.
The Tories attempted to play down the idea that Dr Fox had a secret agenda, pointing out that he had warned in his conference speech that the NHS was doomed in its present form. But Dr Fox's four-point strategy for the future of the health service, outlined in his taped remarks, appeared to give the impression that he was willing the service to fail.
The first stage, he said, would involve persuading "the public that the NHS is not working", followed by the second stage of convincing poeple that it "won't work and can't work".
In the Commons yesterday, shadow chancellor Michael Howard renewed the attack by pointing to the UK's record on surviving cancer. He claimed 25,000 lives a year could be saved by better funding. Mr Brown - criticised for pre-empting Derek Wanless's findings by declaring that the former NatWest chief executive's interim conclusions ruled out anything other than a tax-funded system - insisted that other systems were "likely to be more costly."
But he announced that he would publish the detailed analysis of seven other countries which have a similar national income as Britian, and shared the objective of providing comprehensive, universal health care.
Mr Wanless's interim findings confirmed the UK as the lowest spender on health of the seven - and also that it performed badly on almost all measures of health such as life expectancy, cancer survival rates and infant mortality.