Ed Miliband will reveal Labour’s ’10 year plan’ for the NHS in Trafford today in an attempt to win the trust of voters – 100 days before the General Election.
Mr Miliband will pledge to ‘restore the right values to the NHS’, by making strategic investments in staff, and delivering reforms that will improve services and ‘save billions of pounds’.
The party leader has warned David Cameron ‘can’t be trusted’ with the National Health Service and says Britain’s most precious institution will face its most ‘perilous moment’ when voters go to the polls in May.
He makes his speech in Sale, in the heart of the North West – which is being touted as a key battleground that could decide the fate of what is expected to be one of the closest fought elections in history.
Mr Miliband said: “When you look at his record for the last five years and his plan for the next five years, you know David Cameron can’t be trusted with our NHS. He puts the wrong values at the heart of our NHS and he just won’t put the right resources into our NHS.
“That means you will wait longer and longer for care, forced to go private if you want timely treatment, with more and more services hived off to the private sector.
“Look at the one clear manifesto commitment the Tories have: public spending cut back to levels as a share of national income not seen since the 1930s, back to before the National Health Service even existed.
“David Cameron says he cares about our NHS but that isn’t enough: there is no country that runs a world-class national healthcare service with spending like that.”
He added: “One of our country’s most precious institution faces its most perilous moment in a generation. The future of our NHS is at stake in this general election.”
Speaking in Trafford, where the first NHS hospital was opened in 1948, the Labour party leader will pledge to ‘build an NHS with the time to care’ and promise 20,000 more nurses and 8,000 more GPs, as well as join up service ‘from home to hospital’, guaranteeing GP appointment within 48 hours.
Mr Miliband said: “When people can’t get to see their GP, they end up in A&E. When problems with mental health aren’t spotted early at school or work, they build up and end up in hospital. When elderly people can’t get the care they need at home, they are more likely to grow ill or have a fall and end up in hospital.
“In each and every case, it is worse for the person involved and it costs more for the NHS too. If we are going to build an NHS that meets the challenges of the 21st century – and sustain funding for it through the 21st century.
“We cannot leave parents unable get a GP appointment for their sick child, or neglect mental health, or limit social care visits for some of the most vulnerable in our communities to just 15 minutes a time.
“We will end these scandals because they have no place in a world class health service but also because no competent government can afford to ignore them any longer.”
Immediately after, Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham will deliver a further speech in London to the King’s Fund where he will set out more details of Labour’s plan for the NHS.
Mr Burnham is expected to say false economies in social care have increased pressure on NHS funding with the number of avoidable hospital admissions soaring last year to a record high of more than half a million – costing the NHS around £1 billion.
The Shadow Health Secretary will say: “Today the Party that created the NHS in the 20th century re-sets it for the 21st as a national health and care service. We need an NHS that sees not just the immediate problem but treats the whole person.
“Our aspiration is to create a service that supports people with dementia, autism and mental ill health as well as it treats cancer.
“I have long warned that, if social care in England is allowed to collapse, it will drag down the rest of the NHS. That is what is unfolding before us in the NHS right now and is a root cause of the crisis in A&E.
“For the want of spending a few pounds in people’s homes on decent home care, we are spending thousands of pounds keeping older people in hospital even when they are able to leave. This is not sustainable in human or financial terms. The increasing hospitalisation of older people is no vision for the ageing society.
“Labour’s plan will lift the NHS out of this cycle, put the NHS on a sustainable path and give everyone who is concerned for its future a vision to unite around.”
