The head of the organisation representing NHS trusts has called for parties to avoid “cheap political slogans” about health during the general election campaign, and instead engage in a rational debate about the best way to fund and manage the service.
Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, stressed that his organisation was politically neutral and not seeking to criticise any one party.
But pointing to examples of potentially misleading campaigning, Hopson noted that the level of NHS funding increases promised by the Conservatives would do no more than maintain current provision, rather than take the NHS to “sunlit uplands”.
Asked about Labour’s warnings on NHS privatisation, Hopson said the debate around outsourcing had to be framed around the point that much of this took place anyway, and that some private provision was seen as working well, for example hospices.
“What really worries us, if you look back over the last four or five elections, the debates about our health and care systems have generated extreme amounts of heat and very little light,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“What we’re very keen to do is ensure that as we start to think about that debate in the general election campaign, we frame it in the right way.”
The NHS is expected to dominate much of the domestic policy debate during the campaign. Given the popularity of the service, “you can see why politicians would want to wrap themselves in the mantle of the NHS and show how they are it’s biggest champions, it’s biggest defenders”, Hopson said.
“What we are saying is: let’s have a proper, mature, evidence-based debate about what the NHS needs, and let’s not resort to the cheap political slogans, and skimming across the top, which is what we’ve seen over the last four or five elections.”
In discussing the current plans to increase the real-terms NHS budget by an average of 3.4% a year, it was important to be “honest about what the extra funding is going to buy”, Hopson said.
“One of the worries we have is that everybody is running around saying that this extra money now takes us to the sunlit uplands and that it’s all going to be fantastic. The reality is, it’s an amount of funding that just enables us to keep up with demand.”
A key Conservative pledge has been to create six extra hospitals, with seed finding for others. However, hospitals were not the only issue, he argued: “The NHS has a whole range of capital needs. It’s not just about acute hospitals, it’s actually also about mental health facilities, community and ambulance facilities. So we need a debate about how you cover all of the NHS’s capital needs.”
