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The unifying theme of the debate, if there was one, was the need to deliver better services in an era of tighter budgets. In a room full of doctors, nurses and health professionals – and no doubt with an eye on the votes of their colleagues outside the room – all the spokespeople spoke the language of efficiency and productivity, rather than cuts. All three pledged to protect ‘frontline’ jobs, claiming that only managers and bureaucrats would be sacrificed. With Peter Carter, General Secretary of the RCN, reminding the audience how many jobs were lost during the NHS deficit crisis a few years ago, and others pointing to redundancies already being made, many remained sceptical about these assurances.
The first sign of division came early on in the debate in response to concerns from the audience about the use of independent providers. While Andy Burnham stressed that, under Labour, the NHS would get the first opportunity to deliver the services needed to address the challenges of the future, Andrew Lansley called for a level playing field, with decisions being made on the grounds of price and quality alone, an argument supported by Norman Lamb.
On public health, the dividing line was between the Liberal Democrats and the other two parties, with Norman Lamb calling for minimum prices for alcohol. Lansley and Burnham resisted this, prompting accusations from the audience that they were beholden to business interests. While Andrew Lansley pointed to evidence – disputed from the floor – that minimum pricing would have a disproportionate impact on people on low incomes, Andy Burnham did concede that it may be something to look at over the long term if he remained as Health Secretary.
The debate really livened up when the discussion turned to local service changes. Andy Burnham, clearly smarting from his Tory counterpart campaigning in his Manchester backyard earlier in the week, accused him of ‘saying what people want to hear’ by pledging to stop the ‘forced closures’ of local A&E and maternity units. This led to heated exchanges, with Andrew Lansley denying that he is opposed to local service changes where they are supported by clinicians and patients. Norman Lamb stressed that the key is to ensure local accountability – something that he argued the Lib Dem proposal for locally elected health boards would deliver. With arguments about local service closures playing out strongly on the doorstep, this issue may yet be the catalyst to kick start a national health debate before polling day.
But the biggest differences emerged during the debate on social care reform. The exchanges revealed significant philosophical differences between the Labour and Conservative approaches. Andy Burnham’s proposal to share the costs of social care – as he put it ‘currently the only part of the welfare state where we don’t come together as a society’ – by developing a National Care Service contrasted sharply with Andrew Lansley’s voluntary approach to insuring against the costs of residential care. Lansley argued that a compulsory levy would undermine the incentive for people to undertake the informal care on which the system depends. Meanwhile, Norman Lamb condemned the Tories’ voluntary insurance scheme as unworkable and criticised Labour for putting back comprehensive reform until 2016. He said he favoured a partnership model, as The King’s Fund has previously proposed.
On yesterday’s evidence, the consensus on social care called for last week by all three party leaders seems as far away as ever.
A face-off between health secretary Andy Burnham and the two men who want his job has centred on a heated debate over how to make efficiency savings in the NHS - and a 'secret report' urging cuts in GP consultation times.
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The role of the private sector also came in for particular scrutiny as Mr Burnham, Conservative health spokesman Andrew Lansley and Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb traded blows over how patient care could best be protected in the face of projected NHS efficiency savings of £15 billion to £20 billion by 2014.
Mr Lamb directly challenged Mr Burnham to publish a controversial report drawn up by management consultancy firm McKinsey which recommended NHS London consider a series of radical cost-cutting measures including slashing GP consultations by a third, cutting the number of people going to A&E departments by 60% and shifting millions of patients into polysystems.
He said: ‘The changes in London are based on a report by McKinsey that has remained private. It is a secret report. This should be in the public domain – will you publish the report?’
But despite being repeatedly challenged on the point, Mr Burnham refused to explain why the report remained secret, claiming that publication was ‘not my decision’.
Mr Lansley pledged that under a Conservative government ‘every penny of the efficiency savings will be reinvested in the NHS’, and said cutting administrative costs would be a priority.
But he added that the efficiency savings targets set by NHS chief executive David Nicholson should not be considered unreasonable.
‘What he’s asking for is maybe 3% efficiency savings each year. In most areas of private sector activity that would be regarded not as ambitious.’
Mr Burnham insisted that lessons had been learned from the handling of the NHS’s previous financial crisis in 2006-7, and said a 30% reduction in management spending would help.
‘We’re going to have to have big savings on management costs in the NHS so we can carry on protecting the frontline,’ he said.
But Mr Lamb warned that the previous financial crisis had prompted cuts in public health programmes, staff training and mental health - and cited Pulse’s survey of GPs earlier this week as proof that frontline services are being cut once again.
‘Our choice now is whether you slash and burn services, and lose staff and training, which we’re already starting to see the start of in various parts of the country,’ he said. 'Pulse did a report yesterday demonstrating that this is what they're finding.'
Mr Lamb also buttonholed Mr Lansley over a donation his private office received from the wife of the chief executive of private company Care UK, arguing it was a ‘conflict of interest’.
Mr Lansley replied: ‘An individual person provided money to Conservative central office. That happens.’
BMA chair Dr Hamish Meldrum took all three politicians to task over the parties’ commitment to increasing use of the private sector in the NHS.
‘There also seems to be a consensus amongst all three parties that although you’re pledged to maintain NHS funding and to protect frontline services, you’ll continue to push for NHS care to be delivered by competing commercial organisations - despite the evidence that this leads to fragmentation, loss of accountability, increased costs and that three quarters of the public don’t want it,’ he said.
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