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The Liberal Democrats have promised to protect frontline services such as cancer, mental health and maternity despite a squeeze on the NHS budget.
Unlike the other two main parties, the Lib Dems are not making any commitment in their manifesto on the level of future NHS funding in England.
The promise to protect key services is based on efficiency savings including halving the Department of Health.
New elected Local health Boards would plan services in England.
The Lib Dems say £140m a year in management costs could be saved by scrapping the regional organisations in the health service, Strategic Health Authorities, and £100m a year by cuts at the Department of Health.
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Lib Dems on health
Cut NHS bureaucracy by slashing Department of Health and scrapping strategic health authorities
Remove "unnecessary quangos"
Cut the number of Government targets
Cap pay and bonuses of NHS managers
Prioritise dementia research
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On the controversial issue of the future of hospital services such as accident and emergency and maternity care the Lib Dems say their Local Health Boards would allow communities a greater say in deciding whether it was cost effective to maintain the existing pattern of services.
The health boards would replace the existing Primary Care Trusts, and healthcare would gradually be integrated with social care.
Under Lib Dem proposals family doctors would be asked to take a greater role in organising out of hours care. Unlike the conservative proposals which envisage re-negotiating the contract with all GPs, the Lib Dems say the NHS at a local level should have to include some local doctors in providing services.
In some areas consortia of GPs have won contracts for care at weekends and overnight, but they often face competition from commercial companies.
Binge drinking
The manifesto also commits the Lib Dems to reducing the health impact of excessive drinking through banning low cost selling, and supporting the principle of minimum pricing.
However in Scotland where the SNP has tried to introduce minimum pricing the plans have been opposed by the Lib Dems.
Commenting on the proposals, Alan Downey, Head of Public Sector at KPMG, said: "The Liberal Democrats have taken the brave step of refusing to ring fence the NHS budget for protection from public sector expenditure cuts.
"Objectively, it makes a lot of sense to include Health in the search for savings, because it means the pain of expenditure cuts can be more evenly spread."
But he said proposals to cut the Department of Health by half would "not be easy".
"It will be necessary to make major changes in the way that policy is developed, and Ministers may feel exposed as a result."
There is no specific commitment on overall NHS spending in the manifesto (the Liberal Democrats have previously said they will match Labour’s spending commitments), and while they pledge to increase spending ‘in some parts of the NHS’ they do not say which parts. Savings are identified in the manifesto: the Department of Health will be reduced by a half, strategic health authorities scrapped, some quangos will be cut and no NHS manager will be paid more than the prime minister.
There is also a commitment to ‘integrate health and social care’, but there are no details about how this will happen. On social care funding, the Liberal Democrats had previously shown a preference for a partnership model – where the state and the individual both contribute to the costs of long-term care – but in the manifesto the party has retreated from any policy details, promising instead to ‘immediately’ establish an independent commission to develop future proposals for long-term care.
On public health, the Liberal Democrats favour a ban on below-cost selling of alcohol and support ‘the principle of’ minimum pricing', but say it needs ‘detailed work’ on how it could be used to reduce irresponsible drinking. Health inequalities, absent from Labour’s manifesto, are to be reduced by giving extra payments to GPs whose patients come from deprived areas.
The Liberal Democrat’s most radical proposal, which is not new to the manifesto, is the commitment to set up locally elected health boards in place of primary care trusts. The party has long argued that the current accountability arrangements result in a democratic deficit, where the only direct form of citizen involvement takes place for hospitals (via foundation trust governors), but not for the local health bodies that allocate the bulk of the NHS budget, namely PCTs. The manifesto also commits the party to pursuing the next logical step in the future: to allow some NHS funding to come from locally raised taxes ‘to fund local NHS services that need extra money’. Both elections and local taxation represent a major departure from the 1948 settlement and raise intriguing questions about how people would respond to the opportunity to vote on their local NHS services, and what sort of variations would result if NHS services were more closely linked to local citizens’ preferences and taxation revenue.
There are some very specific pledges: to prioritise dementia within the health service's research and development budget (although it is not clear whether this would mean ahead of cancer or other diseases), and a promise to set up a working group to determine ‘appropriate levels of financial assistance’ for those suffering as a result of HIV-contaminated blood products.
Overall, the manifesto speaks the same language of choice and local control as the other parties. The elected health boards offer a tangible – if controversial – mechanism to deliver this, but it is not clear whether this will generate much enthusiasm with the electorate.
LONDON (Reuters) - The Liberal Democrats overtook their rivals for the first time to lead an opinion poll on Saturday, increasing the prospect of a hung parliament where no party has outright control.
The survey from BPIX for the Mail on Sunday said support for the Liberal Democrats, usually the third force in British politics, had soared 12 points to 32 percent, with the main opposition Conservatives down 7 points on 31 percent and ruling Labour Party down 3 points on 28 percent.
Britain has not had a hung parliament since 1974 and the pound weakened on Friday over fears a coalition or minority government would struggle to tackle Britain's huge budget deficit approaching 12 percent of gross domestic product.
If the latest poll results were repeated nationally, the quirks of Britain's electoral system mean Labour would emerge as the largest party in parliament, according to a Sky News seat predictor, and could remain in power if the Liberal Democrats offered their support.
The poll boost followed Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg's well-received appearance in a live television debate on Thursday. Viewers and commentators judged the 43-year-old to have performed better than Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Conservative leader David Cameron.
The BPIX poll is the most favourable yet for the Lib Dems among surveys conducted since the debate.
Polls by YouGov on Friday and ComRes on Saturday both gave the Liberal Democrats an 8 point surge, putting the party second behind the Conservatives but ahead of Labour.
The Liberal Democrats, who have 63 of parliament's 646 seats, have trailed in third place in opinion polls since the last parliamentary election in 2005, when they gained 22 percent of the national vote. Continued...
Popularity of Conservatives among gay voters drops by 30% in 11 months while Lib Dems soar
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/04/25/exclusive-popularity-of-conservativ...
“He’s happy for your vote not to count so that he can keep his MPs in safe seats tending to their moats and duck houses instead of the people they are supposed to represent," said the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary.
Commenting on David Cameron’s description of Proportional Representation as a ‘great con’, Chris Huhne said:
“David Cameron doesn’t want change at all. He’s just another old-style politician making a grab for absolute power with just one in three of the votes.
“He’s happy for your vote not to count so that he can keep his MPs in safe seats tending to their moats and duck houses instead of the people they are supposed to represent.”
http://www.libdems.org.uk/latest_news_detail.aspx?title=Cameron_happy_fo...
The deficit
We have already identified over £15 billion of savings in government spending per year, vastly in excess of the £5 billion per year that we have set aside for additional spending commitments. All our spending commitments will be funded from this pool of identified savings, with all remaining savings used to reduce the deficit.
- Setting a £400 pay rise cap for all public sector workers, initially for two years, ensuring that the lowest paid are eligible for the biggest percentage rise.
- Reforming public sector pensions to ensure that they are sustainable and affordable for the long term, with an independent review to agree a settlement that is fair for all taxpayers as well as for public servants.
In the longer term, as part of a Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) involving wide consultation, we will seek to identify additional savings which can be used to pay down the deficit further.
The NHS
We will increase spending in some parts of the NHS by cutting waste in others. We have identified specific savings that can be made in management costs, bureaucracy and quangos, and we will reinvest that money back into the health care you need. Because of the rising costs of treatments and an ageing population, there will be particular pressure on services like cancer treatment, mental health care, maternity services, and dementia care; only by going through this process of fi nding savings elsewhere can we protect these services in the coming years. The NHS is a huge system, and we will make changes to ensure it works as effectively as possible.
- Give priority to preventing people getting ill by linking payments to health boards and GPs more directly to prevention measures.
- Cut the size of the Department of Health by half, abolish unnecessary quangos such as Connecting for Health and cut the budgets of the rest, scrap Strategic Health Authorities and seek to limit the pay and bonuses of top NHS managers so that none are paid more than the Prime Minister.
- Make the NHS work better by extending best practice on improving hospital discharge, maximising the number of day case operations, reducing delays prior to operations, and where possible moving consultations into the community.
Integration of health and social care
Integrate health and social care to create a seamless service, ending bureaucratic barriers and saving money to allow people to stay in their homes for longer rather than going into hospital or long-term residential care.
Social care
Use the money for Labour’s flawed Personal Care At Home Bill to provide guaranteed respite care for the one million carers who work the longest hours. We will establish an independent commission, with cross-party support, to develop proposals for long-term care of the elderly. Prioritise dementia research within the health research and development budget.
Mental Health
Improve access to counselling for people with mental health problems, by continuing the roll-out of cognitive and behavioural therapies.
Alcohol
Reduce the ill health and crime caused by excessive drinking. We support a ban on below-cost selling, and are in favour of the principle of minimum pricing, subject to detailed work to establish how it could be used in tackling problems of irresponsible drinking. We will also review the complex, ill-thought-through system of taxation for alcohol to ensure it tackles binge drinking without unfairly penalising responsible drinkers, pubs and important local industries.
Air pollution and ill-health
Save lives and reduce pressure on NHS budgets by cutting air pollution. We will cancel plans for a third runway at Heathrow and other airport expansion in the South East, and reduce pollution from vehicle exhausts through tighter regulation. We will aim to fully meet European air quality targets by 2012.
More control over health
The NHS often feels too remote and complex. Local services especially maternity wards and accident and emergency departments keep being closed, even though local people desperately want them to stay open. People often struggle to get convenient access to GP services, and poorer areas are less well served by the NHS, contributing to widening health inequalities. We will change this be sharply reducing centralised targets and bureaucracy, replacing them with entitlements guaranteeing that patients get diagnosis and treatment on time. If they do not, the NHS will pay for the treatment to be provided privately.
Employee trusts and elected Local Health Boards
Putting front-line staff in charge of their ward or unit budgets, and allowing staff to establish employee trusts giving them real involvement and a say over how their service is run. Empowering local communities to improve health services through elected Local Health Boards, which will take over the role of Primary Care Trust boards in commissioning care for local people, working in co-operation with local councils. Over time, Local Health Boards should be able to take on greater responsibility for revenue and resources to allow local people to fund local services which need extra money.
Access to GPs
Giving every patient the right to choose to register with the GP they want, without being restricted by where they live, and the right to access their GP by email. Ensuring that local GPs are directly involved in providing out-of-hours care. Reforming payments to GPs so that those who accept patients from areas with the worst health and deprivation scores receive an extra payment for each one they take.
Commissioning
Giving Local Health Boards the freedom to commission services for local people from a range of different types of provider, including for example staff co-operatives, on the basis of a level playing field in any competitive tendering – ending any current bias in favour of private providers.
Reporting mistakes
Require hospitals to be open about mistakes, and always tell patients if something has gone wrong.
Language testing
Make it illegal for a Local Health Board to allow a doctor to work in the UK without passing robust language and competence tests.
Tackling abusive behaviour towards staff
Clamp down on anyone who is aggressive or abusive to staff in accident and emergency departments. We would encourage better working relationships between hospitals and the local police to provide an increased police presence at times of high risk, and increase prosecutions. At the same time, we will ensure that problem drinkers or substance abusers are referred for appropriate treatment.
HIV
It is deeply disappointing that the Government has failed to provide adequate support for those affected by the contamination of blood products with HIV. A Liberal Democrat government will establish a working group involving patient groups to determine appropriate levels of financial assistance.
Higher Education
- Scrap unfair university tuition fees for all students taking their first degree, including those studying part-time, saving them over £10,000 each. We have a financially responsible plan to phase fees out over six years, so that the change is affordable even in these difficult economic times, and without cutting university income. We will immediately scrap fees for final year students.
- Reform current bursary schemes to create a National Bursary Scheme for students, so that each university gets a bursary budget suited to the needs of its students. These bursaries would be awarded both on the basis of studying strategic subjects (such as sciences and mathematics) and financial hardship.
- Replace wasteful quangos (the Skills Funding Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council for England) with a single Council for Adult Skills and Higher Education.
- Scrap the arbitrary target of 50 per cent of young people attending university, focussing effort instead on a balance of college education, vocational training and apprenticeships.
- Start discussions with universities and schools about the design of a trial scheme whereby the best students from the lowest achieving schools are guaranteed a place in Higher Education.
Immigration
Britain has always been an open, welcoming country, and thousands of businesses, schools and hospitals in many parts of the country rely on people who’ve come to live here from overseas. It would be wrong to try and end immigration completely but we have to manage migration so that it benefits Britain and is fair for everyone. Among other measures, we will introduce a regional points-based system to ensure that migrants can work only where they are needed. We need to enforce any immigration system through rigorous checks on businesses and a crackdown on rogue employers who profit from illegal labour.
http://www.bgs.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=556:e...
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/general-election-2010/leaders-criss-cross-country-$1376168.htm
Today Nick Clegg Leader of the Liberal Democrats said that the party with the greatest number of seats and the greatest number of votes was the one which had the mandate to try and form a government.
Last night was a disappointment for the Liberal Democrats. Even though more people voted for us than ever before, even though we had a higher proportion of the vote than ever before, it is of course a source of great regret to me that we have lost some really valued friends and colleagues and we have returned to Parliament with fewer MPs than before.
Many, many people during the election campaign were excited about the prospect of doing something different, but it seems that when they came to vote, many of them, in the end, decided to stick with what they knew best. And at a time of great economic uncertainty, I totally understand those feelings. But that’s not going to stop me from redoubling my efforts and our efforts to show that real change is the best reassurance that things can get better for people and their families, that it shouldn’t be something which unsettles people.
Now we’re in a very fluid political situation with no party enjoying an absolute majority. As I’ve said before, it seems to me in a situation like this, it’s vital that all political parties, all political leaders, act in the national interest, and not out of narrow party political advantage. I’ve also said that whichever party gets the most votes and the most seats, if not an absolute majority, has the first right to seek to govern, either on its own or by reaching out to other parties, and I stick to that view. It seems this morning that it’s the Conservative party that has more votes and more seats, though not an absolute majority, and that is why I think it is now for the Conservative party to prove that it is capable of seeking to govern in the national interest. At the same time, this election campaign has made it abundantly clear that our electoral system is broken, it simply doesn’t reflect the hopes and aspirations of the British people, so I repeat again my assurance, that whatever happens in the coming hours and days and weeks, I will continue to argue not only for the greater fairness in British society, not only the greater responsibility in economic policy making, but also for the extensive, real reforms that we need to fix our broken political system. Thank you very much.
http://www.libdems.org.uk/latest_news_detail.aspx?title=Nick_Clegg%27s_s...
The Liberal Democrats have pledged to make dementia the priority area for medical research in their general election manifesto, launched by leader Nick Clegg today.
The pledge follows Community Care's call for a full election debate on dementia during the election campaign and for the next government to make improved care for those with the condition a financial priority, through our Dementia Declaration campaign.
The Lib Dems were the first of the three major parties to sign up to the declaration and its promise today responds to widespread concerns that dementia research spending is far too low.
Though it did not mention research, Labour pledged to introduce greater access to psychological therapies, counselling and memory clinics for dementia patients as part of its manifesto. The Tories did not mention the condition in its manifesto, published yesterday.
The Lib Dems also pledged to advance greater integration of health and social care in order to cut bureaucracy and allow people to stay in their own homes.
This would involve establishing elected local health boards to replace primary care trusts and creating a duty for boards and councils to pool budgets and jointly commission services.
Mental health patients would receive greater access to counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy as part of the Lib Dems' plans, while hate crime against disabled people would also be recorded centrally, allowing for greater analysis of the problem.
The manifesto also restated the party's commitment to deliver a week's break a year to all informal carers putting in over 50 hours a week, which would be paid for by scrapping Labour's £540m-a-year plan care to fund care at home for people with high needs.
On children's services, the Liberal Democrats appear to have joined the Conservatives in backing the publication of anonymised serious case reviews in full. The manifesto said: “We will enforce the publication of an anonymised version of serious case reviews to ensure that lessons are learned."
Other commitments include ending the detention of children for immigration purposes, ending child poverty by 2020 and reducing child maltreatment by 70% over the next 20 years. The party has also backed moves by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) to establish quick-report buttons on all social networking sites.
Clegg was keen to emphasise the economic viability of the manifesto saying: "This isn't a promise, it's a plan."
Costings for many of the plans were included within the document however it was not explicit about how much would be set aside for dementia research.
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http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2010/04/14/114285/lib-dem-manife...