The UK general election will be held on Thursday 4 July 2024 and we’re asking the question, how will the NHS be impacted by the outcome?

Labour:

Labour have not been shy in their attack on the conservatives, whom they believe to have “broken the NHS”. But, if what they say is true, how do they intend to “fix it”?

They are predominantly focussed on the NHS waiting lists. Labour say these lists were oversubscribed even before the pandemic hit. Their manifesto highlights the fact that the NHS should be “free for all” and that working people shouldn’t be forced to scrape together money to go private instead. Ultimately, their aim is to cut down wait times and ensure earlier diagnosis of conditions and diseases, both physical and mental. 

Their website boasts the following: “We will return to meeting NHS performance standards.That means patients should expect to wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral for consultant-led treatment of non-urgent health conditions. This standard was achieved with the last Labour government and will be again under the next.”

So, how do they intend to achieve this? “As a first step, in England we will deliver an extra two million NHS operations, scans, and appointments every year; that is 40,000 more appointments every week,” – Labour website. 

The party has pledged to cut “NHS waiting times by delivering 40,000 more appointments each week on evenings and weekends, paid for by “cracking down” on tax avoidance. It also pledges to launch what it calls a new Border Security Command, using specialist investigators and counter-terrorism powers to “smash criminal boat gangs.” states The Week.

Labour Manifesto Summary:

• • • Cutting wait times 40,000 more appointments every week
    • More care in local communities by introducing shared waiting lists to pool resources across neighbouring hospitals.
    • Modernising the NHS (updating equipment and machines e.g. double the number of cancer scanners
    • Transforming the NHS app
    • ‘Home first’ social support
    • Improving mental health by recruiting 8,500 additional mental health staff.
    • A Dentistry Rescue Plan to recruit more dentists where they’re needed most.
    • A Child Health Action Plan.  
    • Regulation of NHS managers
    • Tackle the social determinants of health, halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions in England.
    • Ensure the next generation can never legally buy cigarettes and ban vapes from being branded and advertised to appeal to children.
    • Set a target to close the black and Asian maternal mortality gap.

Conservative party

The Tories have been in power since the general election of 2010. That means that they have been governing the UK for the last 14 consecutive years. 

In that time, we have had a global pandemic to contend with, which has significantly impacted on the health care system in the UK (along with the rest of the world). However, the Conservative party is eager to rebuild the NHS to its former glory.

The pressure is certainly on for the party, not only from the public in terms of patient care, but from healthcare professionals too. According to an article by The Royal College of Surgeon London, “a significant proportion of the NHS workforce is deeply unhappy with their pay and working conditions, as evidenced by well over a year of industrial action led by the British Medical Association’s (BMA’s) junior doctors committee in England.” 

The Conservative’s website manifesto states that, if re-elected, they intend to: “Reform our disability benefits so they are better targeted and reflect people’s genuine needs, while delivering a stepchange in mental health provision.” They go on to claim that “Since 2010, we have invested more in the NHS than at any other point in its history. We will continue to increase NHS spending above inflation in each year of the next Parliament.” 

Conservative Manifesto Summary:

• • Recruit 92,000 more nurses and 28,000 more doctors in the NHS than in 2023 by the end of the next Parliament. 
  • Boost training places for dentists and other dental care professionals by 40 per cent.
  • Expand Pharmacy First, including for menopause support, contraception and treatment for chest infections, freeing up 20 million GP appointments a year. 
  • Build or modernise 250 GP surgeries, focused on areas of new housing growth. 
  • Build 50 more Community Diagnostic Centres, including in underserved areas, resulting in an additional 2.5 million checks a year.
  • Expand coverage of Mental Health Support Teams from 50 to 100 per cent of schools and colleges in England by 2030 including opening early support hubs for those aged 11-25 in every local community by 2030.
  • Increase the planned expansion of NHS Talking Therapies by 50 per cent, supporting people with anxiety, stress and depression. 
  • Invest £3.4 billion in new technology to transform the NHS for staff and for patients. 
  • Implement the Cass Review which made recommendations to NHS gender services for children and young people. 
  • Bring forward the Tobacco and Vapes Bill in the first King’s Speech.
  • Legislate to restrict the advertising of products high in fat, salt and sugar.
  • Gather new evidence on the impact of ultra-processed food.

Source: NHS Confederation  

Liberal Democrats

“The Liberal Democrats were the first party to officially launch its manifesto, which centres on a £8.4 billion package to improve the NHS and social care,” says The Guardian.

The Lib Dem’s website promises to improve the NHS by (yes, you’ve guessed it) also injecting a large sum of money into the system. “At the heart of the Liberal Democrat manifesto is a £9 billion rescue package to save the NHS and social care. The party says they will be the boldest proposals of any party to tackle the crisis in our health services.” 

The funding should allow for more healthcare professionals, in an attempt to tackle the ever-increasing backlog of patient appointments, more specifically, GP appointments!

“The party has pledged 8,000 more GPs in England to ensure everyone has the right to see a doctor within seven days, or 24 hours for urgent care. The Lib Dems also plan to introduce free personal care for the disabled and elderly in England, in a system similar to that already operating in Scotland. 

Further health pledges for England include a guarantee that all cancer patients would start treatment within 62 days of urgent referral, as well as guaranteed access to an NHS dentist for anyone needing emergency care.”

Liberal Democrats Manifesto Summary:

• • Recruit 92,000 more nurses and 28,000 more doctors in the NHS than in 2023 by the end of the next Parliament. 
  • Boost training places for dentists and other dental care professionals by 40 per cent.
  • Expand Pharmacy First, including for menopause support, contraception and treatment for chest infections, freeing up 20 million GP appointments a year. 
  • Build or modernise 250 GP surgeries, focused on areas of new housing growth. 
  • Build 50 more Community Diagnostic Centres, including in underserved areas, resulting in an additional 2.5 million checks a year.
  • Expand coverage of Mental Health Support Teams from 50 to 100 per cent of schools and colleges in England by 2030 including opening early support hubs for those aged 11-25 in every local community by 2030.
  • Increase the planned expansion of NHS Talking Therapies by 50 per cent, supporting people with anxiety, stress and depression. 
  • Invest £3.4 billion in new technology to transform the NHS for staff and for patients. 
  • Implement the Cass Review which made recommendations to NHS gender services for children and young people. 
  • Bring forward the Tobacco and Vapes Bill in the first King’s Speech.
  • Legislate to restrict the advertising of products high in fat, salt and sugar.
  • Gather new evidence on the impact of ultra-processed food.

Reform UK was founded in 2021 as a relaunch of the Brexit party and is led by Brexitier, Nigel Farage. As you can imagine, their main focus as a party is cutting immigration rates, but what are their policies in regards to the health sector?

Like the previous parties mentioned, Reform UK has also addressed the NHS waiting list issue. “Reform UK says its policies would eradicate NHS waiting lists in two years. This is big talk. Waiting lists for treatments are huge. The party also says the NHS must use the private sector more to help take the pressure off its services and pledges 20% tax relief for private healthcare providers and insurance.”

However, people were quick to draw an obvious conclusion from this… “Independent health think-tank the Nuffield Trust say this could take money out of the public purse to give to profitable business, encourage NHS staff to move to the private sector and leave the NHS worse off,” – BBC.

Despite the concerns, the party’s aim is clear. Their website goes a little further towards explaining their goals for the NHS: “Put Patients in Charge With a New NHS Voucher Scheme NHS Patients will receive a voucher for private treatment if they can’t see a GP within 3 days.  For a consultant it would be 3 weeks. For an operation, 9 weeks. Services will always be free  at the point of use.” This all sounds idyllic, but is it achievable? 

Other promising plans are as follows:

• Keep theatres operating on weekends
• Cut A&E wait times with a “Pharmacy- First” approach
• End doctor and nurse shortages

The Green Party

As their title suggests, the group are channeling their efforts into making the UK a greener nation. However, ‘The Week’ claims that “To deliver it, they are promising a massive investment of an additional £8 billion of NHS annual expenditure within the first year of the next parliament, which will increase to £28 billion by 2030. Doing so, they say, will help to cut waiting lists, guarantee access to NHS dentists and urgent access to GPs, and give NHS staff an immediate pay rise.” – The Week.

The Green party is focussed on developing the NHS both for patients and staff. The UK has seen several NHS strikes this year alone. One example was the Junior Doctor Strike, which was instigated as a means of trying to “achieve full pay restoration to reverse the steep decline in pay faced by junior doctors since 2008/9”.  – BMA.org

Take Home

Ultimately, the NHS seems to be at the heart of most, if not all, of the parties’ manifestos. However, politicians in general aren’t known for their honesty. Who’s to say whether any of the parties, if elected, will honour their promises and make good of their plans to rescue the NHS from its knees.

The election usually comes down to a two-horse race, and how the current leaders of the country acted in the wake of a global pandemic will, no doubt, play a crucial part in the public’s decision-making. The question is, would a different party have handled things better, and, more importantly, will a new party do a better job in the future?

Of course, the preservation of the healthcare system is not the only thing to take into consideration when deciding who to vote for. However, the destiny of the UK health system will be in the hands of whomever wins the election, so it is an important factor. 

Will you be voting?