THE Conservatives will challenge Labour on its home turf of the NHS next week by promising individual “care plans” for every patient.
Doctors and nurses will be told that they can choose freely from across the NHS the best care plan to suit the individual, rather than be hamstrung by local facilities.
The announcement will go head-to-head with the Government’s five-year NHS plan amid claims that both parties are trying to woo voters with identical policy objectives. The care plan proposal sounds similar to Labour’s pledge of individual NHS care records by 2010 and comes after Tory promises to put as much money into the NHS as Labour.
Both party leaders laid claim to offering more choice to NHS patients in angry exchanges at Prime Minister’s Questions. Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, taunted the Prime Minister over a constituent who had to wait 349 days for a knee operation when 60 miles away he could be treated in 33 days. “Doesn’t this show that patients should have the right to choose which hospital they go to in the NHS?” Mr Howard said.
Mr Blair said that the Government was introducing a programme of expanding NHS capacity and had been the first to bring in patient choice.
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Mr Howard said that those who had been waiting more than six months would “if they are lucky” currently be offered the choice of one additional hospital somewhere in the country “selected not by them but by the system”.
He said: “That is Labour choice. Under our plans patients would have the right to choose whichever hospital they want to go to, within the NHS and free of charge. Isn’t that a real right to choose?”
Mr Blair replied: “I am delighted that you want to join battle on this issue. Let me tell you exactly what our policy is: to expand choice and to expand the capacity. Without the investment in the National Health Service, choice is entirely meaningless.”
He added: “If you want the debate to be, between now and election day, who cares for Britain’s National Health Service? . . . come on and have it . . . We want the NHS better. You want to wreck it.”
Mr Blair attacked Tory plans for a “patient passport”, under which people would pay part of the cost of an operation at a private hospital. He said: “What a typical Tory proposal. First of all it only goes to the few who can afford to pay
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50 per cent of their operation. Secondly, it is to help people go out of the National Health Service, not to stay in it. And thirdly, it takes money from the National Health Service.”
Mr Howard replied: “The Prime Minister will never get away with that. The choice that I have been talking about is choice within the National Health Service, free of charge.
“You have forced people into the private sector . . . We are not going to force anyone out of the National Health Service, we are going to give people choice in the National Health Service. That is the difference between your policy and ours. Why does the Prime Minister say health should be a no-go area for choice?”
Mr Howard announced on Tuesday that he had ditched the patient passport, which proposed paying 60 per cent of the bill if a patient decided on private treatment, and replaced it with “the right to choose”. The detail of the new policy will be published next week.