Cameron stresses commitment to ‘free’ NHS

Conservative leader David Cameron has stressed his commitment to maintain a National Health Service that is free at the point of need, under a Tory government.

Speaking at the King’s Fund in central London, Mr Cameron confirmed that he had scrapped the party’s previous policy of introducing ‘patients passports’ and said that he would never agree to convert the health service into an insurance-based system.

Under the ‘patients passports’ scheme, patients who opted out of using NHS services in favour of private healthcare would have their treatment subsidised.

Mr Cameron said: “Under a Conservative government, the NHS will remain free at the point of need and available to everyone, regardless of how much money they have in the bank.

“Some people think that we Conservatives want to change the NHS into something that it isn’t. Well, they’re right. We do. We want to change the NHS into a more efficient, more effective and more patient-centred service. We want to change it into something of which we can be even more proud.”

However, while he acknowledged that some Conservatives wanted him to go further and pledge that a future Tory government would transform the NHS into a system based on medical insurance, he said that he would “never go down that route”.

The Conservative leader also accused both Labour and Conservative politicians of losing sight of the basic purpose and values of the NHS in the past. He said: "The left have spent too much time trying to get the private sector out of the NHS and the right have spent too much time trying to get people out of the NHS and into the private sector.

Mr Cameron said that both were flawed. "The NHS should be neither a state monopoly, nor something charitable or demeaning," Mr Cameron said.

However, Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Steve Webb accused Mr Cameron of coming up with “headline grabbing words that lack detail and deliver mixed messages.”

He said: “It is difficult to believe that he is committed to full scale reform when only ten months ago, he wrote the Conservative manifesto that advocated the introduction of patient passports.

“People will not easily forget the years of damage the Conservatives inflicted on the NHS and will be hard pressed to believe that the Tories have changed more than just their presentation.”

(KMcA)