It is clear now that we have reached a tipping point where it is no longer enough to repeat ‘I love the NHS’ or swear allegiance to Danny Boyle’s Olympic caricature of the health service. So what now? Labour and the Tories are scrapping over who still really, truly loves the health service: the latest round of revelations about the Care Quality Commission have allowed the Conservatives to ask questions about the culture and attitudes of both the health service and of the Labour government that led it. Labour, meanwhile, points out that Andrew Lansley is also alleged to have leaned on a whistleblower, something the former Health Secretary denied yesterday. Andy Burnham’s PPS, Debbie Abrahams, has even suggested that the government simply wants to use the revelations to undermine the NHS itself.
The Conservatives have always endured dark allegations from the Left about what it is that they want to do to the health service, and Jeremy Hunt is making a very good show of demonstrating that all he really wants to do is make it work, rather than bring some evil plot to ruin it to fruition. Nowhere in any of the pronouncements by Hunt and his team has there been any suggestion that the Health Secretary wants to abolish the NHS, or even to change the structures introduced by Andrew Lansley. His drive is to increase accountability and change the culture so that it is focused on patient, not producer, as it is currently.
This requires a weakening of Labour’s claim to be the party of the NHS, and that battle has been well-documented on this site. If Labour is still able to claim moral authority over the health service, then Jeremy Hunt will struggle to reform it. But it is a difficult battle, one fought on the head of a pin because while both parties desperately want that NHS crown, neither wants to be accused of playing politics with the service. The next few months will be a real test of the Tories’ ability to demonstrate that they have a patient-focused vision for reform, without appearing too fixated on just squashing their opponents, no matter how satisfying a revenge that might be for some of the mud flung at their health policies over the past few years.
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