In spite of the difficult decisions that this Government has had to take towards balancing the books, I am pleased that it has understood the importance of the NHS and the demands on its services.
The Health Secretary has not only pledged to protect health spending but is increasing the health budget year-on-year so that the NHS will benefit from £12.7 billion in extra funding, providing Crawley and East Surrey hospitals with the support needed to meet increasing demand. Under Ed Miliband’s plans, as with health services in Labour run Wales which have had their funding cut by 8 percent, there would be 43,000 few nurses and 11,000 fewer doctors across the country.
Thanks to the Government's health reforms we now have 7,000 fewer managers and instead 8,500 more frontline clinical staff, with nearly 6,000 more doctors. The results are clear from the fact that there has been a 32 per cent fall in the number of patients in our region waiting longer than six months for treatment since 2010, and a staggering 82 per cent fall in the number of patients waiting longer than a year. MRSA and C. difficile infections at their lower levels, there is a Cancer Drugs Fund helping 30,000 sufferers access treatment, mixed-sex wards have been virtually eradicated and fewer people are waiting 18, 26 and 52 weeks for treatment.
These successes have all come not only at a time of severe pressures on the nations finances but also during dramatically increasing rates of demand on health services, with 400,000 more operations taking place and one million extra patients visiting Accident and Emergency every year.
In every care setting, standards will rise by highlighting poor performance as well as celebrating the best. This Government is determined to root out poor practice, confront weak leadership and restore public confidence. Patients deserve nothing less.
No one is in any doubt that there is still further to go in hauling the National Health Service into the twenty first century but positive steps have been made by ensuring that doctors and nurses have the freedom they need to design treatment and service for patients; whilst patients have more power to choose how or where they want to be treated.
Henry Smith MP