Clegg: Empower the nurses
By politics.co.uk staff
The Liberal Democrats have set out their plans for the NHS today, with calls for nurses to be given greater power within the health service.
Speaking at the Royal College of Nursing’s (RCN) conference in Bournemouth this afternoon, Mr Clegg downplayed the ‘I love NHS’ Twitter campaign which exploded last summer.
“I am wholly committed, head and heart, to keeping our NHS, free when people need it and paid for by us all,” Mr Clegg said.
“But you and I also know that’s the easy bit to say.
“The real question that politicians now have to answer is not ‘how much do you love the NHS’? It’s ‘how do you protect and improve the NHS at a time like this’?”
Mr Clegg insisted that frontline workers know more about how to improve services than management.
“We need to change the way power flows in the NHS,” he said.
“You should be telling us how to run it, not the other way around.
“It is only the skills, innovation and ideas of the nursing staff of our health service that can protect it from the cuts you fear.”
The speech comes on a day when all three main parties focus on policy issues, in a bid to escape the protracted debate over a hung parliament.
