Howard presents “choice” based policies
The Conservative Party Leader has said that the Tories would place choice at the centre of their public service policies.
In a keynote speech to the Institute of Civil Engineers, Michael Howard said Labour’s “top-down, centralised” public service was failing Britain, and that the extra money they were putting into education and the NHS was not producing results.
“The reality is that Labour have spent without real reform. That is Labour’s tragedy.”
Mr Howard argued that: “The Government must give up being a monopoly producer and instead guarantee and fund everyone’s access to public services”
Stating that the Conservatives would be different, Mr Howard said: “We must let parents and patients choose what they believe is best for them and their children … It means ending the command and control political consensus on public services that has persisted for far too long, but failed to deliver. It means trusting parents and patients to make decisions – not forcing them to take what they are given.
“My simple idea is the Right to Choose. I want to give everyone the kind of choice in health and education that today only people with money can buy.”
The “Right to Choose” builds on the “Right to Buy” policy the Conservatives employed in the 1980s to allow council tenants to buy their own homes, and on the passports policy set out last year.
Mr Howard said: “Choice works. It transfers accountability from politicians to patients and parents – those with the single greatest stake in the outcome.”
It was a “myth that state provision protected the less well-off, he said. On the contrary, the wealthier members of society had better access to the best state schools and received more effective healthcare, he claimed.
He criticised Labour’s inability to eradicate waiting lists, but made no specific promises on when the Conservatives would achieve this.
Anticipating allegations that a Conservative government would cut spending, Mr Howard pledged to invest an extra £34 billion a year in the NHS and an extra £15 billion a year in schools over the next Parliament.
Mr Howard’s policy announcements were strongly attacked by the Liberal Democrats. Parliamentary party chairman Matthew Taylor, said: “Even Margaret Thatcher didn’t dare to divert so much money from the NHS and local schools into the private sector. Yet that is precisely what Michael Howard is doing, no matter what he cares to call it.
“Michael Howard’s policy amounts to taking millions out of the NHS and schools to subsidise those already wealthy enough to afford private healthcare and education.”
