Howard: We would give matrons the power to close wards
Matrons, not managers, would have the final say on whether to close wards under new plans announced by the Conservatives.
Leader Michael Howard said that the increase in incidences of the superbug MRSA was the “most damning indictment” of Labour’s record.
And he claimed that a National Audit Office report suggested that one in ten infection control teams reported that their recommendation to close a ward because of infection has been refused or discouraged by the chief executive because of performance targets.
Mr Howard said that a Conservative government would give doctors and nurses the powers to make such decisions.
He said: “Matrons – not bureaucrats – will decide which wards or operating theatres are closed because they have been infected with the superbug.
“We’ll require hospitals to publish their infection levels so that patients know which hospitals are the cleanest. And we’ll give them the right to choose to be treated in those hospitals.”
Claiming that the NHS was failing many people in Britain today, Mr Howard said that improving the health service was the reason he came back into frontline politics.
He said: “I came back into frontline politics because I saw people in my constituency in Kent being let down by our NHS. Yet just twenty miles across the Channel, in France, people have routine access to a quality of healthcare that we hardly think possible in Britain: a publicly-funded system, which puts the patients first, and has no waiting lists.
“I have never accepted that we have to put up with a second-class health service in Britain. We are a first-class country, and we deserve first class health care.”
Mr Howard said that Labour’s pledge to reduce waiting times to 18 weeks would be “treated with derision it deserves” anywhere else in Europe.
Waiting lists, he said, would become a “thing of the past” under the Conservatives.
“Extra money, freeing hospitals from bureaucratic control and letting patients choose – that’s the way to make waiting lists become a thing of the past.”
Paul Burstow, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said that the Tory policies were “uncosted, unfair and unbelievable”.
He said: “The Tories have three kinds of health policy: uncosted, unfair and unbelievable. What the Tories really need to say is sorry. Sorry for making patients wait over 18 months for an operation. Sorry for driving dentists out of the NHS. Sorry for years of underfunding that has left the NHS still struggling with a legacy of staff shortages and deficits.
“When Michael Howard talks about choice it is choice for the few and long waits for the rest. Subsidising private treatment for those who can afford it will cost the NHS £1.2 billion before a single extra operation is ever performed.
“If Labour’s obsession with targets and lack of trust in frontline staff is the problem, the Tories have nothing to offer but quack medicine.”
