Policy Research Media Morhamburn

Following the launch of the Labour manifesto on Monday, the Conservatives released their ‘Invitation to join the government of Britain’ yesterday.  Tell your family, Mr Cameron said, tell your friends, tell your friends to tell their friends, tell your friend to tell their friends to tell their friends, tell… Well you get my point. Thank goodness for social media, where would we be without it?

As expected after the ‘Big Society’ speech a couple of weeks back, David Cameron spoke about the role the British people can play in the future of the country, invoking JFK’s quote: ‘Ask not what can your country do for you – ask what you can do for your country’. Only with our help can the nation become ‘Great’ Britain again.  So nice of him to ask for our help, don’t you think? Rather humble too.

However, I’m not going to talk about the ‘Big Society’ today, I’ve done that already.  I’m going to talk about Conservative plans for the NHS. Since becoming leader, David Cameron has been a vocal supporter of the NHS and Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley says the NHS is their ‘number one priority’. 2010 Manifesto pledges include increasing health spending every year, scrapping all Labour introduced targets, ensuring better GP and drug access, greater transparency and giving more power and choice to patients (you just can’t avoid the ‘Big Society’ can you?).

Despite these pledges though, a recent YouGov poll still has Labour leading the Conservatives as the best party for the NHS. Do these figures mean that the country has yet to be fully convinced that the Tories are the party of the NHS or indeed for Government? Do these figures mean anything? The answer is probably not, and definitely not in Scotland.

Pledging to ring fence NHS spending and giving more choice to patients does nothing to help the Conservatives in Scotland. Health is a devolved issue and, as such, the Tories have no power over this meaning the NHS budget in Scotland cannot be ring fenced along with its counterparts in England and Wales. The Conservatives know this obviously, so are they thinking ahead to the Holyrood elections?

The Scottish Conservatives argue that as the Government the SNP have the power to ring fence Scotland’s NHS budget. However, the whole of the UK is facing cuts and Scotland’s block grant will be no different. This poses a problem for the SNP as, without knowing what the block grant will be, they cannot propose any such policies harming their chances of a second term in power. This, I think, would be a smart move and also goes some way to portraying the SNP as an irrelevance in the General Election. Although following from their poster gaffe promoting their education policy in Scotland – another devolved power – maybe I’m placing too much faith in the Conservatives’ political foresight.

Who knows? The TV debates start tomorrow night and the topic is domestic affairs.  This will undoubtedly cover the NHS giving us a better idea of how important the NHS is to the Conservatives. In the meantime, in case the Conservatives win the election, start having a think about what job you’d like in Dave’s Government…

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