The NHS isn’t just another public service, it’s our shared stake in society
4 min read
The Conservatives are the natural guardians of the NHS – our record cash settlement will ensure it is there for the whole country, writes Matt Hancock MP
I love our NHS. It’s there for us at the best of times, and it’s there for us at some of the worst of times. And I am determined to make sure it’s always there for those who need it. So this Conservative Party Conference isn’t going to be about wild promises like four-day-weeks, or wacky ideas like abolishing Ofsted, but practical, deliverable, priorities for our public services, our economy, and our country, so we can ensure Britain thrives after Brexit.
The NHS is our biggest domestic priority – the prime minister made this clear on day one. The NHS isn’t just another public service, it’s our shared stake in society. We all have a deeply personal connection to it, whether it’s the joy in witnessing the birth of a child, or the care and compassion shown to a loved one in their moment of need.
The government understands what the NHS means to people, and that’s why we’re putting in the largest cash settlement in its history – £33.9bn extra – so we can ensure it continues to be there for every single person in our society.
That record funding will allow us to focus on three crucial parts of the health service: infrastructure, technology, and people.
We’re going to deliver dozens of new hospital upgrades across the country – new intensive care wards, new children’s units, and new mental health facilities. It’s a multi-billion-pound infrastructure injection for hospitals from Cornwall to Newcastle. And we will make money available for essential maintenance right across the NHS.
Investing in infrastructure isn’t just about increasing the capacity of the NHS to deal with growing demand, but increasing the capability of our doctors and nurses to deal with changing needs, such as growing awareness of mental health, and utilise new technology and treatments to deliver faster and more effective care.
Technology is the second crucial part of the NHS we must get right. Since I became health secretary I’ve made it my mission to get new tech into the NHS, not because we must have the latest gadgets and gizmos, but because the right tech saves time for staff, and saves lives.
During the past year, we’ve started to catch up with the 21st century – mobiles replacing pagers, secure emails replacing letters that get lost. Over the coming years, we will build on our world-leading work on genomics so we can detect, diagnose, and treat rare childhood illnesses more quickly. And we will start to see the dividends from the £250m investment in the NHS’ first ever Artificial Intelligence lab. Together, gene-based therapies and AI promise major breakthroughs in the treatment and care of patients with cancer, dementia and Parkinson’s.
These new technologies will complement and augment what staff do, but tech can never replace people. The third, and most important, part of the NHS is people. Our health service is nothing without the dedicated people who work in it – so we will back NHS staff every step of the way and make sure they have the support they need.
We’ve now got record numbers of new GPs in training, secured record pay rises for the lowest paid nurses, agreed new contracts for junior doctors, and brought in ring-fenced training budgets for nurses and midwives. This is all thanks to the record funding delivered by this Conservative government.
Labour sometimes try to claim the mantle of the NHS. They are wrong – because we Conservatives are the natural guardians of the NHS.
It was a Conservative health minister, Henry Willink – under a Conservative Prime Minister, Winston Churchill – who first proposed the NHS 75 years ago. For the majority of the time since, the NHS has been served by Conservative secretaries of state under Conservative prime ministers. And it is a Conservative government today that is delivering record funding to our NHS to make sure the health service delivers for people across the country.
We are the party of the NHS – and under my watch we’re always going to be.
Matt Hancock is Conservative MP for West Suffolk and health secretary
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