If elected, the Labour party has pledged to repeal the Health and Social Care Act in its election manifesto, therefore “scrapping the competition regime”.
“We will establish a sensible commissioning framework, based on the principle of an NHS preferred provider, to stop the drive towards privatisation and make sure that NHS services are not destabilised by competition and fragmentation,” the manifesto states.
If elected, the Labour party has pledged to repeal the Health and Social Care Act in its election manifesto, therefore “scrapping the competition regime”.
“We will establish a sensible commissioning framework, based on the principle of an NHS preferred provider, to stop the drive towards privatisation and make sure that NHS services are not destabilised by competition and fragmentation,” the manifesto states.
At the manifesto launch in Manchester, party leader Ed Miliband said: “We’ll call time on David Cameron’s privatisation of the NHS, with a cap on profits in our health service.” This is clarified in the manifesto as specifically for private companies that are commissioned to provide clinical services.
Although Labour supports the principles of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Treaty (TTIP), Labour says it will ensure that the NHS is protected from the TTIP treaty.
Labour also advocates integrating commissioning and budgets at a local level to avoid inefficiency and duplication, stating in the manifesto that ‘services must be joined up in ways that make sense to the people who use them.’
The manifesto says Labour will invest in 20,000 more nurses, 8,000 more GPs and 3,000 more midwives, paid for by a mansion tax on properties worth more than £2 million, a levy on tobacco firms, and by tackling tax avoidance.
Other plans include increasing the proportion of the mental health budget that is spent on children, recruiting 5,000 new care-home workers, and using digital technology so people can give feedback, with the aim of saving on the costs of service failure.
