With the Conservative health headlines already safely secured over the weekend, today’s manifesto launch was targeted at other policy areas. Adopting an upbeat tone overall (reminiscent of the Tory health rhetoric in the build up to the 2010 election), the health chapter of the manifesto focused on reiterating support for the implementation of the Five Year Forward View (5YFV), taking a swipe at the NHS 'culture' under the previous Labour government, and showcasing favoured initiatives from the past five years.
As expected, continued support for Simon Stevens’ vision forms the foundation of future Conservative health policy. The commitment to increase NHS funding by at least £8bn by 2020 is accompanied by other key 5YFV ambitions: a seven-day NHS; increased transparency and access to information; implementation of evidence-based prevention programmes; and ensuring equal priority for mental health.
The alignment with the 5YFV makes Labour’s omission of any references to the document in their health manifesto (coupled with Andy Burnham's assertion that the 5YFV left ‘many big questions unanswered’) all the more striking.
The 5YFV has replaced all talk of centrally driven NHS structural reorganisation – with no direct reference made to the 2012 Health and Social Care Act. Rather, the manifesto showcases more politically palatable activities. These include implementing the recommendations of George Freeman’s Innovative Medicines and Medical Technology Review, delivering the Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia and continuing investment into the Cancer Drugs Fund.
With no new announcements on health, the 2015 Conservative manifesto is an extension of the Tories’ long-term effort to re-neutralise health as an election issue. It will also be hoped that it can go some way to close the trust gap that the Conservatives suffer on health policy (see the polling in the adjacent column). As such and as expected, no potential sources of controversy have made it into the manifesto.
However, with the headline £8bn spending promise dominating the Conservative offer on health, George Osborne’s influence over manifesto development is clear. It would therefore be no great surprise if the rather innocuous promise to ‘consider how best to recognise and reward high performance’ of NHS staff develops into a health flashpoint should a Conservative-led Government be returned in May. Is this signalling a controversial move towards performance-related pay?
