Health

 

A good level of health is essential for people to flourish, to achieve this citizens require the necessary resources and opportunities to access healthy housing, food, environment and a well-functioning health and social care system. Due to continuing poor hospital performance, difficulties in getting GP appointments, continually missed targets, and the longest NHS waiting times in its history, health in general and the NHS in particular continues to be a major issue for the public. Sufficient financial resources are needed so that the health and social care system can guarantee individuals a comprehensive range of high quality services within a reasonable time frame. Thanks to social and medical progress we are an increasingly aged population that require growing support from an adequately funded social care system in particular. At present health and social care services are too limited and of variable performance, and experts agree that spending in these areas needs to be substantially increased to sustain a good quality health and social care system to improve and maintain the population’s health status.

 

Although all the parties’ manifestos have policies that focus on the poor performance of the NHS only the Green Party propose to significantly increase NHS spending to the level that independent experts state is necessary. The other manifestos have pledges to reduce NHS waiting times and ‘fix’ the social care system but the commitment to the necessary funding in these areas is missing. For example, on NHS spending the Conservatives are offering 0.9% and Labour 1.1% extra, which is well below what experts state is necessary. The Liberal Democrats focus on improving access to GP services by recruiting 8,000 more GPs, although the funding for this pledge is unclear. Although the Conservative manifesto vaguely commits to a long-term NHS workforce plan the only explicit spending commitments in their manifesto are to modernise 250 GP surgeries and develop 50 more Community Diagnostic Centres. The Labour Party’s only specific costed aim for the NHS is to provide 40,000 more NHS appointments to begin to tackle the long waiting lists. 

All the manifestos make variable pledges to tackle the poor dental health of the population with increasing access to dental health services, but only the Green Party is able to pledge the necessary funding for this. Mental health is another area that gets some policy attention from the manifestos, particularly for young people. All the manifestos pledge to provide mental health professionals in all schools. The manifestos also give variable policy attention to the plight of social care. Only the Liberal Democrats and the Greens are explicitly committed to providing free personal care as is the case in Scotland. The Labour and Conservative parties discuss social care but have no explicit costed policies in this area, for example the Labour Party states that it will create a National Care Service but there are no details on how this would be done.

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To achieve a flourishing society government must coordinate various policy areas such as education, housing, employment and the environment. In terms of health care policy, government must take a broad view that includes health promotion, illness prevention and public health services. It is encouraging to see some of the manifestos having a multisectoral approach to health, for example, the Liberal Democrats include policies on food, with a National Food Strategy to make nutritious food affordable and making more green spaces available for  people’s mental and physical well-being.

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Similarly, the Green Party provides a plan for a cross-government approach to public health, by requiring food labelling, promoting active travel and pledging local government investment in sport. The Conservative manifesto aims to legislate to combat smoking, vaping and high fat, sugar and salt in foods. Although the Labour manifesto has several good aims that would contribute to a flourishing life, there is a lack of a clear and costed plan for achieving these aims and no provisions for funding them. This quote is typical of the Labour manifesto: ‘[A]t the core of our mission will be a bold new ambition to raise the healthiest generation of children in our history.’ Without pledges for funding these ambitions, Labour’s aims remain only vague ambitions. Except for the Reform Party all the manifestos to a lesser and greater extent discuss the need to tackle health inequalities amongst regions, age groups and genders.

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As already stated, a flourishing and healthy population is only possible if government is committed to ensuring that citizens have the necessary material resources. Many experts agree that abolishing the two-child benefit cap in particular and increasing benefits to the most vulnerable in society in general is urgently needed. The Liberal Democrats, Greens and Plaid all pledge to specifically abolish the two- child benefit cap, the bedroom tax and tackle benefit poverty in general.

 

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