Ed Miliband today launches Labour’s General Election campaign and announces plans for a “double lock” to safeguard the future of the NHS
In his speech at the ArcelorMittal Orbit in the Olympic Park in London, he will declare that Labour will guarantee that local health services are no longer threatened by marketisation and privatisation, and provide extra investment so the NHS has time to care.
Ed Miliband will say the future of the NHS is now on the ballot paper in this campaign because it is at risk from Tory privatisation policies and extreme cuts.
He will set out Labour’s plan to safeguard the future of the NHS with a double lock which will:
1. Put the right values back at the heart of the NHS, with legislation to repeal the Tory market, so fewer private contracts are awarded, and guarantee that, when the private sector does play a role in providing services, patients are always put before profit.
They include plans to:
• Impose a profit cap when private companies provide NHS services.
• Stop cherry picking so companies cannot profit by only treating easy cases.
• Ensure contracts are terminated when companies are not delivering a high-quality service.
• Repeal David Cameron’s market framework for the NHS that is seeing services forced out to tender, privatised and fragmented, and replace it with a system based on cooperation and collaboration, in which the NHS is the preferred provider.
2. Make extra investment in the NHS to give staff the time to care, with funding of £2.5 billion over and above any Tory plans and the rejection of their extreme public spending cuts that would put the NHS as we know it at risk.
Labour’s plans will:
• Raise £2.5 billion a year for the NHS through a mansion tax on properties over £2 million, tackling tax avoidance by hedge funds, and a levy on the tobacco companies.
• Pay for 20,000 more nurses, 8,000 more GPs, 5,000 new homecare workers and 3,000 more midwives.
• Join up services from home to hospital.
• Guarantee no-one waits more than a week for vital cancer tests
• Guarantee a GP appointment within 48 hours - or on the same day if you need it – ensuring families get quicker access to their GP and helping relieve pressure on frontline hospital services.