General Election 2015: Conservatives pledge £8bn a year for the NHS
The Tories will inject an extra £8bn a year into the NHS if they win the general election, the party has announced.
As part of a bid to revolutionize the health services, the Conservatives will guarantee over-75s same-day access to a GP and provide access to GPs on the weekends and in the evenings.
The £8bn funding pledge follows a similar promise made by the Lib Dems and is the figure quoted by head of NHS England Simon Stevens as what the health service needs to implement its modernisation programme
Chancellor George Osborne explained the measures in a Guardian comment piece:
We back the NHS’s plan, but there’s no point having a plan without the funding to deliver it, so today we commit to deliver what the NHS needs.I can confirm that in the Conservative manifesto next week we will commit to a minimum real terms increase in NHS funding of £8bn in the next five years.Decisions about spending go to the heart of our politics because they reflect our values. We in the Conservative party are in no doubt about our approach: the NHS is something precious, we value it for the security it provides to everyone in our country, and we will always give it the resources it needs.
In contrast, Labour is promising an extra £2.5bn a year to the NHS but has also made a £138m pledge to recruit 3,000 extra midwives to ensure women receive attention during labour.
The NHS is a key battleground at this year’s general election and has been regularly cited as top of voters’ concerns. The YouGov tracker has Labour as the most trusted party on the NHS.
In response to the Tories’ announcement Labour’s shadow chief secretary Chris Leslie said: “Nobody will believe a word of this…they still can’t say where the money would come from. And they haven’t been able to say how they will pay for any of their panicky promises over the last 24 hours.”