Louise Bagshawe: In praise of Andrew Lansley

Louise Bagshawe welcomes the Conservative lead on the NHS.

For obvious reasons, it was very moving to be in Liverpool last week for the recording of Any Questions?. It is a wonderful programme that affords the panellist enough time to actually answer the questions put to them. Whilst I knew that the recording would concentrate on the unimaginable tragedy that had happened to Rhys Jones, it would touch on other issues too. You have a good guess at what might come up. That week the National Health Service had been much in the news, and the media spin was not wholly positive for the Conservatives. We had circulated a list of hospitals that were under threat. It contained one true error (the name of Altrincham hospital substituted for Trafford General, which is in the same NHS trust). A combination of media bias – the reporting of complaints by NHS Trust managers as though they were by definition justified – and unfortunate news management – Henry Bellingham MP apologising to his local hospital – led to a narrative of shambolic Conservative media controls and Tory fear-mongering on maternity and A&E.

The fact that the protestations of the trust managers were often unfounded and that Bellingham had never said his own hospital ought not to be on the list, but rather, that other area hospitals should have been added to it as well, did not seem to matter. Never complain, never explain.

On the AQ panel with me was Peter Oborne, the Daily Mail columnist. He gave a brave performance in the face of an unremittingly hostile audience and stood his ground on the issues. In an article last Saturday, Peter argued, as an aside, that Andrew Lansley should be sacked. I must disagree. Whatever the flaws of last week’s presentation, both our overall strategy on the NHS and the decision last week to highlight maternity and A&E closures are proving themselves justified.

One of the great achievements of the last eighteen months has been for the Conservatives to fight, and win, on ground Labour thinks of as its own. “Stop Brown’s NHS cuts” was a highly effective issue campaign; I recall Polly Toynbee arguing how worried by it she was after last year’s Tory conference. After years of double-digit deficits on the issue of health, the Cameron/Lansley one-two punch of pledging to defend the NHS and pointing out Labour’s waste and failure finally got home to the public. We erased Labour’s huge lead and built a slim one of our own. A new poll today shows that Conservatives enjoy a 25% lead over Labour amongst GPs.  That was as unthinkable once as Labour leading on immigration would be now. Under Andrew Lansley, the message has been hammered home. A scarcity of NHS dentists. Fewer health visitors and midwives. Hospitals in hock to PFI profiteering. Before the local elections this year, we were treated to the astonishing sight of a rally of junior doctors cheering David Cameron to the rafters. The Conservatives under Lansley had held Patricia Hewitt accountable for the disastrous IT failure for their applications. And of course, at last year’s conference, David Cameron promised that the NHS would be his priority. You can argue that Labour had been bad but they have been bad on the NHS before. Under this team they have been made to pay for it.

I wish I had got the question on the hospital closure list. First of all, I can speak about it with some passion, since a few weeks earlier I’d actually given birth in one of the fine maternity units Labour threatens to shut. And secondly, you could almost feel the momentum shift on the issue as our train pulled in to Liverpool. The prior day, the story was about the typo that Altrincham (which doesn’t have a maternity unit) was threatened with maternity cuts. But that day, the hospital in the same trust they meant to include was one of four that actually lost its maternity unit, four in Manchester alone. Which was the more important – a researcher’s naming error, or the fact that Mancunian mothers now have to travel further from home whilst possibly in agonising labour to give birth? Want to talk about some minor clerical error? Great, allow me to remind you of the Chairman of the Labour party and a cabinet minister marching against her own government to save her maternity unit – which Labour just shut. And in an obvious ‘bury bad news’ move, the same day the maternity units were closed, Labour announced the cost of its last pointless reorganisation – 80 million quid in redundancy payments, not one penny of which goes to the health of patients. Average consultant payoff? Three hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Yes, I know. One consultant received nine hundred grand of taxpayers’ money. That wastage would have paid for a lot more district nurses.

Andrew Lansley was right to fight on this issue. These cuts are driven not by clinical need but by EU regulations, the Working Time Directive, which demands more doctors to do the same amount of work. We could have opted out; as always, Labour chose not to. Labour may have chuckled at the minor snaffles on the Tory hospital list. Lansley, being human, admitted he was exhausted. But it was the wrong strategy. Their moment of fun kept the issue in the news; barely a couple of days later, as maternity units shut and the papers fisked the Tory list to pen ‘Cameron was right on the NHS’ stories, it became clear the strategy was justified. A report out two weeks ago tells us every six miles travelled puts critical patients 1% closer to death. I know first-hand that if forced to travel to Eastbourne, I would have had my third child without pain relief stuck in a traffic jam (he arrived quickly). Mr. Lansley should continue to fight on this issue. His shadow department has done wonders to highlight Labour’s ongoing failure. The latest opinion poll, taken after the release of the Tory threatened hospitals list, showed that the party had regained its lead on health. Labour will be very worried indeed.

Comments

[hardly surprising]

It's good to see our candidates able to express themselves as fluently as Louise. I always enjoy her articles.

However, on this, she's surely preaching a non Conservative line.

GPS in this country are overpaid and underworked. The Labour Party, to its credit, is taking them on and requiring them to offer service in return for our prepayments into the NHS (as these are what tax and NI really are).
Is it so surprising then that GPS are nervous of Brown? Have we anything to learn from his approach in terms of showing some guts and demanding more from our public services?

[Iain]

Louise, if Cameron and Lansley were right to make an issue of what is going on in the English NHS then they shouldn't let their campaign be just a one day wonder, but hammer the message home for the issue should be more important that an error in their facts.

( note I defined it as the English NHS for that is the service they have legislative powers over, and should be accurate and define it as such, in doing so highlighting Gordon Brown's 'anomalous' position)

But in the campaign I saw, I thought it was an error not to have directly linked Gordon Brown with the closures. For it Gordon Brown's fiscal mismanagement and the resulting financial pressures which are forcing the closures, just as it forced the need to stage the English nurses pay rise, ( though Nurses in Scotland don't ), just as it necessitated Gordon Brown having to slash the capital spending budget in the English NHS by one third (yet Gordon Brown has left Scottish budgets untouched).

Above all it is a massive error for the Conservatives to not challenge Gordon Brown's stewardship of the economy, for it is there in peoples everyday lives, when they see their A&E, Maternity, local hospital closures, there in the Nurses staged pay rise, there in the Prison Officers staged pay rise, all it needs is the Conservatives to show Gordon Brown's finger prints all over them, and so hang those problems where they belong, around Gordon Brown's neck!

[Tony Makara]

Labour's hypocracy over the NHS is staggering. Louise I'm not sure if you are old enough to remember the 'Battle of Jennifers ear' but basically Labour tried to pin the ill-health of a little girl on the Conservative government on the day by supplying 'False' information.

The fact that a decade after announcing that there was 'A week to save the NHS' Labour are now closing down hospital services on aweekly basis. The fact is Labour have given up on the NHS, after 'losing' an indeterminate amount of money in the NHS system they are now red-faced and are giving up on the project.

[Iain]

"Labour's hypocracy over the NHS is staggering."

Agreed, which is why it is hard to understand why the Conservatives haven't attacked Labour over the NHS more assiduously. Labour came to office denouncing the internal market, scrapped it, yet have spent the last 10 years reinstating the structures left by the last Conservative Government.

Liam Halligan did an excellent article on Labours tyranny of change at the NHS, which has resulted in 10 wasted years and £3billion wasted to get us nowhere.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/25/nrhewitt125.xml

The Conservatives should not be allowing Labour off the hook, with this, and the A&E, Maternity, local hospital closures, they should remorselessly bang on about it, and making sure people know about it, and know where the blame lies. Labour and Gordon Brown.

[Not a traditional Tory]

Iain, Gordon Brown "has left Scottish budgets untouched" only because allocation of the Scottish budget is a responsibility of the Scottish Executive, not the Chancellor/Prime Minister.

Please don't try to make out as though this is some situation where Gordon Brown is deliberately cutting English health spending but giving the Scots preferential treatment, because it's not so. If we can't rely on our own policies and proposals to win the election, but instead just gripe about how we don't like the idea of a Scottish Prime Minister, we simply won't deserve to win. Gordon Brown is ahead in the polls people!!! The public don't care about his "Scottishness", except for some narrow-minded sour little Englanders who really should just bog off to the English Dumbocrats if it bothers them that much. It's time to change the record.

[James Maskell]

Lansley has been very quiet again. It seems that as soon as we start a campaign on one issue, we lose our gaze on the other equally important issues.

[Iain]

Not a traditional Tory, well let me quote the article from the Financial Times...

"Prompted by the tightness of the public finances, the new prime minister, who has placed the NHS as his “immediate priority”, cut the capital budget of the English NHS for 2007-08 from £6.2bn to £4.2bn. The move could delay the government’s hospital building and reconfiguration programme in England.
However, Mr Brown avoided equivalent cuts to the Scottish and Welsh NHS budgets even though the funding formula for the UK nations suggests they should have shared the pain. That decision leaves him open to criticism that he favoured patients in his home country."

[Iain]

Not a traditional Tory, as for the 'sour faced little Englander' jibe, well we have every right to be bloody angry at what has happened, where our young sick and old people are being discriminated against, and above all made constitutionally second class citizens, which has made Cameron's response to this issue pretty weak, pathetic, and almost non existent.

[Mountjoy]

I agree with you Louise - Andrew Lansley has been on fine form and along with DC's superb performance on Newsnight, and DC & DD at the weekend on social breakdown, the opinion polls should be showing a Cameron Bounce...

[DavisFan]

Lansley is great and should be promoted as against the daft no-marks like Grayling, whose expertise seems to be in producing the endless press release.

[Grayling4Leader]

Why is DavisFan having a pop at Graying? Graying is the only member of the Shadow Cabinet to have the energy to take on our real enemies - Cherie Blair and the Bee Gees' letting agents. The man is a genius.

[DavisFan]

I don't know what Grayling4Leader is talking about.

Come back and talk to me when he has claimed a scalp (like DD has).

You know, people will say I'm too pro-DD, but it's suspicious how the Government makes its worst mistakes opposite DD.

Would Blunkett have sorted out visas for his nanny without DD breathing down his neck? I don't know.

Would there have been chaos in the visa issueing departmnet which let all those foreigners in if DD hadn't been applying the death grip somewhere else?

It's not enough for Grayling to just stick out loads of press releases. You've got to force the error.

[Grayling4Leader]

Calm down, DavisFan. I'm not criticising DD. I think most of us on this site would have loved it if he'd become leader. I mean, given that he gets rid of Home Office ministers for fun, imagine how many prime ministers he could have brought down? And think of the tax cuts we'd be promising.

I just wanted to defend Grayling. I think most Conservative Home readers will agree that he is the DD of the next generation. Tireless, brilliant, and never scared to describe other people's work as his own.

I fully expect Brown to have a nightmare trying to get Labour MPs to agree to become the next Home Sec and W&P Secretary. With Davis and Grayling shadowing them, ministers' life expectancy can only be a matter of weeks.

[Patricia Wilcock]

When the "Battle of Jennifer's Ear" was raging, wasn't Louise Bagshaw a member of the Labour Party? Or was that later?
Patricia Wilcock

[DavisFan]

Patricia Wilcock is right. We should be suspicious of people who change their minds.

I for one think that CF membership and activist activity should give candidates points in selection meetings.

I would never vote for someone who had not been a lifelong Conservative. I go to Constituency events and there are fairweather party members turning up. Where were they in 1997?

That's part of the reason why I am such a fan of DD: I think most of our support would be made up of lifelong Conservatives.

[Philip Collinson]

Patricia Wilcock, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia states that Louise Bagshawe joined the Conservatives aged 14, but later joined the Labour Party under Tony Blair in 1996, believing Blair would be "socially liberal but an economic Tory". She said that "she never stopped being a conservative", but "thought Blair was one too". Inspired by the picture of Margaret Thatcher pinned to her monitor, and saying that she was disappointed in Blair, she opted to rejoin the Conservatives, and campaigned for the Conservatives in the 1997 and 2001 elections.

[Matthew Dear]

DavisFan - can we assume therefore that you wouldn't have voted for Churchill?

[Tony Makara]

It is sad that some people are being critical of Louise for being member of anoter party. Its worth bearing in mind that Tory icon Sir winston Churchill was at one time a member of the Liberal party.

In a democracy people have to right to change their opinion, their vote and their affiliation in line with circumstances. Louise is putting in a lot of time, work and no doubt money to ensure that Britain has a Conservative government after the next general election. For that she deserves respect rather than brickbats.

[DavisFan]

Matthew Dear - that's a tough question, but you shouldn't make a rule on the basis that the next traitor might happen to be a naitonal saviour.

There's a deeper issue at stake.

The Party is not just a machine for 'winning elections' or 'changing the country' - it is an activist organisation and it will achieve nothing if it does not respect its activists.

That is where my 'years of service' rule comes from. Imagine it: a Parliament of Graham Bradys, Roger Helmers, David Davises... fabulous.

[Editor]

No more comments about Louise's past please. Let's focus on the topic of the day. Louise briefly supported Labour but her columns and commitment to work for the party now are, I think, very, very persuasive.

[Iain]

DavisFan, I believe there are other and better candidates from the Conservative front benches to put the spot light on rather than Grayling, for my self I would be putting Osborne in pole position for boot up the backside. As you rightly say David Davis has made the Home Office a disaster area for Labour, which is not just a matter of them being particularly inept in that area, it has been the result of DD's single minded determination to hold them to account. Compare that with the Shadow Chancellor, who has been awol from his position and not laid a glove on Brown, letting him go to his coronation with 'best chancellor ever' ringing in his ears, might suggest that much of this Brown bounce has been the result of Osborne not doing his job. Eg the reason why Nurses and Prison Officers in England are having their wage rise staged is because to the economic mismanagement by Gordon Brown. Osborne should be out there nailing that issue on Gordon Brown, and these people knowing who to direct their blame on when they open their wage packets and not find their salary increases. But where is Osborne? I haven't seen sight nor sound of him for months, and when he has been around I haven't heard him make on reasoned argument or challenge of Gordon Brown’s stewardship of the economy, when there is much to go on.

[Tony Makara]

Editor, you are right. We are all guilty of straying too far off topic at times. It probably is better to let wayward comments go rather than chasing them up. Louise writes very well, we should let her theme of the day develop rather than bickering over other items.

[Iain]

"Louise writes very well, we should let her theme of the day develop rather than bickering over other items."

Louise also speaks and argues her point very well, for I heard her on Any Questions and was quite impressed.

[David Sergeant]

The theme is Andrew Lansley. I am sure he would make a great Secretary Of State for Health. Trouble is he is in the oposition. His campaign on closures, whatever Louise says ended up a minus. It is no good complaining now that Bellingham said something diferent than was reported at the time it was up to Lansley and CCHQ to imediately put the perception right. If I can voice a suspicion, the Conservative party seems to have a system where a shadow minister does, and controls, all aspects of an issue and no little "press officer" is going to take the limelight. Labour uses many people to handle issues, nearly all the time you read "number 10 dismissed the Tory claims" etc. There should be more control over issues besides a shadow minister so maybe they won't get exhausted. Remember there are many Tory MPs as naive and foolish as Bellingham.

[David Sergeant]

Just to rub it in, in yesterday's Telegraph a rather twisted American columist wrote an article saying Brown doesn't need to have a referendum on the EU. To-day one, very comprehensive, letter is published demolishing that argument. From a Tory front bench spokesman or MP? No, from, so help me, an Independent Labour peer.

As far as I know Lansley, or any other Conservative luminary, has not written anything to put the record straight. Immediate would have been best but even now would do.