Matt Woods: We should allow private healthcare providers to advertise in the NHS

Matt Woods is a Conservative activist in London who originally hails from Cleethorpes.

Have you ever noticed how many posters there are in a doctor’s waiting room?  It seems like there’s no point painting the walls of NHS surgeries, as they inevitably get papered over with everything from posters asking when I last had an STD check up, flyers for Afro-Caribbean Elders' Health Services, notices about the next young mums' ante-natal class, colourful pleas for me to stop smoking or take more exercise and the ubiquitous Aids warnings.

There’s no doubt that in a doctor’s surgery, there is a captive audience.  People look at their watches and wait to be called, the beep of the doctor’s buzzer punctuating furtive glances over at the table of last year’s Hello! magazines and 1996 editions of Horse & Hound.  Someone clearly thinks that advertising Health Services with posters in the waiting room is a good idea, something that increases take-up of services and saves money in the long term by catching problems earlier.  For that reason, I’m not going to go into a long winded tome about the evils of excessive government advertising and PR (you can read one of my previous Platform pieces for that), but instead look at how we can use the captive audience of the doctor’s waiting room to improve the quality of care, promote healthy lifestyles, prevention and early detection.

Private medical insurers have long understood the importance of encouraging their customers to be healthy.  Previously, this would have meant excluding the irredeemably unhealthy, not covering pre-existing conditions and hiking premiums for age and whether you smoke.  That still goes on, of course, but many insurers are looking at ways to decrease the amount of claims made by their customers.  Take PruHealth for example: they offer a scheme whereby customers can earn discounts on their premiums if they go to the gym, quit smoking or go for a medical.  They even give out pedometers to let people upload how far they’ve walked and offer discounts if you buy healthy food at the supermarket. 

Why is it that private companies are so good at encouraging such behaviour?  Sure, they have an army of statisticians telling them that it’s better to charge someone £20 a month for being healthy than charge them £30 a month and have to pay for a £20,000 heart bypass at the end of it, but don’t the NHS know that too?

Matt Woods is a Conservative activist in London who originally hails from Cleethorpes.

Matt Woods: How the Conservatives stand to gain from talking up the Greens

Matt Woods - more familiar to ConservativeHome readers as "Cleethorpes Rock" - reflects on the rise of the Greens after his visit to Norwich North on the ConHome coach trip, and wonders if the Conservatives might be able to benefit from their improved showing.

Something occurred to me the other day as I walked round Norwich North, observing the Green Party posters that had sprouted up all over the place.  When I got home, I looked at an opinion poll and thought about it a bit more.  Do we stand to gain by building up the Greens?

Graeme Archer and I were chatting away on the ConHome Battlebus and I remarked on the number of posters from the Greens, which I sneeringly ventured might have been printed on organic hemp paper.  Graeme said how surprised he was that I was so disparaging towards those I referred to as Watermelons (you know, Green on the Outside, Red on the inside...).  My answer was that I supposed the leadership of the Greens was indeed Red under the bed and a tie-died, pot-smoking danger to the Tory party.

Then, after more discussion, we all agreed that Green VOTERS (at least at a local election)are probably more Tory inclined in their thinking; after all, if we’re not for CONSERVING things, what are we for?  Taking care of our surroundings, an understanding of the countryside and an aversion to wastefulness ought to give us some common ground with those who hitch their caravan to the Green bandwagon.  We should also remember the electoral advantages the green agenda might bring in certain areas.

Matt Woods: A glut of government advertising could point to an early general election

Matt Woods is Secretary of Cleethorpes Conservative Future but now lives and works in London. He is better known to ConservativeHome readers as "Cleethorpes Rock" and, in his Platform debut, wonders whether Gordon Brown might call the general election sooner than most of us all think.

Whilst recent polls might be pointing towards a Cameron victory at the next election - and all bets seem to be on that being in May 2010 - there are developments that might suggest an election is a lot nearer than we might have thought.

In advance of the last two general elections there has been a marked increase in government advertising spending in the run-up to polling day. So the pundits may be pointing towards May 2010, but the glut of adverts paid for by government may tell their own story. 

Recently, new adverts have cropped up on our screens for Direct.gov.uk, along with those warning us of the perils of smoking, saturated fat, binge drinking, STDs, drug abuse and deadly computer games. Then there are those drawing our attention to those stock "get tough" issues of benefit fraud and car tax evasion, and imploring us to claim tax credits. Chuck in S'ralun Sugar's apprenticeship plugs (or is that plugs for The Apprentice?) and the ad department at ITV must be asking themselves "600 job cuts? What 600 job cuts?".