Big increase in Tory support among doctors

Labour's claim to be the party of the NHS is goundless.  That's the view of Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley after a poll of doctors found that just 7% intended to vote Labour at if a General Election was held this year. The poll of 1,442 doctors (carried out by Hospital Doctor magazine and Medix) found that support for Labour was down 17% compared to the last Election and support for the Tories had increased by 16%.

Andrew Lansley:

"Doctors at the heart of our services are not only suffering poor morale but have now lost confidence in Patricia Hewitt and Labour’s stewardship of the NHS. In the two years since the General Election there has been a huge swing from Labour to the Conservatives.  Health professionals have heard David Cameron and I put the NHS at the forefront of Conservative priorities. They have heard us commit the next Conservative Government to a new partnership with health professionals and a NHS with is focused on patients’ interest not politically driven targets."

A less positive assessment of the reasons for the increase in support (written before the poll was published) comes from Fraser Nelson in The Business:

"In health, the party has assuaged the doctors’ and nursing unions by promising independence for the NHS bureaucracy and freedom from government reform with an “NHS Independence Bill”. It is a recipe for stagnation; the problem with the £106bn ($209bn, E156bn) NHS system is that it concentrates power in the hands of bureaucrats rather than patients... In health, the deeply unimpressive Andrew Lansley has treated his job as the Tory ambassador to the doctors’ unions. There is strategic advantage in campaigning against Labour’s tough decisions to reign in NHS spending: the Tories can pose as opponents of hospital ward closures, and thus attack Labour from the left."

Labour are about to trash the careers of 8,000 junior doctors says Mark Fulford on YourPlatform.

Comments

[Jennifer Wells]

This poll and story is a cameo for the whole of Cameron's mission. More support traded for old principles.

[Umbrella man]

Fraser Nelson is wrong. Most of this extra support will be about Labour failure rather than Tory repositioning.

[Richard Weatherill]

Surely the most telling factor is the high percentage of doctors who were unwilling to express any preference? Not surprisingly, the majority seem to have lost faith with politicians of whatever hue.

[Alan S]

Good point Richard.

[Richard Weatherill]

P.S. Did Fraser Nelson really write "reign in NHS spending" (instead of "rein in ...")?? The rot is spreading; he'll be "towing the line" next!

[William Norton]

Richard W: you have missed the deft subtlety of Nelson's prose. In (the arena of) NHS spending, Labour took the tough decisions to reign.

[Adam]

Nelson does expose one of the difficult choices the party is going to have to make over the next couple of years:

- should it hand powers to the doctors/nurses/teachers or to the patients/parents?

[Alan S]

It's already decided Adam for health. Doctors and nurses will get the power.

[Justin Hinchcliffe]

If you add the support of all 3 parties, it amounts to just 65%. I wonder who gets the rest? UKIP, BNP, Respect, Greens, old Liberals or the Stay At Home Party?

[CDM]

Goundless? Surely some mistake...

[Rachel Joyce]

As long as the NHS is centrally driven by treasury targets, doctors will be disillusioned with politicians.
My colleague doctors are more likely to vote Conservative than any because they have had quite enough of Labour. What they actually want to do is a good job for patients free from goverment intervention. Patients need to receive safe, evidence-based treatments, and what is funded/ affordable needs to be decided in partnership with the wider population. This is what doctors want - this is what they feel comfortable with. They also want to be valued for the extra-ordinarily hard and demanding career choices they have made (not treated as civil servants who can be abused so easily).
Freedom for doctors/ nurses is only part of the answer, as long the accountability is where it should be - to patients and the public at a local level (see my 100 policies suggestion).

[Oberon Houston]

Still, surely its good news. I think our ability to reform the NHS, free from the shackles of state control and direction, into an effcient organisation is the real appeal versus a Labour Govt. that is 1960 in its attitude toward this organisation.