Give us back our NHS

Under Labour it is Government Ministers that have ALL the say while local people have NO say. The Lib Dems want to see more control of the NHS in the hands of local people.

The Lib Dems want locally accountable health services, shaped around the needs of the individual.

Too often decisions are taken to close clinics, wards or entire hospitals, where nobody listened to what local people wanted following sham consultation.

Local people pay for the NHS and should shape how it is run - not Whitehall, not unelected officials.

Liberal Democrats believe that our local hospitals should have their roots in local communities.

We would give people a greater say in how their health services are run by making the organisation which pays for health services
directly accountable to local communities. At the moment, PCT boards are appointed by the Department of Health in London.

This would create local accountability and control. We want to empower patients in decisions affecting their care.

The abolition of Community Health Councils in England (though not in Wales) and the substitution of five new bodies to cover complaints, scrutiny and public involvement in health has not been a success.

Just three years after PPI forums were established, the Government has now abolished them.

Patients must have a greater say in the changes happening in their local health services – from an early and influential point – and not after the changes have been made.

The NHS is centrally controlled and not accountable to local people.

Labour pays lip service to localism but remains wedded to the conviction that Whitehall knows best.

It has created a highly centralised NHS, driven by often contradictory performance targets set in Whitehall. Labour’s command and control culture has stifled innovation, undermined the ability of doctors to make clinical judgements about their patients and distorted health care priorities.

Labour’s centralised approach leaves little scope for local people to influence the development of services in their area, and scant democratic accountability except for that exercised over the Government as a whole.

With such a vast distance between the politicians who take decisions about the NHS and the people who use it, it is little wonder our health service can not always respond to patients’ needs.

Local consultations on service reconfiguration rarely lead to any change. According to the King’s Fund, a published summary of some of the decisions taken by the Secretary of State on contested reconfigurations over the past four years suggests that the majority have supported the original decision of the local NHS.