Party like it’s 2025

Health journalist Andy Cowper is dismayed about the likely date for the next General Election, but sees good news for primary care from the latest party conferences

You’ll always find me in the kitchen at party conferences, as Jona Lewie nearly sang back in 1978. 

Actually, that’s a lie. You’ll always find me avoiding the costly, soul-destroying events that are political party conferences. You’ll find me getting what I need through blogs, social media, livestreams and TV broadcasts.

But before we start on the 2023 party conference season, I must convey depressing news. The Institute For Government think-tank estimates the most likely date for the next UK General Election is late January 2025.

We potentially have to watch this Government stumble on for another 15 months, bereft of clues, so far out of ideas that they’re practically back in. Another year-and-a-quarter of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s tetchiness when asked a question of any minor level of difficulty. And (reshuffles permitting) that permanently baffled look on the face of health secretary Steve Barclay.

So, was there any good news for primary care in the autumn party season?

Perhaps there was. The Liberal Democrats promised to fund free nursing care and support with mobility, hygiene and medication. The party estimates the proposal would cost £5bn a year, but will save an estimated £3bn, so the net cost would be £2bn.  

The Conservatives didn’t offer much new on health. In the opposite of a coincidence, the NHS industrial action over pay also took place that week. Mr Barclay asserted that striking medics were ‘even threatening to take the Government to court over our plans to let patients see their own test results on their own phones, rather than taking up a GP appointment’. I was bemused by this statement, as I suspect many others were: Pulse noted that this refers to a BMA legal challenge that was never made.

It may be comforting for Mr Barclay to have fictional opposition of this kind. He also emphasised that banning things is bad and un-Conservative. This suggested he didn’t know about PM Rishi Sunak’s pledge to stop new generations being able to buy tobacco. Borrowed from New Zealand, it’s likely to be tough to implement. But it is a move that will unquestionably benefit public health, and all of us should back it.

Labour was in confident mood. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s speech endorsed shadow health secretary Wes Streeting’s reformist agenda, with warnings that ‘we must be the government that transforms our NHS. We can’t go on like this, with a sickness service. We need an NHS that prevents illness, keeps people healthy and out of hospital.’

 This prevention emphasis is good. However, Starmer’s pledge to end ‘the 8am scramble for a GP appointment’ is mightily ambitious.

If Wes Streeting knows how he’ll end the 8am scramble, he wasn’t telling us. However, he did serve up some optimism: ‘there is nothing wrong with the NHS that cannot be cured by what’s right with the NHS … primary care will be at the heart of Labour ‘s plan for the NHS … we’ll cut red tape … Labour will bring back the family doctor and will put mental health support in every school and hubs in every community, paid for by cutting tax breaks for private schools.’ 

As with the pledge to end non-dom tax, we must keep a careful eye on how many times this money will be spent.

Andy Cowper is the editor of Health Policy Insight and a columnist for the BMJ and Civil Service World. Read more of his Pulse PCN articles here.