Saturday 25 February 2012
For immediate use
Ed Miliband: This week the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords must join with Labour to hole David Cameron's health plans below the water line
Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Opposition, writing in tomorrow's Sunday Mirror ahead of votes on the Health and Social Care Bill in the House of Lords this week, said:
Before the election, David Cameron promised the country he was a different type of Tory.
The NHS was central to that promise.
But he didn't tell you at the election that within months of coming to power, he would order the biggest ever top-down reorganisation of the NHS.
He didn't tell you that he would divert billions of pounds to his bureaucratic shake-up and away from patient care.
He didn't tell you that he would bring in new rules which say up to 49% of the beds in an NHS hospital could be set aside for private patients.
But this is what he is doing.
He didn't tell you because he wanted to con people into thinking the NHS was safe in his hands.
The reality is on his watch, the NHS is getting worse.
The bad old days of long queues for some operations, lon ger waiting times in A&E and fewer nurses are coming back.
The number of NHS nurses has now fallen by 3,500 since the general election. By the time of the next election there will be 6,000 fewer nurses.
The billions spent on David Cameron's unwanted reorganisation could save these jobs.
His plans will distract staff who will have to cope with huge organisational change and they will put profits before patients and bring in creeping privatisation.
That is why we are fighting against Cameron's plans.
Those plans can still be defeated.
But this week is the time for everybody to stand up and be counted.
This week the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords must join with Labour to hole David Cameron's health plans below the water line.
The House of Lords has the chance to puncture the arrogance of an out-of-touch Prime Minister who thinks he knows better than patients, nurses and doctors and persuade him to drop this bill.
If they do not the betrayal by the Lib Dems in allowing this bill through will be bigger than the row over university tuition fees.
They will betray not only the people who rely on today’s NHS but also generations to come.
It will strike at the heart of Britain's proudest institution.
The choice is not reform or no reform. But what kind of reform and whether it makes our NHS better or worse.
Go to any hospital just now and you will hear the opposition from doctors and nurses about this bill, their worry about how much harder it will make their jobs.
I think they're right.
Even members of his own cabinet are telling David Cameron to think again.
He cannot just plough on.
Labour will fight to stop him and finish off this bill.
Ends
