The Conservatives have been running our NHS for 48 of its 78 years, and I fundamentally believe it’s there for everyone in the country to rely on free at the point of use.
The NHS is still recovering from the pandemic, but has 42,000 more doctors and 71,000 more nurses than under Labour – with 250 more doctors and 400 more nurses for every month we’ve been in office. Resources matter, which is why, despite all the economic shocks we faced, overall spending on public services actually increased from 2010 to 2024 – in the case of the NHS by over 33% in real terms.
In Government:
Record NHS Funding
The Spring Budget 2024 announced that the Government is protecting the day-to-day funding of the National Health Service in England, providing an extra £2.45 billion in 2024/25. This will allow the NHS to continue to focus on reducing waiting times and bring the NHS’s resource budget in 2024/25 to £164.9 billion. This means that NHS funding equates to a real-terms increase of 13% since 2019/20. Our NHS is set to be in receipt of £1 billion more per week than in 2016.
In our area, we have also seen a further £8 million invested into A&E services alongside a surgical day unit at Southend Hospital and a further £110 million investment at Basildon, Broomfield and Southend Hospitals. Once opened, the day unit will offer a further 5,600 procedures a year, helping reduce patient waiting lists.
Upgrading 20 hospitals and building 40 new ones
On top of more money for the NHS every year, we’re investing in hospitals so that our brilliant doctors and nurses have the facilities they need to give patients the best possible care. We’re providing £850 million for 20 hospital upgrades, £2.7 billion for the first six new hospitals, and seed funding so that work on 34 more can make progress. And 78 hospital trusts will receive state-of-the-art MRI, CT and mammography screening machines, so cancer can be detected more quickly to boost survival rates.
Making sure the NHS has the staff it needs
Under the Conservatives, there were 21,000 more doctors and almost 17,000 more nurses on our wards. Over 1 million NHS staff – nurses, midwives and cleaners – are getting a well-deserved pay rise of at least 6.5% per cent and doctors will also see their pay increase. We also secured funding for five new medical schools to make sure we can plan for the future with confidence as we train the next generation of NHS staff here at home.
50 million extra GP surgery appointments
To fulfil our 2019 manifesto pledge, the Conservative Government outlined a spending plan worth £1.5bn funding that delivers 50 million extra general practice appointments a year, an increase of over 15 per cent. That means that if you need an appointment, waiting times will be shorter and you’ll get the service you deserve.
Charging overseas visitors who use the NHS
I believe that overseas visitors should be able to access our NHS as long as they make a fair contribution, just as the British taxpayer does. The NHS is a national, not an international, health service and I commend the Government's determination to stamp out misuse of the system to ensure it remains free at the point of need in this country.
I supported the Conservative Government's measures in February 2024 that raised the Immigration Health Surcharge to £1,035 per person per year for most adults and £776 per person per year for students and children so that we continue to see the funds for our NHS.
In Opposition:
Labour were elected on the promise of ‘fixing the NHS’. In the last two years, we have churned through three Health Secretaries and countless ministers – but Labour cannot hide the fact that they have no real plan to improve the system.
Pay Rises
Labour promised to do things differently. In government, we had to make tough decisions when confronted with unions asking for pay rise after pay rise. We chose to follow the recommendations of the independent pay review board, but as soon as they entered government, Labour announced an inflation-busting pay rise worth 28.9 percent. It is therefore no surprise that the NHS is back striking again. Enough is enough. The Conservative Party will legislate for minimum service levels and ban doctors from striking to protect patient safety.
Abolition of NHS England
Keir Starmer announced his plan to abolish NHS England more than a year ago, but as of today, there has been lots of taxpayer money spent and zero results. Even under a new Prime Minister, they claim that the process is still underway. What we know is that these plans are bogging the system down in a slow, top-heavy restructuring, while resorting to tax rises to fund them. We Conservatives are instead committed to delivering the decentralised and locally delivered healthcare system that constituents deserve.