Midwives and therapists under Lib Dem health plans
Tuesday, 18 September 2007 12:00 AM
Women and people with long-term conditions should be handed their own funds and given the freedom to select their own treatment, the Liberal Democrats said today.
Norman Lamb, Lib Dem health spokesman, said the government should pilot schemes to give pregnant women NHS funds to appoint a midwife, or people with long-term conditions a budget to design their own care plan.
Similar schemes already introduced for disabled people have shown this empowers and dignifies people, Mr Lamb said.
He argued: "There is real potential for extending direct payments into the NHS".
The Liberal Democrats pledged a commitment to mental health, including support for talking therapies.
Effective treatment could get more than a million people off incapacity benefit and back into work, he argued, condemning the current sidelining of therapy as a "dismal waste of human talent".
Addressing delegates at the Lib Dem conference, Mr Lamb hit out at health inequalities in Britain, claiming an "accident of birth in modern Britain affects your very chance of survival."
The health secretary Alan Johnson addressed health inequalities last week, but Mr Lamb dismissed proposals, such as the health in pregnancy grant, as a "gimmick".
The government needs to tackle the causes of inequality beyond the NHS, he argued, including housing, education and poverty. GP contracts must be reformed to encourage doctors to work in deprived communities.
Speaking at conference in Brighton, Mr Lamb set out plans to decentralise the health service.
As the Liberal Democrats attempt to carve out a distinctive agenda on the NHS, he said it should be reformed to empower people and communities. But rather than repeat the former prime minister's mantra of "choice", Mr Lamb argued for a fundamental change of structure in the NHS.
Local communities have little say over local service cuts, he argued. Decisions are taken by nationally appointed primary care trusts, which are accountable to nationally appointed strategic health authorities, in turn answerable to Whitehall.
This structure should be replaced with one that guarantees democratic accountability, Mr Lamb argued, with local control and responsibility supported by some revenue raising powers.
Mr Lamb ruled out cuts in central government funding for the health service. He said the Labour government's investment in the NHS had been laudable, but undermined by "incompetent reforms".
As the Conservatives attempt to portray themselves as the saviours of the NHS, Mr Lamb rounded on the Tories' record on the health service, accusing them of "criminal neglect" for under-funding the NHS during the nineties.
He said: "Just two years ago, David Cameron wrote a manifesto which proposed the NHS would be drained of funds as money flowed into subsidizing private health care. Who can trust the Tories now on the NHS?
"At the first sign of losing support, David Cameron shifts right - into territory where the rest of his party - and John Redwood - stubbornly sulk."
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