Tories criticise ‘backward looking’ NHS report
Shadow Health Secretary Victoria Atkins defends the previous Conservative government’s record on NHS spending and criticises Lord Darzi’s report as “backward looking” and a “cover for tax rises at the budget”. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Of all the departments, the NHS was the department we protected.
00:04Nobody pretended at the time it was going to be easy,
00:08but we protected the NHS because we understood the need.
00:11We want, you know, I use the NHS every day.
00:14I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of three.
00:17It is genuinely one of the reasons I came into politics.
00:20We care about the NHS, but we had to make very difficult decisions
00:24because of the inheritance from the last Labour government.
00:27But all of this conversation is backward-looking.
00:30And I imagine people at home are asking,
00:32well, I don't really care what happened 14 years ago.
00:35What I care is what is happening today and tomorrow and next week.
00:39And that is the worry I have about this report,
00:41is that they spend so much time looking backwards,
00:44trying to compare apple and pears,
00:46because I bet there's nowhere in the report that says
00:48the NHS is in fact looking after 25% more people today
00:54than it was in 2010.
00:56But the way in which the NHS is operating,
00:59the demands we are placing on it have changed over time.
01:02Of course they have.
01:03And so the Labour Party should be looking forwards, not backwards.
01:06My worry is they're doing this as a cover for tax rises at the budget
01:10and because they have not prepared well enough for the winter that is to come.