David Oliver: Did the Labour conference offer hope for the future of health and social care?

From 1997 to 2010 the Blair/Brown Labour government saw sustained improvements in the NHS. By the time they left office its performance had improved dramatically on a whole range of indicators, after major investment and improvement drives.1The performance of acute, elective, and primary care has fallen drastically since then, along with staff and patient satisfaction.2 Social care funding and provision have been cut, as have grants to local public health teams, and funding solutions have been serially ducked or delayed. Health inequalities and healthy life expectancy have worsened.34 We now face a serious crisis in workforce recruitment, retention, and morale.56 And this year’s seen several industrial disputes between health workers and the government.7None of this is inevitable, as the last Labour government’s record shows and both the King’s Fund and the Institute for Government have made clear.12 We could choose to improve things again. The Blair/Brown government inherited a strong…
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