A liberal blueprint for the NHS - Lamb

7.34.00am GMT Thu 4th Feb 2010

Norman Lamb MP discussing the Lib Dems blueprint for the NHS

Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb has today [Thursday] published his vision for how the NHS can cope in the current economic climate.

The proposals, published in The NHS: a liberal blueprint, are not formal party policy but set out Norman Lamb's vision of a genuinely decentralised NHS. The proposals are designed to protect frontline services by more effective use of resources. They include dramatically cutting NHS bureaucracy, changing the financial incentives in the NHS to promote prevention of ill health, linking GP pay to improving patients health such as giving up smoking or losing weight, giving every patient the right to contact their GP by email and fines for people who turn up drunk in A&E and are aggressive to staff.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb said:

"The NHS is a much loved institution but it is facing an unprecedented financial challenge over the next few years.

"Labour and the Conservatives are in complete denial about the scale of the problem we face. Rather than reforming the NHS to make it more efficient they will cut services and frontline staff.

"These proposals set out a liberal approach to the NHS which can drastically reduce costs, improve the quality of care and give people a say in how their local services are run.

"The NHS is far too important to the people of this country to ignore this challenge anymore - we must act now to secure its future."