Tories will not deliver better maternity services
05 January 2010
The media is reporting that the Conservatives want to make improved maternity services a key plank in their general election manifesto. But Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, says Tory policies on privatisation will only make provision worse
Tory plans to protect the NHS are simply spin and rhetoric. What they really want is fragmentation and privatisation. Dislike for the NHS runs deep in the Conservative culture, as we all saw during the Thatcher and Major years, and more recently with Daniel Hannan's repeated attacks and suggestion that the NHS is a 60-year mistake.
Of course women need urgent investment in midwifery services. They need to have personalised and comprehensive care as good as that provided by independent midwives, but this standard of care should be provided by the NHS. They also need to feel confident to give birth at home or in well staffed maternity units. The Conservatives, however, will simply fragment care even more than has already happened, and they will create a two-tier health care system, one for the rich and one for everyone else.
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