Some UK public sector workers embracing Tories
Source: Agencies |
April 19, 2010, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
SOME public sector workers are switching support to the opposition Conservatives in Britain's May 6 election despite the huge extra resources the ruling Labour Party has poured into education and health.
The trend is surprising because the Conservatives have in the past been seen as hostile to the state-run National Health Service, although they now insist they are staunch defenders of the service which employs 1.7 million people.
The center-right Conservatives also pledge to cut public spending more deeply than Labour would to rein in Britain's budget deficit, set to exceed 11 percent of Gross Domestic Product this year.
"I am deeply unhappy about what Labour have done, other than the money that they have put into the health service," said Simon Newell, 53, a consultant in pediatrics in the northern English city of Leeds.
He complained of the growth in "pointless management and unnecessary bureaucracy and the amount of time that all of us spend filling in forms," instead of caring for patients.
Newell, who indicated he had voted Labour in the past, said he favored the Conservatives this time.
"I have no feeling at all that the Tory party (Conservatives) would do anything damaging to the health service," he said.
The last Conservative governments under prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major in the 1980s and 1990s introduced market-based reforms to the NHS as part of their philosophy of rolling back the frontiers of the state, which led to the privatization of many formerly state-owned sectors.
Labour's Tony Blair tapped into public concern over the poor state of the health service in 1997, accusing the Conservatives of planning to privatize the service, which offers health care free at the point of delivery. Since then, Labour - which founded the NHS in 1948 - has poured billions of pounds of extra money into the health service and education.
Despite that, there are questions over whether the huge new investment in health has been spent wisely and doctors and teachers complain about bureaucracy and government-set targets.
The trend is surprising because the Conservatives have in the past been seen as hostile to the state-run National Health Service, although they now insist they are staunch defenders of the service which employs 1.7 million people.
The center-right Conservatives also pledge to cut public spending more deeply than Labour would to rein in Britain's budget deficit, set to exceed 11 percent of Gross Domestic Product this year.
"I am deeply unhappy about what Labour have done, other than the money that they have put into the health service," said Simon Newell, 53, a consultant in pediatrics in the northern English city of Leeds.
He complained of the growth in "pointless management and unnecessary bureaucracy and the amount of time that all of us spend filling in forms," instead of caring for patients.
Newell, who indicated he had voted Labour in the past, said he favored the Conservatives this time.
"I have no feeling at all that the Tory party (Conservatives) would do anything damaging to the health service," he said.
The last Conservative governments under prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major in the 1980s and 1990s introduced market-based reforms to the NHS as part of their philosophy of rolling back the frontiers of the state, which led to the privatization of many formerly state-owned sectors.
Labour's Tony Blair tapped into public concern over the poor state of the health service in 1997, accusing the Conservatives of planning to privatize the service, which offers health care free at the point of delivery. Since then, Labour - which founded the NHS in 1948 - has poured billions of pounds of extra money into the health service and education.
Despite that, there are questions over whether the huge new investment in health has been spent wisely and doctors and teachers complain about bureaucracy and government-set targets.
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