Victoria Stratford is a student at the University of Essex, graduating in 2025.
The NHS has been a pillar of Great Britain since it was first created in 1948. However, in recent years, it has been facing its own crisis. The Conservatives have had a difficult time dealing with the coronavirus pandemic which led to healthcare staff being burnt out but, under a Labour government, the NHS would be much worse off.
The Tories have continually increased investment into the NHS with approximately £131 billion being spent on the NHS in 2010/2011 when they came into power and now approximately £185 billion in 2023/2024. The Labour government would likely either raise taxes for the working people to fund the NHS, or just cut spending to the NHS all together.
It is clear that the Conservatives value financial stability and structural efficiency, something that Labour are yet to place a strong emphasis on during their campaign. If re-elected, the Tories have promise to prioritise funding and investment in the NHS to give GPs and local health services more autonomy. Rishi Sunak has continually emphasised how essential financial stability is if the NHS is to remain capable of treating patients.
Evidently, to solve the problems rooted within the NHS they need to address the systematic issues with the whole healthcare system. The Conservatives plan to do this by finding patient-centred solutions to the problems that also benefit the staff. This could be done by reallocating funding towards the frontline healthcare staff and away from the middle managers.
The Tories have a robust plan to implement planned reforms to cap the social care costs an individual is liable to pay from October 2025. This policy demonstrates how the Conservatives are trying to reduce the financial burden on the families of those requiring social care which will ease the financial worry that is an unnecessary added stress on the families and loved ones of those requiring additional care.
Labour have however stated that they are eager to improve care services for the elderly (which they like of course like to be publicly funded). It is unclear where they would get this additional money from, likely tax rises, but this is not uncommon under Labour.
The Opposition have promised a range of improvements to the NHS if they were to win the election, ranging from delivering an additional 400,000 appointments a week and a new dentistry rescue plan to provide 700,000 new urgent dental appointments across the country, targeting areas with the most need.
These plans sound great; more GP, hospital and dental appointments are definitely needed. The only problem being that the Labour Party has not stated where the additional funding required for these initiatives would come from – likely from taxation which would leave the public worse off and struggling more financially than ever before.
Under Labour, all NHS staff would be seemingly worse off, not just financially but technologically too. The Conservatives plan to invest £22 billion into technological innovation and put it at the forefront of healthcare, so that patients today and in ten years time will benefit – something that Labour is yet to comment on. The Conservative Party manifesto clearly states how they will use this technology to provide 250,000 people with new digital health checks each year which aim to prevent strokes and heart attacks through early detection of such medical conditions that can then be prevented before they occur.
Labour would also like local councils to play a more active role in healthcare services and care services for their local communities. But without additional funding, this would just cause more strain on already stretched councils, likely compromising the standards of healthcare the patients would receive.
With a Conservative government, the public can expect an improvement in NHS staff wellbeing which will translate into better quality patient care, but also improved technological innovations. By making the NHS app the main point of access for services including GP and specialist appointments, as the Tories plan to do so if they are re-elected, frontline staff can be freed up to treat patients rather than focusing on administrative tasks.
This technology could also be used to speed up MRI and CT scans and the party hope that soon AI will have a place in healthcare allowing medical professionals to focus solely on their patients care.
Labour, on the other hand, will probably leave people on longer waiting lists and make it harder for people to get a GP appointment when they need one; they plan to use spare capacity in the independent health care sector to bring down waiting lists – but have not made clear how they will fund this mass employment of expensive private providers.
Although both parties have big ideas and plans, it has been proven time and time again that only the Conservatives will follow through with their promises and with Labour you can expect one thing – a very long wait.