NI Conservatives’ spokesman, Trevor Ringland, has described an Assembly motion which attacks private involvement in the NHS, tabled by the SDLP’s Conall McDevitt, as “dogmatic and misguided”.
“The most important aspect of our health service is that it is free at the point of use”, Trevor emphasised. “That principle cannot be compromised, but we should certainly be open minded about how care can best be provided. It is not sensible to be dogmatic about public ownership of every nook and cranny of the health service. Macmillan and Marie Curie are examples of fine, independent, not for profit organisations which work within the structures of the NHS. Is the Assembly saying that new arrangements of this type should be prevented in future? That is the implication of some of the SDLP's language”.
“The NHS is under severe pressure and, with an aging population and the availability of increasingly expensive treatments, that pressure will only increase. It would be irresponsible for the health minister to rule out using a range of providers, if there are ways to provide better services, offering better value for money. It would be irresponsible to ignore the potential for private finance to fund expensive infrastructure which the executive cannot afford on its own.”
“The NHS is rightly regarded as one of the UK’s finest achievements and NI Conservatives believe a first class health service should always be a central priority for government here in Northern Ireland. The guiding principle must always be to provide the best care, free at the point of use. Taking a narrow, old-fashioned, ideological view of how services should be provided will only hamper achieving that aim.”