Labour's Electoral Programme (Part 5)

The National Health Service

1. Within the NHS bring together physical health, mental health and social care into a single service to meet all of a person's care needs, with a focus on prevention, thus ending fragmentation (pages 93 and 95)

2. Repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012, scrapping regulations which force services to be put out to tender and bring back failed contracted services into the public sector (93)

3. Oppose the inclusion of the NHS and other public services into a trading agreement which is currently being negotiated between European Union and the USA, as this would block such  proposals (93, 94) 

4. Make Foundation, NHS and Community Trusts accountable to the public and fully integrate all service providers to work in a collaborative and not a competitive way (94)

5. Create a national entitlement, written into the NHS Constitution, to ensure that patients get legal rights to access the services they need, replacing the current market system which does nothing to provide real choice to patients (95)

6. Give people the right to receive their end-of-life care at a place of their choosing, with family around them (96)

7. Ensure communities have a real say in shaping local services, taking power away from NHS commissioners and giving it to independent bodies such as the Health and Wellbeing Board, with a duty to secure real public engagement (97)

8. Give NHS patients the right of same-day consultation with their local GP surgery and the right to book an appointment within 48 hours with the GP of their choice (98)

9. People need a fairer deal and protection against the rising costs of care. Greater localism of services will have a beneficial impact (100)

10. There will be a greater institutional recognition of the rights of carers, including young carers and their rights to childhood (101)

11. Ensure that mental illness is treated with the same level of priority as physical illness, creating a new right to psychological therapies, with more mental health specialists working in teams with GPs, nurses and carers (104)

12. Support the excellent work of health unions and strengthen collective bargaining structures in the NHS to work towards a fairer system of pay setting (105)

The above are a selection of some 40 proposals made in the Labour Party policy document "Health And Care"