Yesterday, David Cameron launched the Conservative Party’s draft health manifesto, which you can read here, Conservative Party Draft Health Manifesto.  

The draft manifesto has lots of sensible initiatives that will focus money on the provision of healthcare rather than management and process initiatives. 

The draft manifesto also points the way forward to give each of us more power to choose our public health providers, and it does it in a very sensible way, seeing the GP as our guide rather than relying on us as isolated – and, sometimes, ill-informed – “consumers”. 

The key points to me are:

• An independent NHS board to allocate resources and make funding of NHS fairer and less political
• Putting patients in charge of their health choices, but critically seeing the GP as their trusted guide
• Enabling new community providers of health care – broadening choice, but really the main impact will be improving convenience
• Increase single rooms in hospitals to help combat MRSA

David Cameron has signaled his strong commitment to the NHS by placing it first in his list of priorities – a policy that I strongly support.