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Secretary of State for Health

What I have knowledge of is the proceeds of growth rule, which commits the hon. Gentleman’s party to spending less on public services than we would. He has not denied that the proceeds of growth rule would result in a Conservative Government spending less on public services than a Labour Government. As I said earlier, if that rule was introduced this year, it would mean spending would be £21 billion lower than under the Government’s plans. It would be lower still in every year after that. Let me put it another way: spending on the NHS accounts for almost a fifth of the Government’s total managed expenditure, so cutting £21 billion from public spending would mean slashing £3.6 billion from the NHS. To achieve that, one would have to sack 100,000 nurses, 35,000 doctors and cut by a fifth the number of new hospitals, clinics and health centres. All the talk about a new compassionate Conservative party that is committed to the NHS is exposed as the old empty rhetoric masking the same old Tory party. The Conservatives might not give us the details about where the cuts would fall, but every speech makes it absolutely clear. What do they mean when they talk about cutting back the big state or cutting the fat from public expenditure? They might not give us the details about which services they would slash to pay for the tax cuts or which bits of the big state they want to trim back, but the fancy photo calls, the so-called rebranding, the hospital visits, the fact that the Leader of the Opposition spent time in a school in Hull, and lived with what the Opposition patronisingly referred to as an ordinary family in Birmingham for a week, cannot mask the truth that this is the same old Tory party, running down the NHS because it is committed to the same old spending cuts. The British people face a choice at the next election: record investment and reformed ways of working, transformed treatment, improved care and the aim of keeping patients at home and alive for longer under this party, or the same old Tory party with the same old package of cuts, charges, and privatisation.