The NHS costs each voter £50 a week on average. That's £2,600 a year. We aren't getting our fair share locally.

Few things matter more to our country than the NHS - it's an institution that binds the nation together. Yet North East Cambridgeshire is not receiving as much funding as patients in Scotland in Gordon Brown's own constituency. We have also suffered from the merger of the Fenland & East Cambridgeshire PCT with the heavily in debt Cambridgeshire PCT.

The PCT merger has meant Fenland and East Cambridgeshire are still missing out on improvements to services. This can be seen with the future of Doddington Hospital which has been run down, and the on-going consultation about its future has dragged on for years.

Sadly, Labour's mismanagement has meant throwing billions of pounds at healthcare without driving up productivity in line with the money being spent. Central targets and top down management has often gone against the wishes of clinicians at the sharp end.

Conservatives will create an independent NHS Board to take responsibility for dividing up NHS funds between different parts of the country away from Ministerial meddling. This body will allocate money fairly and in a way which will help secure equal access to healthcare for all.

Dentist healthcare has got much worse

Despite Tony Blair's promise in 1997 of access for all to NHS dentistry, 51% of people in Cambridgeshire no longer have access to an NHS dentist. So much for Labour's promises on dental care. It means 13,600 people in Cambridgeshire have lost access to a NHS dentist. Conservatives will reintroduce dental screening for children in schools and ensure taxpayer trained dentists work in the NHS for at least 5 years.

Steve Barclay and the Conservatives have a plan to fix local healthcare for the long term:
* We are committed to real increases in health spending
* We will protect family doctor services by opposing Labour's plans to impose impersonal “polyclinics” at the expense of local GP surgeries
* We will reform the way drugs are priced so that all new treatments that are clinically effective are made available, ending the situation whereby cancer drugs routinely available in Europe are not provided in this country.

The choice of Government at the next General Election is going to be a healthcare choice too. Steve Barclay is passionate for us to get our fair share of healthcare funding in North East Cambridgeshire. This has not happened under Labour in line with the money local residents have paid in.

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