X marks the spot

So, the election campaign is in full swing. Politicians are wearing out their soles pounding pavements and trees are being cut down for leaflet after leaflet to be printed, put through your letter box and binned!

So apart from the fact that Gordon "Agrees with Nick", what else do we know? In order to determine the party line on neonatal care I wrote to the parties several weeks ago (finger on the pulse - I sensed an election was in the offing!) to ask. I wrote to the Health Secretary and Shadow Health Secretaries for the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, in addition to the Green Party national HQ. I also contacted my local candidates for Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat (Green hadn't declared theirs at the time). All contact was by email, with the same email sent to all contacts. So, what did they say? First the Greens...

I received a reply from the Green Party Leadership Office. This is an edited (for length, not meaning) version of that reply...

• The Green Party believes that a comprehensive health service, free at the point of need and funded through taxation, is a fundamental citizen’s right.
  
• They fully support the NHS Neonatal Taskforce report Toolkit for High Quality Neonatal Services published last November.
  
• The Green party would provide the required investment to make up the shortfall of over 2700 nurses and 300 supporting therapists referred to in a recent Bliss newsletter (Ed: Annual Report?) and would make 1:1 nursing a priority for the next decade.
• Also keen to support greater care and support for the mother post-natally.
• The Green Party would also ensure neonatal capacity in the UK was improved to ensure that units were no longer crowded and overstretched and were not endangering the lives of babies.

So, all sounds pretty good doesn't it? At the risk of sounding like a politician, I guess one point is around funding. Ok, so they mention funding through taxation, but there isn't anything else is there?! It is great to see that they have clearly taken the time to read the Taskforce output and have taken onboard the key demands with respect to nursing levels and 1:1 nursing, but I guess the big question is how to pay for it?

Next time, the Liberal Democrats...