So, on to the Conservatives. I received a letter from our sitting MP, Sir Alan Haselhurst. Straight off, I should say that Sir Alan has been a great supporter of us since before our son came out of home, contacting various MPs and senior NHS staff on behalf and attending both the Bliss events at the House of Commons that we have attended. His response to my email was as follows (again, edited for brevity by myself)...
- To improve neonatal care the Conservatives will make sure that spending on maternity services keeps pace with birth rate
- They will provide mothers with more information on the performance of maternity care providers
- Tariff payments (funding to hospitals) will be based on performance, including reduction in perinatal mortality and mothers' positive experiences
- Realistically Sir Alan recognised that he cannot pledge to support all causes due to the current budget deficit (but stated he would do his best on this particular cause)
So what is to be made of this? From a personal point of view I accept his pledge to continue to support neonatal care as I have observed in the past. In terms of specifics however, I am not sure that the points made will be that helpful. Firstly, keeping pace with the birth rate surely maintains the status quo (a charge I also levelled at the Liberals
here), which as we all know is currently not good enough. Further, as the rate of premature births increases, funding based on birth rate will actually result in a drop in real terms in funding for neonatal care. In addition, whilst funding based on a reduction in mortality on the face of it sounds like a good thing, I wonder whether this may penalise those specialist units developing pioneering treatments on the very smallest or sickest of babies.
Coming up, the Labour party...
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