Election watch – the final furlong

The trust – The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust – offered its apologies to the boy and his family, and explained the circumstances around the events in its paediatric emergency department.

However, it was widely agreed the prime minister didn’t help himself for, initially, not looking at the picture when a journalist presented it to him on his phone – pocketing the reporter’s phone at first, though he did appear to then examine the picture. Health and social care secretary Matt Hancock was duly dispatched to Leeds to apologise to the family, though when he emerged from the meeting he was given a hostile send-off by a number of bystanders.

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said Boris Johnson had reached ‘a new low’ in his reaction to the picture, but was himself left red-faced when a recording emerged of him apparently rubbishing his party’s election chances and criticising leader Jeremy Corbyn. Mr Ashworth later played down his comments, insisting he was ‘joshing around’ with a Conservative-supporting friend.

Polling company IPSOS Mori said concern about the NHS has risen 18 percentage points since October. The proportion of Britons who say the NHS is one of the most important issues facing the country is now 54% – close to the figure for Brexit (57%) – according to its November issues index. A rise in concern for the NHS also happened before the last general election in 2017, it added.

Labour believes the NHS is its strongest weapon on the campaign trail, focusing hard on its promise to ‘pull the NHS back from the brink’. It said an analysis of 120 trust board papers had found hundreds of catastrophic risks to patient safety – mostly linked to lack of spending, staffing shortages or failures of privatisation. If elected, it said it would immediately undertake a full audit of the risks revealed by the research and prioritise capital spending to ensure people and buildings are made safe. 

These measures would be implemented in a Labour government’s first 100 days in office – last week, the Conservatives also promised to take action on the NHS in its first 100 days, if elected. A Tory government would enshrine in law its promise to increase NHS funding by £33.5bn in cash terms by 2023 and increase the amount migrants pay to use the NHS in its first 100 days. The party also repeated controversial claims about additional nurses and new hospitals.

Whichever party – or parties – forms the next government, the NHS has been promised more funding, but there are clear differences in how they would govern health and social care. By Friday morning, the approach that will be taken may be clearer.