The mood could hardly be lower in the Conservative Party following their historic defeat in the summer. Therefore much of conference was devoted to introspection and, most importantly, who will succeed Rishi Sunak as leader. We have to wait until 2nd November to find out.
As the Tory Party spent the days re-licking its wounds, topics such as immigration tended to dominate the agenda rather than health policy. However, in the leadership pitches, former Cabinet Minister, James Cleverly, showered the health service with praise for its fantastic treatment of his wife, who suffered from breast cancer.
A few fringe events did examine health and life sciences. At the ‘Boosting UK health and wealth through life sciences research’ event, panellist and former Science Minister, George Freeman, stated that the life sciences sector is the only one which can ‘save’ the UK’s finances, adding that the NHS is currently ‘breaking’ public finances. He also said that the UK should financially incentivise the health innovation sector to tackle localised health issues.
The Shadow Health Secretary, Victoria Atkins, at the boldly titled event, ‘How to save the NHS’, disagreed with the current Government’s assessment that the NHS is broken. Though she did agree that reforms did need to be implemented, particularly regarding how the NHS budget is spent.
Given Labour’s intent to aggressively pursue NHS and public health reforms – or else, in the words of the Health Secretary, the health service will ‘die’ – it will be intriguing to see where the new Conservative Party leader positions their party on health policy in the years to come.
