General election: Labour and Conservatives warned not to use NHS as political football

NHS leaders have called on politicians not to turn the service into a political football ahead of the general election next month.

In the first days of the election campaign the Conservatives and Labour have traded blows over the health service with both claiming to be the party of the NHS.

Now the chief executive of the body that represents state-run hospitals, NHS Providers, has publicly called on politicians of all stripes to avoid using the service as a weapon.

Writing in The Times, Chris Hopson acknowledged the NHS was always a topic of debate at election time because of the public’s overwhelming support for it.

But he added: “This political potency is often helpful for the NHS. But it becomes counterproductive when the NHS is used as a political weapon. Frontline NHS leaders are worried that is already starting to happen in this election.”

He said it was important to be “open and honest” about failings in the health service, adding that the NHS was “falling back against key targets for A&E, cancer care and diagnostic tests”.

“Waiting lists for operations have climbed to nearly 4.5 million and the pressures on our mental health, community and ambulance services are just as great. However hard the NHS front line works, it can’t seem to keep up with growing demand,” he said.

Mr Hopson, a former civil servant, warned politicians that “over-dramatising or distorting the difficulties for political ends will do nothing to help those frontline staff who are working flat out for patients.

“Equally, disingenuous claims about extra funding, or promises that create unrealistic expectations, may be tempting in the heat of the election battle, but they do the health service no favours.”

New figures published by Labour on Monday showed 79,000 operations were cancelled last year with 20 per cent scrapped because of staffing issues and equipment failures.

The number of procedures called off by hospitals for non-clinical reasons has increased by 32 per cent in the last two years.

Meanwhile, the British Medical Association said patients had “endured winter after winter” of overcrowded emergency departments, and it criticised reports the government was planning to set up a unit in Downing Street to monitor the health service during the election.

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said Labour had nothing positive to say on the NHS and was scaremongering over cancelled operations which he said were falling and amount to only 1 per cent of the total.