Opposition party chief David Cameron was making an audacious raid on British Prime Minister Tony Blair's political territory yesterday, claiming himself the potential guardian of Britain's health service -- a totemic issue for the Labour Party -- and condemning the government as a "vast, inhuman machine."
Addressing delegates at a convention in Nottingham, England, the Conservative leader planned to pitch himself as the lawmaker to correct the county's creaking health network, dogged by hospital closures, huge debts and a revolt among junior doctors over job opportunities.
Cameron's move to take a lead on health -- a key issue in national elections -- is part of reforms aimed at switching his party's agenda away from defense and low taxes to climate change and public services.
Cameron whose four-year-old son Ivan has cerebral palsy and requires regular medical care, has proposed scrapping Blair's system of targets for hospitals and doctors -- which some staff believe has prioritized administration ahead of treatment.
"They've turned the NHS [National Health Service] into a vast, inhuman machine, a pen-pusher's paradise," Cameron planned to tell delegates, excerpts of his speech released in advance showed. "Labour have ripped the heart out of the NHS and replaced it with a computer."
Approximately 1,500 delegates have gathered for the convention, not all certain about the direction Cameron has led the traditionally right-leaning party.
A poll of supporters for a grassroots Web site claimed around a quarter worry the leader's lurch to the political center is misguided.
Two days of speeches and debate that began on Saturday were focusing closely on a long-promised package of prospective legislation -- including policies to abandon targets on reducing hospital waiting lists for consultations and operations.
"It used to be said that Labour were the party of the NHS," Cameron planned to say. "Not anymore. Labour are the party that is undermining the health service."
Blair's Labour is fiercely proud of establishing Britain's National Health Service, which introduced state-funded healthcare in 1948. Conservatives had traditionally favored offering the public assistance to use private medical providers while reducing investment in state-run services.
Cameron on Saturday addressed thousands of junior doctors at a rally in London as they protested over an online government recruitment system that selects candidates for medical jobs. The doctors claim it has limited their career opportunities.
He planned to tell delegates Blair had become obsessed with centralized control over healthcare.
"It is because of their values and philosophy," Cameron planned to say. "Labour's pessimism about human nature, Labour's belief that if people aren't told what to do, they'll do the wrong thing."
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