Single hospital rooms become early casualty in election battle

LABOUR has accused the Conservatives of another policy U-turn after it emerged they had dropped a flagship pledge to build tens of thousands of new single rooms in NHS hospitals.

The Tories had promised to create 45,000 additional single rooms in hospitals over five years, almost doubling existing numbers.

The programme costing 1.6bn was meant to improve patient dignity and reduce the risk of hospital-acquired infections. Women giving birth in NHS hospitals and mental health inpatients were to have been guaranteed single rooms.

However, in a draft health manifesto published by Tory leader David Cameron on Monday, the pledge was abandoned - although it remains on a number of candidates’ websites.

Instead the Conservatives say they will now “increase the number of single rooms in hospitals, as resources allow”.

The row comes after Labour claimed the Tories had made a series of uncosted pledges worth 34bn and follows apparent confusion in the Conservative leadership over plans to give tax breaks to married couples.

Yesterday, Health Secretary Andy Burnham said scrapping the single-room plan undermined Tory claims that they were the “party of the NHS”.

“Just two years ago the Conservatives pledged to the voters of this country that they would build 45,000 new single rooms across the NHS – and as recently as Monday morning this pledge was still on their website,” he said.

“The Conservatives can try to hide their ill-considered pledges when they realise they’re unaffordable, but they need to do a better job of covering their tracks.

“The Tories’ bad habits of going around the country telling people what they want to hear without doing their sums has been exposed once again.”

Yesterday, in a point-by-point rebuttal of Labour claims of a 34bn spending gap, the Conservatives dismissed the accusations.

“As our draft manifesto shows today, we are only committed to increasing the number of single rooms over time, and within existing resources.

“To suggest otherwise is deliberately misleading,” the party said.

The pledge, which would have increased the number of single rooms in NHS hospitals to 55 per cent of total beds, was made by Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley at the Conservative conference in September 2008 although serious doubts about the feasibility of the programme and its eventual cost later emerged.

Mr Cameron’s health manifesto promises to protect the NHS from upcoming spending cuts.

Cash will be diverted to the poorest areas to tackle the gap in health services between rich and poor and new maternity networks will be set up to make services “more personal and more local, with more choice”.