Labour has replaced heart of NHS with a computer, says Cameron

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The Labour government has "ripped the heart out of our NHS and replaced it with a computer," said Conservative leader David Cameron in a speech yesterday.

During his keynote speech at the Conservative Spring Forum, the opposition leader criticised the Labour government's reforms, calling them a "mind-blowing waste in the name of modernisation and efficiency".

The National Health Service (NHS) is currently undergoing a multi-billion pound, ten-year IT overhaul, which will see patients bar-coded, records digitised and the system modernised.

Cameron said a Conservative government would return the "heart and soul" to the NHS by putting people back at the centre of the system and cutting back on management consultants. The Labour party have "turned the NHS into a vast, inhuman machine, a pen-pusher's paradise at the mercy of the management consultants' latest wheeze," he said.

He heaped criticism on the embattled Modernising Medical Careers program, the delayed and derided new web platform for junior doctor job and training applications.

"Junior doctors, who have already spent years working in the NHS, [are] having to apply for their jobs by computer," said Cameron. "They're not allowed to say what areas of medicine they're passionate about. They're not allowed to describe any voluntary work they've done. They're not even allowed to send in their CV."

"They have to fill in forms on the internet, describing ethical dilemmas in a hundred and fifty words, treated like cogs in a machine," he continued. "I don't think ministers have the slightest idea how angry these doctors are."

But Cameron said a Conservative government would not scrap current NHS reforms. Instead, it would "build on and improve the NHS we inherit."

In the rest of his speech, Cameron praised Margaret Thatcher, laid out the Conservative Party's plans to improve quality of life in Britain, battle climate change and replacing the Trident nuclear system.

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