Rishi Sunak has dropped his Conservative leadership campaign pledge to fine patients £10 if they miss a GP or hospital appointment.
The prime minister had told Tory members in August it was “wrong” that there were “15m missed appointments every year” at GPs and hospitals, as he justified the fine as a “tough” measure to change people’s behaviour.
In a blue on blue attack, Sunak, then a former chancellor with no portfolio, told members that “no one had bothered tackling” the issue for years, even though the Tories had been in power for more than a decade.
“It’s not valuing our doctors properly but it’s also, more importantly, depriving people of care that they urgently need, making them wait unnecessarily long, so I’ve said I want to get tough on this,” he said at the time.
But a Downing Street spokesperson said on Friday: “The PM wants to deliver a stronger NHS and the sentiment remains that people should not be missing their appointments and taking up NHS time. But we have listened to GPs and health leaders and have acknowledged that now is not the right time to take this policy forward.”
Health experts had widely criticised the plans. The British Medical Association said the measure would “make matters worse” and threaten the principle of free NHS care at the point of need.
Sunak’s press secretary said the prime minister was instead “committed to delivering the commitments made” in the Tories’ 2019 election manifesto.
In the summer, Sunak had presented the fines as being a necessary temporary measure until the post-coronavirus backlogs were tackled. “Under my government there will never be charges for care in our NHS,” he said. “But I will charge people who waste valuable NHS time by booking appointments and failing to attend.”
Sunak also vowed to cut NHS waiting lists, saying it was his “No 1 public service priority” if he were to become PM. He pledged to create a “vaccines style” taskforce on day 1 of his premiership dedicated to tackling backlogs.
The PM lent support to a plan to expand the number of community diagnostic hubs by repurposing 58,000 vacant high street shops, with the aim of increasing the number of such hubs to 200 by March 2024 in the hope of easing the backlog.
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