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The Labour party says prescription charges will be abolished, as free healthcare is a ‘human right’, amid a raft of policy proposals that will also see the schools inspectorate Ofsted abolished too.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth is expected to announce the policy at the party’s conference in Brighton on Sunday, in a move designed to bring ‘England in line with the rest of the UK’.
Prescriptions are currently free for patients living in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but cost £9 per item for those in England who do not qualify for an exemption.
The party says the financial costs can be a burden for those suffering from long-term conditions such as asthma and chronic kidney disease, with those who have the conditions spending £104 a year on mediciation.
There are also fears that people are put off from collecting prescribed medicine.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said scrapping the charges for everyone was ‘simple common sense’.
He added: ‘Bringing England in line with the rest of the UK by scrapping prescription charges for everyone, is simple common sense and part of our plans to expand and upgrade our public services for the many, not the few.’
Mr Ashworth said that in the long term, it was costing the NHS more money, because people who don’t take their medicines due to financial pressures, present with ‘even more serious conditions later on’.
He added that it was ‘heartbreaking’ that 19-year-old Holly Worboys died after an asthma attack and didn’t have an inhaler because she couldn’t afford one.
The proposal was welcomed by campaigners including the Prescription Charges Coalition.
Its chairman, Lloyd Tingley, who is also policy and campaigns adviser at Parkinson’s UK, said: ‘We are thrilled to see Labour’s commitment to abolishing the unfair prescription charge for people with long-term conditions.
‘For too long, people with conditions like Parkinson’s have been forced to skip the essential medication they rely on because of cost, which can have a disastrous impact on their health.’
It comes as the party also reveals plans at its party conference to abolish Ofsted.
The body will be replaced by a new system, where all schools have regular ‘health checks’ carried out by local councils, and more in-depth inspections led by Her Majesty’s Inspectors, if concerns are raised.
The shadow education secretary Angela Rayner says that full-time trained inspectors will provide ‘in-depth and reliable information that they need about our schools’, while reducing stress for teachers.
Ms Rayner will also set out plans to crack down on an estimated 500 illegal schools which fall outside the current inspection system.
She said: ‘In too many cases, Ofsted’s judgments and grades reflect the affluence of a school’s intake and the social class of its pupils – not the performance of the school.
‘School performance is far too important and complex to be boiled down to an over-simplified single grade, reducing all schools to one of four categories.
‘The current system is unfit for purpose, so the next Labour government will abolish Ofsted and replace it with a system that will give parents the reliable and in-depth information that they need about our schools.’
However, minister of state for schools, Nick Gibb, blasted the idea as ‘yet another sign of the extreme left-wing ideological drift that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has taken’.
He added: ‘Labour are clearly intent on reversing the huge improvements that have been seen, particularly for the most disadvantaged children, by ending academies and free schools.
‘Now they want to stop parents having even the most basic information so that they can make informed choices about their children’s schools.’
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Labour also announced that should it win the next election, it would launch a ‘school improvement revolution’ with a nationwide, school-led peer review improvement programme.
Ms Rayner added: ‘The next Labour government will launch a school improvement revolution, introducing a new system of peer-to-peer school-led improvement – based on the success of Labour’s hugely successful London Challenge – right across the country.’
Ofsted’s chief inspector Amanda Spielman said: ‘Ofsted has been standing up for the interests of children and parents for over a quarter of a century. It’s a cause that inspires everyone who works here.
‘In my time so far as chief inspector, we have supported children in challenging circumstances, through our work tackling illegal schools and off-rolling, and we have shifted the emphasis in education from a narrow focus on exam results, onto the real substance of what children are taught in schools.’
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