Dunfermline East Conservative Association
DECA's Policies
Unsurprisingly, DECA's policies are generally those of the Scottish & UK Conservative Parties as a whole. The principles behind these are encapsulated in the statement of our mission. However, we do have a number of specific issues on which we've campaigned in the past and will keep campaigning as the May 2003 elections come closer. These are
- Fighting to keep Queen Margaret Hospital Open
- Setting our Schools Free
- Sorting Out the Scottish Parliament
- Opposing Road Tolls and Increases in Bridge Tolls
- Demanding a Fair Share of Lottery Investment
- Defending Scotland, the UK and the Pound
Fighting to keep Queen Margaret Hospital Open
The Conservative Government built Queen Margaret Hospital, opened in 1993, and DECA campaigns hard to keep it open and to maximise the range of services provided on site.
We recognise that every speciality cannot be provided in every hospital. However, we believe Fife Health Board's Right-for-Fife strategy is fundamentally flawed. We believe the inexorable centralisation of services into a few large and increasingly distant hospitals puts the convenience of the bureaucrats and managers ahead of the interests of those the NHS is there to serve: the patients and their families.
The history of Queen Margaret Hospital helps point up the flaw in the oft-repeated argument that the Tories' only interest in the NHS is in privatising it, starving it of cash, etc. etc.
Statistics from the House of Commons Library show otherwise.
- In 1979, when the Tories came to power, spending on health in Scotland was a shade over £1billion.
- Had it simply kept pace with prices, this would have risen to £2.76billion by the time the Conservatives left office in 1997.
- In fact, by then, it had risen to £4.24billion, a full 55% ahead of inflation.
- That's equivalent to an inflation-plus 2.5% increase, every year, through good times and bad, for eighteen years in a row.
- Funding per head in Scotland was also consistently 22% higher than in England.
The vast majority of that extra money was invested at the front-line. Over the same period,
- the number of nurses in Scotland's NHS rose by 15%
- the number of GPs rose by 18%
- the number of consultants rose by 20%
- the number of hospital doctors rose by 21%
- the number of dentists rose by 46%
The Tories opened big modern hospitals like Queen Margaret's to replace the old hospitals that were closed, and it is highly ironic that some of these facilities are now under threat from the people who said there were 24 hours to save the NHS.
It is precisely because the Conservatives spent 18 years pumping money into the NHS we now know, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the old centralised NHS cannot keep up with patients' demands for ever-better and faster treatments. Without fundamental reforms, the Herculean efforts of the staff will continue to result in outcomes that are poor compared to those in other developed countries.
The Tories are learning from these countries how to make our health system better, while preserving the principle that treatment must be available to all, regardless of their means. By contrast, Labour and the Lib Dems are trying to push the existing system and staff harder and this is causing problems with recruitment and retention.
Gordon Brown hopes to increase UK health spending to the European average, but it's because of all that Tory investment that the Scottish NHS is already there.
Setting our Schools Free
Fife, like many other areas, has many excellent schools, staffed by skilled and dedicated teachers. Many of the headteachers are outstanding managers and are held in high esteem by their communities.
In the 1990s, the Conservative government recognised that schools and their communities would benefit from a loosening of council control. It introduced Devolved School Management (DSM), to allow those schools that wanted it to take greater control of their affairs and, in particular, of their budgets. DSM was to be implemented in stages, starting with the large secondary schools with their pre-existing management teams.
Unfortunately, since 1997, Labour has slowly unwound these reforms and we've seen a drift of control back to the centre. This is of course only to be expected from an administration which regards who makes decisions as more important than the decisions themselves.
We in DECA will continue to argue that our schools should be allowed greater freedom; that budgetary control should be devolved to those that want it; that diversity should be encouraged.
Our opponents will argue that we want a return to the selection process of the 1960s and before. This is nonsense. The system that existing then, involving a single selection at age twelve between senior and junior secondary school, was clearly too crude a discriminator. On the other hand, the out and out comprehensive system is utterly indiscriminate and the trend towards "setting" (streaming within individual subjects) shows a recognition of this. We in DECA will press for an education system free of all dogma, run in the interests of children and, through them, of the whole of society.
Sorting Out the Scottish Parliament
The Conservatives opposed the setting up of the Scottish Parliament. Four years on, the bulk of of the Scottish people share our belief that its successes have been few and far between. Its chief talent appears to lie in spending a mind-numbing amount of our money on its own building, whose completion date recedes into the distance like last year's holiday memories.
Nevertheless, we recognise that the Parliament is here to stay. That Scottish people don't want it abolished. They want it fixed and the best way to fix it is by applying the Tory principles of leaner, fitter, smaller government, focused on the issues that matter.
In many ways, devolution is a classic Tory policy. Power should be devolved down as far as possible, ideally to the individual person or family. What we oppose isn't devolution itself but the ever-burgeoning government at all levels, with all the waste, inefficiency and lack of responsiveness that it brings.
Opposing Road Tolls and Increases in Bridge Tolls
We in DECA recognise that the cars and lorries are a necessity. No system of public transport, however good, can possibly offer the same flexibility of options. Unlike the left-wing parties, we don't view road users has inherently evil people, driving around in order to create jams and pollute the environment. We realise that an efficient road system is essential to the economic wellbeing of the country.
We oppose the imposition of more and increased tolls. We oppose the deliberate introduction of wasteful, inefficient and disruptive changes to the road layout under the disingenuous title of "traffic calming".
We call for increased spending on the road system, targeted on eliminating the worst jams and funded by slimming down other aspects of our overbloated government.
Demanding a Fair Share of Lottery Investment
West Fife has missed out in the past as regards allocation of lottery funds. We in DECA will press for this omission to be rectified.
Defending Scotland, the UK and the Pound
Alone among the major parties, the Conservatives are committed to preserving the positive aspects of Scottish and British life and culture. Not for us, the Blairite belief that anything that existed pre-1997 must be abolished or amended out of all recognition.
We believe that, even in our post-devolution world, Scotland gains from its place as part of the UK, one of the world's great political and economic powers.
We don't share our opponents' belief that euro automatically means better. Nor do we take the view that membership of the EU must always mean giving way to others. It's no coincidence that Britain's EU rebate was negotiated under a Conservative government.
In particular, we believe in Keeping the Pound, on which we campaigned in 2001 and will again, if and when Blair finally pops the question. Since the 2001 election, events in the Euro zone, not least the treatment of the smaller nations and the bending of the rules when one of the larger players threatened default, have demonstrated what we already knew - that joining the Euro is not without its downside. Indeed, UK opinion is moving towards us on this.
We will continue to promote British interests in areas like fishing, where the EU threatens draconian sanctions against our fishermen but leaves those of other nations free to plunder the resources off our coasts.
