More borrowing and fewer nurses – let’s judge Cameron on his record

At the last General Election, when Labour warned that the Tories in power would cut the number of Sure Start centres, David Cameron said: “Yes we back Sure Start. And it’s a disgrace that Gordon Brown has been trying to frightened people about this”. At PMQs this week, as Ed Miliband pressed David Cameron on the issue, Cameron in fact couldn’t bring himself to admit that there are now 578 fewer Sure Start centres since 2010 – that’s three a week.

While many are debating the remnants of David Cameron’s so-called modernisation project – ‘Vote Blue Go Green’ this week became ‘Get rid of that green crap’ – there is less attention on two other announcements which encapsulate perfectly the policy failures of the Cameron Government. I don’t remember Cameron promising more borrowing and fewer nurses at the 2010 General Election, but that is precisely what’s been confirmed this week.

Cameron and Osborne went to the country in 2010 with a promise to balance the books by 2015 and yet they have now borrowed more in the three years since May 2010 than Labour did over 13 years. Add to that the fact that families are on average £1,600 worse off every year since the election and prices have risen faster than wages in 40 of 41 months David Cameron has been in Downing Street. Their calamitous decisions on economic policy mean borrowing is forecast to be over £200 billion more than planned. To use an old phrases: it’s hurting but it definitely isn’t working.

We also found this week that the NHS lost 752 nurses in the past month, bringing the total reduction in the number of nurses serving patients in our hospitals since May 2010 to a staggering 6,642.

We all remember Cameron saying the NHS would be his “first three priorities” and we will all have seen recently Jeremy Hunt trying to convince the country that he has a plan for A&E. But the latest figures on nurse numbers make a mockery of everything the Government tried to claim earlier this week. For three years we’ve been telling ministers that nurse numbers were falling – but the Government ignored the warnings. This winter Cameron has left the NHS facing an A&E crisis with thousands fewer nurses.

With vital frontline staff numbers falling, walk-in centres closing, NHS Direct abolished, waiting times up and no action to make GP appointments easier, this is more proof that you simply can’t trust the Tories with the NHS.

In the aftermath of the 2010 General Election, David Cameron – aided and abetted by Andy Coulson (remember him?) – sought to caricature Labour’s record based on a lie. Douglas Alexander put this best: it is the myth that somehow Lehman Brothers collapsed in the United States because Labour built too many schools and hospitals. Yet the Tory default position is still to blame everything on the last Labour government.

Now, after more than three and a half years, Cameron’s Government has a record all of it’s own. And polling shows that most people rightly think the Government should be showing results by now. It’s Labour’s job to hold Cameron to account for his own record based on what is now happening as a result of the decisions he has taken.

The truth is Cameron’s Government is failing on the very policy promises by which he defined himself: firstly that his party was a changed party that believed in a modern, compassionate conservatism; and secondly that he would tackle borrowing and balance the books. This week, once again, both have been shot to pieces.

The Tory party has not only broken their promises, we know they have literally tried to delete them from their records. What we are left with is a desperate prime minister reduced to smearing Ed Miliband and Labour, aided by a few declining Conservative-supporting newspapers. But whilst Cameron continues to only stand up for just a privileged few, ordinary working people will judge his Government on it’s record. That is more borrowing and fewer nurses.

Michael Dugher is MP for Barnsley East and Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office