Ailing NHS will be Tory achilles heel at election, report says

Party's standing badly undermined by broken promises made in 2019 manifesto, ministers warned

- Denis Campbell

The NHS will be the Conservatives' "achilles heel" at the next election, ministers have been warned in a report by a former government special adviser on health. Richard Sloggett said the Tories' standing has been badly undermined by their failure to deliver on most of the pledges to improve the NHS they made at the 2019 general election.

"The NHS is back as the Conservatives' electoral achilles heel," Sloggett he NHS will be the Conservatives' "achilles heel" at the next election, ministers have said in a report for his Future Health thinktank. "The inability to deliver on the health promises in the [2019] manifesto and deteriorating access to care mean the NHS is back once again as the issue of greatest threat to Conservative prospects at the next election."

Sloggett was a policy adviser to then health secretary Matt Hancock at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in 2018-19 and before that worked at Policy Exchange, the right-of-centre thinktank.

The government has met or is on track to fulfil only 14 of the 35 health-related pledges it made during the 2019 campaign, according to his analysis.

It should increase the number of nurses working in the NHS in England by 50,000 by the 2024 election, as there are already 44,000 more than in 2019, he said.