QT's NHS debate gets lost in the detail

With the resignation of Liam Fox on Friday, it was the debate on the NHS which I focused upon on this week’s Question Time. Arguably, it was a fitting panel to have discussing the NHS, with the health secretary Andrew Lansley as well as the media savvy doctor, Phil Hammond. Eagerly anticipating a balanced and level debate, I was disappointed to witness a rather heated discussion which did not prove to be nearly as insightful as I had imagined.

Clearly here were two men who were incredibly knowledgeable and indeed passionate about the NHS. For a spectator however, it meant a far less open and informative debate. Hammond was continuously grilling Lansley about his reforms even stating that they were ‘incomprehensible’ as well as pointing out that the word ‘competition’ appeared 85 times, within his reforms. In short, the real problem was simply that they knew too much about the topic, and got bogged down in minute detail, whereas what we needed as viewers was a broader brush approach.

At times the debate got overly heated, with David Dimbleby appearing to almost lose control. However he did show good chairmanship eventually by cooling the mood down with a more light hearted question on MP’s tweeting in parliament, brining the debate back on track. 

Theresa May trips over her kitten heels in Human Rights debate

The Human Rights Act, and in particular Theresa May, was the focus for this weeks Question Time (QT) in Salford. The panel were therefore given the chance to mop up events which had passed over the course of the week, at the Tory Party Conference. The main focus point, bar of course, the leader’s speech by ‘Dave’, was the comments of current Home Secretary Theresa May, who addressed conference over the issue of the Human Rights Act and her aim to eventually axe it. Clearly, May made a potential grave mistake by claiming that an illegal immigrant could not be deported because of his pet cat, a claim which was proved wrong almost immediately by the judicial office.

The panel at QT inevitably therefore attacked both May’s comments as well as her plans of abolition. As a First Time Voter, for me it was Charles Kennedy former Liberal Democrat leader, who shone as he got straight to the point, and in my opinion, summed up the Human Rights Act rather well. He stated that the Human Rights Act was set up ultimately to prevent Ms from ‘second guessing judgements by court’. He continued to mock Theresa May by providing the audience with the examples of former Home Secretaries, Douglas Hurd, William Whitelaw and Roy Jenkins, and questioned whether any of them would have stood up and used this kind of ‘idiotic caricature to advance a serious point’. Finally he concluded that the ‘answer speaks for itself’ and labelled her comments as ‘nonsensical rhetoric’. On this point, the panel had seemed to have found a conclusive answer, and Jane Moore, the Sun columnist, reiterated Kennedy’s point concluding simply that ‘the cat comment trivialised the serious topic of the Human Rights Act’.

The question therefore remains over the status of the Human Rights Act and whether it should remain untouched, amended, or altogether abolished. For me the answer is clear. The Human Rights Act should be hailed as one of Britain’s most prestigious and celebrated Acts of Parliament, as it protects and maintains natural human rights, which for me is even more imperative than it ever was, in today’s society. I support the proposed commission to review article 8 of the European convention on Human Rights, to potentially reduce the number of illegal immigrants/foreign criminals from claiming to ‘the right to family life’.

As a First Time Voter, I agree with Mr Clegg that the Human Rights Act should be ‘here to stay’.