“Ministers appear to mean what they say”

However, it was with some relief that I arrived into Euston last week (24 September) after three days spent at the Labour party conference. Not that the conference hadn’t been successful – far from it. It’s just that conference season requires you to be socially “on it” the whole time, eyes constantly scanning for your intended targets and conversations which, no matter how informal and food-and-drink-fuelled they may seem, are always pointed and outcome-driven. I am also someone who has a limited stock of social capital; while some people gain energy from such occasions, I get exhausted.

Yet however tiring it was personally, it was certainly valuable from a professional standpoint. Not only did me and my AOP colleagues get good, quality face-time with Ministers, sharing a platform with Stephen Kinnock, the new Primary Care Minister, and finding ourselves in the same rooms at various times with pretty much all the new Cabinet.

Between us, we also had good conversations with most of the advisers and influencers who surround the Government’s key health team, and deepened our engagement with many of the think-tanks and journalists whose views on Labour’s plans for health are going to be so important. If business cards and promises of future meetings are the currency of success, we came away with riches to show for the past few days.

Critically, we also came away with a real sense that the positive signs we were seeing before the election were not illusory, that the next few months and years represent a huge opportunity for the profession to establish itself even more firmly as a key part of England’s health system. I say England deliberately and with a full consciousness of how far ahead of Westminster the thinking in Cardiff and Edinburgh has been. In Scotland and Wales, what optometry can do to take the pressure off hospitals and GPs alike has already been explicitly recognised, and our members are being allowed to use the full range of their skills. In England, as the Darzi report made clear, the stranglehold of secondary care over decision-making and funding has prevented that from happening in England. But in speech after speech at the Labour party conference, the new health team in England committed itself to making more use of professions like ours.

Privately as well as publicly, Ministers appear to mean what they say. However, as we all know, these things have been said before: Darzi said very similar things in a report to Gordon Brown in 2008 without any noticeable change resulting. Business cards and promises of meetings are all very well, but it’s action that counts.

And if we are going to get action, we need as many allies as possible. Yes, having the advisers and influencers on board is important. Making common cause with our fellow primary care professionals – dentists, pharmacists and GPs – is vital. But we also need to build a wider consensus for change.

Of course that means building a consensus beyond Labour. As a non-party political organisation, we give equal time to the other two main UK parties too; we were hard at work the previous week at the Liberal Democrat’s party conference, and next week we will be at the Conservative party conference, which this year is in Birmingham. Euston again…