ABSTRACT
The result of the 2010 General Election was that none of the parties achieved an overall majority, with the Conservative Party having the largest number of seats in a hung Parliament. Coalition talks began immediately between the Conservative and the Liberal Democrats in which the National Health Service (NHS) 'barely featured'. At the end of five days, Mr Cameron became Prime Minister on 11 May 2010, and the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, Mr Clegg, became Deputy Prime Minister in a new Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition Government. The coalition Government was responsible for a major new piece of legislation relating to the NHS, the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which came into force on 1 May 2013. The Liberal Democrats proposed cutting the size of the Department of Health (DoH) in half, whilst the Conservatives proposed reducing the costs of NHS 'management' by a third, transferring the resources to front-line services, and cutting significantly the number of health quangos.
