Labour has to cut its NHS losses

10:24am Wednesday 24th January 2007

You don't need a crystal ball to see the NHS under Labour is in trouble.

Peter Atkinson (Letters, December 29) seems to suggest Gordon Brown has no choice but to make the drastic and short-sighted NHS cuts we are all so concerned about.

There have been ten major reorganisations of the NHS since Labour came to power and this has been costly. The merger of primary care trusts and the regionalisation of strategic health authorities in 2006 alone are together estimated to have cost £320 million.

Labour's financial mismanagement has encouraged a culture of waste within the NHS.

The number of managers in the NHS is increasing almost three times as fast as the number of doctors and nurses.

There are now 264,012 administrators in the NHS, compared with 175,646 beds. In the past year alone, 5,000 more administrators than nurses were recruited.

By 2004-05, the extra cost of employing NHS administrators was almost £1.6 billion per year more in real terms than it was in 1999-2000.

Labour's failure to pilot the new NHS staff contracts adequately has created a "black hole" in NHS finances of £610 million.

The cost of Agenda for Change - the pay deal for virtually all staff in the NHS except doctors and dentists - was underestimated by £220 million.

The cost of the new contract for hospital consultants was underestimated by £90 million and the cost of the new GP contract by £300 million.

I make no apology for supporting the hard-working nurses and doctors of Brighton and Hove.

I make no apology for sticking up for ordinary people who rely on our local NHS services and I make no apology for pointing out that Labour are hellbent on making these cuts because of their own mismanagement.

Simon Kirby
Conservative Parliamentary
Candidate, Brighton Kemptown

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