For the second time in four months, the Labour Government has stuck the knife into the NHS and other social services. But even before Healey's £3,000 million axe fell in April, the NHS was already suffering from years of inadequate funding.
* Only 18 per cent of beds are in hospitals built during the war. 75 per cent of beds are in hospitals dating from before 1918, and nearly seven per cent in buildings built in 1850!
* The total number of beds has fallen by 18 per cent since 1948. In one year, 1973-74, the NHS lost 26,200 beds. At the same time it is forced to rent 4,200 beds in private nursing homes.
* The NHS needs 74,000 more nurses, 23 per cent more technicians, 20 per cent more physiotherapists, and 3,000 more consultant posts. In London alone, 35 per cent more radiographers at needed * The waiting list for treatment is well over half a million. 40 per cent have been waiting for over a year and 20 per cent for more than two years. Waiting times of up to six years are not uncommon.
Even to maintain this deplorable level, the NHS budget needed to increase at a rate of 4.3 per cent a year. But the cutbacks in January in the NHS (including lopping £75 million from its building programme) mean that this year's spending will only increase by 0.6 percent.
The effect of these was spelled out by Dr Loehry, chairman of thelimedical staffs committee at two hospitals in Boscombe, Dorset. tween different health regions The budgets of the four southeast regions and Merseyside (although they have waiting lists of over 100,000 and 25,000 respectively) have thus been frozen in order to provide 'extra funds for the less well-off areas to the tune of between 0.16 per cent and 4 per cent this year But the Trent Region, one of the worse-off areas in the country, is still having to accept cuts of £10 million in capital investment; and the extra money will probably only just maintain standards. Lancaster AHA, part of this region, still cannot afford to pay for 20 extra nurses, let alone the 60 urgently needed; while Lincoln still cannot afford to build the hospital the town has been promised for over five years Labour obviously intends to bring about 'equality between the regions by bringing the levels of care down to those of the most deprived areas, involving untold misery for millions of working class people and their families.
All this is in stark contrast to the Labour Government's treattheir manifesto Labour pledged to rid the NHS of the parasite of pay beds. At every stage, however, they have given in to the interests of the consultants and their backers-private insurance firms, city financiers, and the drugs Photo: JOHN STURROCK (Report)
maustry HALI No wonder that the private medical industry, for all its protests, is increasing its invest ment in private hospitals. Over 60 new private hospitals are being planned while the NHS building programme grinds slowly to a Labour is thus encouraging the growth of a two-tier health system with an adequate level of care for those who can afford its fees (which vary from £72 to £1,400 per week) and a collapsing service for the majority. It is literally a Government with working class blood on its hands.
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