AS the Election approaches NHS surveys are discovering major financial problems in NHS Trusts across the country with carrying debts of approaching £1 billion. With operations being cancelled and patients turned away to save money Labour claim this is a lack of management by the Trusts.

Labour have piled layer after layer of bureaucracy onto the Health Service in their attempts to 'micro-manage' each hospital from the Government. Badly thought through Government 'Targets' have been shown to damage health provision through distorting clinical priorities.

After pouring vast sums of money into the NHS (75% more in 2004 than in 1997) government audits now show that New Labour are incapable of managing the money they take in tax from us properly or efficiently.

Worse still the National Audit Office has had to warn Ministers that Labour's approach to Healthcare is actually causing sickness and ill health in some areas.

Waiting Lists in some areas are down, although others, notably cancer treatment times have lengthened, and in some healthcare areas patient treatment and performance is now worse than any other European country.

This is set against a back drop of serious decreases in productivity in the NHS, huge increases in bureaucracy and vast sums of money wasted by new Labour's inability to use cash effectively.

In short although the health service has improved in some areas in others it has worsened significantly. We now face the prospect of some forced hospital closures through Labour's failure to come up with a coherent health care policy in the UK according to the British Medical Association.

1 in 11 patients get hospital acquired infections as a result of New Labour health policies. Ministers were warned by the National Audit Office in 2005 that Labour are forcing hospitals to operate outside the safety levels set by the Health Protection Agency and this is causing the massive rise in MRSA and other hospital based infections. Labour health policies are performance driven rather than health based, and as pointed out by many senior doctors, consultants and others this frequently prevents treatment based on a patient's needs.

• Cost and Productivity of the NHS under New Labour
  • £3000 a year cost for every working person in 2004 - up from £1700 in 1997 (£85.4 billion, up from £45.6 Billion)
  • Prescription Costs up 28% since 1997 despite the huge amounts of tax-payers money pumped into the system
  • Despite 75% increase in spending the actual output only rose by 2.6% in 2002 and 2003 (Office of National Statistics), this figure was later revised up to 4.1% under pressure from Ministers (leaked cabinet office papers).
  • Economists have calculated that around £20 billion - or 6p on the Basic Rate of Tax - is wasted each year through the vast drop in efficiency across Government Departments in the first 7 years of new Labour in Power.
  • NHS productivity down 20% since 1997 - there is a row over reduction in productivity (is it a 20% or a 12% drop?) as Government insists that the Office of National Statistics (ONS) method of calculating this must be revised to reduce the drop in productivity.
  • Bureaucracy has reached such a level that there is now One Manager for every One Nurse in the NHS!
  • 3rd World countries health services have been decimated by Labour policies of aggressive recruitment of Doctors and Nurses while in the UK the number of doctors in training is reduced.
    
    
• Health treatment
  • Cancer patients in Britain now have the lowest chance of survival of any country in Europe despite Labour claims to have prioritised cancer treatment. Terrifyingly there is more chance of surviving lung cancer in Poland, Slovakia or Estonia than in Britain under New Labour !!
  • 85 lives a day could be saved if Labour managed to reach even the most the basic European Healthcare standards on respiratory diseases. The lowest respiratory disease death rate in Europe is 36.4 per 1000 population, the average is 73.6 - but in Britain it is 126.1 per 1000. Meeting just the average would save 85 deaths a day or 31,000 lives a year, but Labour's health policies have failed this basic improvement.
  • Doctors have predicted that Healthcare will suffer as a direct result of Labour's insistence on 24 hour pub opening. Countries such as Ireland and Australia which brought in 24 hours opening found violence and alcohol consumption soaring along with increased accident and emergency treatments being required. The Government did not include this evidence in its reports and proposals.