Sunday, April 25, 2010

Khoodeelaar! Asking all touts and peddlers of crossrail the big business scam "how is it that NHS jobs can be cut, schools funding can be starved, other transport work neglected like the london tube networks and yet Crossrail is kept on? What is the secret? What is the evidence that crossrail is more important than health, education, housing, employment and the environment, housing, employment and the environment?

0935 Hrs GMT
London
Sunday
25 April 2010

Editor © Muhammad Haque


Khoodeelaar! Asking all touts and peddlers of crossrail the big business scam "how is it that NHS jobs can be cut, schools funding can be starved, other transport work neglected like the london tube networks and yet Crossrail is kept on? What is the secret? What is the evidence that crossrail is more important than health, education, housing, employment and the environment?


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April 25, 2010

Secret NHS cuts to axe thousands of medics

Hospitals across England are planning to shed at least 650 doctors and 2,000 nurses under new cost-cutting plans

Burnham claims savings can be made just by cutting waste
Burnham claims savings can be made just by cutting waste
Jonathan Oliver



HUNDREDS of doctors and thousands of nurses will lose their jobs over the next five years under secret cost-cutting plans.
The cuts to clinical staff, exposed in documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, undermine Labour’s election pledge to protect services.
Half of all hospitals that responded to the FoI requests said they were planning to cut the number of doctors and nurses. Two-thirds also said they would cut the number of hospital beds.
Ministers have always insisted that the planned efficiency savings could be achieved by cutting waste and bureaucracy alone.

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Andy Burnham, the health secretary, said last week: “Our savings proposals are not contingent upon redundancies.” However, the survey of English hospital trusts, conducted by the Conservatives, reveals that over the next parliament there will be a net loss of at least 650 doctors and 2,000 nurses.
The figures are based on responses from 46 out of a total of 169 hospital trusts, so the true scale of planned clinical job losses is likely to be higher.
The responses to the FoI requests also disclose that at least 1,500 beds will be lost in English hospitals.
Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said: “Gordon Brown promised voters that he would protect the National Health Service and protect frontline services. But these figures reveal that Labour is planning secret cuts. They will cut the number of nurses, the number of doctors and the number of hospital beds. It does not get more frontline than that.”
Lansley insisted the Tories would be in a better position to guarantee clinical services because of their commitment to ring-fence health spending.
However, while both parties say they will protect NHS spending, jobs are at risk because inflation in healthcare is much higher than in the ordinary economy.
The most severe cuts are those at the Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals Trust, which includes the City, Sandwell and Rowley Regis hospitals. The trust revealed it was cutting 23% of beds, 343 nurses and 62 doctors. A spokesman said this was part of a strategy of treating patients “in the community”.
Over the next five years the University Hospital of North Staffordshire plans to shed 239 nurses and 84 doctors. The hospital will also cut 292 beds, or one in five, of its total capacity.
The trust said it had a restructuring programme that “involves moving some inpatient and outpatient services into community settings and staff will be moving with these services”.
The Imperial College Trust, which includes the Charing Cross and Hammersmith hospitals in west London, revealed that it planned to cut 265 nurses and 49 doctors. The trust would not comment on the reasons for the cuts, citing election “purdah”, but a spokesman refused to deny that frontline services could be hit.
Other trusts which revealed plans to reduce staff numbers included Nottingham University Hospitals, North Lincolnshire and Goole, Doncaster and Bassetlaw, and Co Durham and Darlington.
The Conservatives have obtained further details of the job cuts being planned by one trust, Hull and East Yorkshire. A leaked presentation showed it was anticipating a 4% cut in consultants and a 10% cut in midwives.
NHS West Midlands, the only regional health authority to provide figures, said that it planned to cut 1,000 nursing jobs.
Although some hospitals indicated that they planned to recruit doctors and nurses, these expansion plans were more than offset by cuts forecast by other trusts.
The Conservatives claim to have identified almost £5 billion of stealth cuts Labour is planning to inflict on the NHS. These include a £700m cut to the capital budget and £215m squeeze because of the planned National Insurance rises.
Last week The Sunday Times disclosed internal NHS documents which showed 120,000 managers will go by 2014 and that three of the country’s 10 strategic health authorities plan to reduce staff numbers by an average of 8.7%. If similar cuts are imposed across the NHS, 120,000 jobs will be lost.
Lansley said the reductions in hospital staff could not be excused by “restructuring” or “moving care into the community”. He added: “There is no evidence that extra staff are being recruited to replace these roles in the community. In fact the number of district nurses has gone down. The big increases in primary care trust staffing are coming in administration not frontline workers.
“Under Labour the number of managers has risen five times faster than the number of nurses. Our NHS has been weighed down by a bloated bureaucracy which means precious resources aren’t being spent on helping patients.
“We will cut bureaucracy by a third and we will make sure that frontline patient care comes first.”


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YOUR COMMENTS

9 Comments
(Displaying 1-9)

steve tea wrote:
Since when as every a back office beauracat in the NHS ever saved a life. Doctors and Nurses on the front line do.

Labour lie exposed about protecting frontline jobs.
April 25, 2010 9:41 AM BST
Patricia Surtees wrote:
If there's any cost cutting to be done let it be in the benefit system, anyone on benefits should only be able to claim the minimum wage x 40 hours less 20%, tax & NIC, this action alone would save the goverment millions and end the "I don't want a job, I'm better off on benefits" culture we're living in !!!!
April 25, 2010 8:36 AM BST
el trebol wrote:
What utter stupidity. Far better to cut the non-medical hangers on.

Some time ago I came across a prime example. They were travelling around the country, 1st class rail travel and hotels, promoting non-existent staff training courses to NHS trust hospitals. (When I asked what the courses were about they said that they had not even been specified yet, let alone written, so had no idea).

After the expenditure of a considerable amount of money the project was dropped.

This is just one example of useless waste of money - how many more have there been and how many exist at the moment?
April 25, 2010 7:45 AM BST
John Whetton wrote:
Well, well, well Mr Brown; get out of this one. Perhaps you should tell us the truth on the next TV election debate.

We need more front-line services and far fewer paper pushers and target drivers in the NHS.

Since increasing numbers of the front-line staff are foreign nationals, perhaps NU-Labour thinking is that their careers are unimportant in compared with those of core middle management.
April 25, 2010 6:20 AM BST
Robert Elliott wrote:
Gordon Brown

The NHS is safe in Zanulabour hands

There will be no cuts to frontline services

Compulsive liar.
How can anybody believe a word in the Zanulabour MAnifesto. It may as well have been written by Hans Christian Anderson.
April 25, 2010 5:27 AM BST
Frederick Hartmann wrote:
As a Yank, I frankly don't want that much fun in my healthcare system.

Unfortunately our present regime thinks we need some of that great government run healthcare too.

God help us.

Go figure.

Stupid should hurt
April 25, 2010 2:37 AM BST
fred smith wrote:
But you can bet your bottom dollar that managers won't be going -- in fact, they'll probably get a pay rise.
April 25, 2010 12:55 AM BST
John Fairfield wrote:
Brown's pledges;

Free one-to-one specialist nurse care in the community
Access to a cancer specialist within 2 weeks

Yeah, right! The man is a pathological liar
April 25, 2010 12:18 AM BST

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