David Craig, on August 20th, 2012NHS bosses claim they are having to make cutbacks in medical services because of a lack of money. But the NHS gets twice as much as it did a decade ago. Plus it’s got £229bn in PFI hospitals. The real problem is that the NHS has wasted billions of our money on bureaucrats. Here’s a small example of the problem:
New Labour set up at least one new healthcare regulator each year it was in power, though 2004 was a bumper year with no fewer than three new regulators being imposed on us. In 2001, we got the National Patient Safety Agency – about £30 million a year and over three hundred staff. In 2002, there was the Nursing and Midwifery Council – about £24 million a year and two hundred and forty plus staff. In 2002 we also were given the NHS Confederation – £26.5 million a year. In 2003 the Health Protection Agency began work – £250 million a year and over three thousand staff. In the same year there was the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency – £80 million budget and eighty staff.
In 2004 our healthcare bureaucrats hit the jackpot. In January, Monitor appeared on the scene – over £13 million a year. There was also the Healthcare Commission – £80 million a year and over five hundred staff. And not to forget the Commission for Social Care Inspection – £164 million and 2,335 staff.
I could go on. There are still a few more to come. But you probably get the picture by now. All these new bodies were apparently Blair’s and Brown’s way of fulfilling the pledge given in New Labour’s 1997 election manifesto, ‘the key is to root out unnecessary administrative cost and to spend money on the right things – frontline care’. Looking at what had actually happened, one commentator recently remarked, ‘of all the billions poured into the NHS, it is just sickening to see how much of it has been soaked up by this ever-expanding bureaucracy, particularly these quangos’.
Need I say more?
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