NHS Cuts – which should we fight?

The NHS is currently planning significant cuts. Although its spending is protected in real terms by government, it still needs to find £20 billion of savings in England over the next three years to meet the extra costs of medical inflation and an ageing population.

Many of us can identify cuts the NHS should make. I heard this morning of a new shower that was installed in a hospital ward the week before it was due to close and in spite of protests from ward staff. Patients and healthcare professionals also point to unnecessary expenditure on management consultants and re-branding hospitals.

But there are also cuts we need to resist, especially those which affect services. When the NHS ran into financial difficulty five years ago (mild by comparison with what is coming), people with asthma told me of specialist nurse posts which were lost locally. This was rarely nurses being made redundant, instead nurses were often not replaced when they retired.

These stealth cuts are classic examples of short-term decision making. We know that specialist nurses save their salaries many times over by helping people avoid admission to hospital for their asthma. They do far more, too, as the lynchpin of many people’s care.

At this stage, cuts are still on the drawing board. But we need you to be our eyes and ears and tell us what happens to your local services. You can help us by telling us if nurse posts are lost or if services are affected. But you can also tell us where you think the NHS is spending money unnecessarily or if you have ideas for improving productivity.

That will help us to take a constructive response to NHS spending across the UK – proposing cuts where they make sense but fighting cuts to frontline services.

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