UK Stats head confirms cameron is cutting NHS

The Chair of the UK Statistics Authority has stated that “expenditure on the NHS in real terms was lower in 2011-12 than it was in 2009-10."

David Cameron famously promised he would cut the deficit, not the NHS. We now have it in black and white: he is cutting the NHS, not the deficit. There could be no clearer evidence of the failure of this Prime Minister and his Government.

For months, David Cameron's Government have made misleading boasts about NHS spending, misrepresenting the true financial difficulties he has brought upon the NHS. At the same time they have recently begun to try to distance themselves from these problems which David Cameron has created, trying to shift the blame to the NHS and its staff.  

The Prime Minister must come to the House of Commons at the earliest opportunity and correct the record. He has been found out. He has cut the NHS budget for two years running and he owes it to patients and NHS staff to be honest about that.

This mismatch between David Cameron's promises and the reality on the ground cannot be allowed to continue. These real-terms cuts explain why the Care Quality Commission recently found that 16 per cent of hospitals in England do not have adequate staffing levels; why over 7,000 nursing jobs have been lost on David Cameron’s watch - one thousand in the last month alone; and why hospitals are dangerously full.

This must be a hard lesson for this Prime Minister. He might be able to airbrush a poster, but he can’t manipulate the statistics and expect to get away with it.

Andrew Dilnot's letter to Jeremy Hunt can be viewed here.

5,500 Nursing posts axed since May 2010

David Cameron promised to protect the NHS budget but has cut it for two years running. To make matters worse, he prioritised spending on back-office restructuring over protecting the NHS frontline.

The result is that the NHS frontline is taking a battering from the Tory–led Government’s mismanagement of the NHS. Over 5000 nursing jobs have been cut on Cameron's watch, with 700 going in the last month alone.

The Government has taken the NHS to the brink with its toxic mix of budget cuts and destabilising reorganisation. Patients are paying the price as A&E waiting times get longer and the number of patients left waiting on trolleys in hospital corridors is up by a third.

What greater sign could there be of a Government with its priorities wrong than one which gives tax breaks to millionaires and P45s to nurses? David Cameron must live up to his pre-election promises. He must stop this assault on the NHS frontline.