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The BBC are reporting: The NHS in England will be £750m in the red by the end of the financial year on 31 March, a BBC survey has found.
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BBC Two's Newsnight asked all 28 strategic health authorities, which control most of the NHS's £76bn budget, for their latest forecast deficits.
Twenty predicted deficits totalling £799m, while a handful of surpluses brought the net deficit to £750m.
The figures came after ministers this week denied NHS chief executive Sir Nigel Crisp quit over the situation.
Resignation denials
Newsnight also contacted all 32 Foundation hospital trusts, which are funded separately.
Overall they were £10m in the red, making the total NHS deficit £760m, according to the BBC's research.
Sir Nigel on Tuesday announced he was stepping down, saying "not everything has gone well" and sparking reports he had been pushed out.
Downing Street denied he was "carrying the can" for financial problems in the NHS.
The Tories said his "rushed" departure was a clear admission of a crisis.
Some of the largest health authority deficits are:
North West London - £106m
Surrey and Sussex - £102m
Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire - £89m
Shropshire - £49m
Hampshire and the Isle of Wight - £44m
South East London - £40m
The new interim chief executive of the NHS, Sir Ian Carruthers, who is replacing Sir Nigel Crisp, is currently in charge of two health authorities - one predicting a deficit and one a surplus.
Hospital funding
Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, is forecasting a deficit of £44m, while Dorset and Somerset is predicting a small surplus of £6.5m.
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has refused to say how much she expects the total NHS deficit to be, although she conceded it would be larger than the government's £200m target.
The half-year forecast was £600m.
Earlier this week she said that only "a very small minority" of hospitals and NHS bodies had serious financial problems.
Another report from the BBC: Fear for jobs in NHS cash crisis
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The Royal College of Nursing has said it fears a financial crisis in parts of the NHS may lead to further job losses.
This follows the announcement that a hospital trust in Staffordshire plans to cut one job in seven as managers try to reduce debts of £17m.
It is thought three quarters of the redundancies at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent could be compulsory.
The trust is to cut its 7,000-strong staff by the equivalent of 1,000 posts.
An estimated 370 of the posts will be nurses and midwives.
Dr Beverly Malone, of the Royal College of Nursing, told BBC News: "We've seen a steady creep of these types of issues, from the freezing of posts to now we are actually talking about redundancies.
"This could happen at any of the hospitals and trusts that are having deficits and, as we know, there's a number of them that are in deficit."
The Department of Health said it was reassured services would not be cut in the Staffordshire hospital.
The job cuts there are in addition to strict controls on recruitment to vacant posts and invitations for expressions of interest from staff over voluntary redundancies, early retirement and reduced working hours.
The chief executive of the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, Anthony Sumara, said: "We hope once this most difficult part of the changes is completed the vast majority of staff who remain can begin to feel more secure and confident in the future."
The total shortfall for the NHS in England this year is expected to be more than double last year's at £620m.
This has been caused partly by more expensive drugs but mostly by a big increase in staff pay, the cost of which the government admits it underestimated.
Its not just England:
The BBC are reporting: Total Welsh NHS debt 'tops £70m'
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Opposition parties have said the National Health Service in Wales is more than £70m in the red.
A Tory AM has been told by the Welsh NHS director that total debt, combining historic debts and deficits, and the deficit this financial year, is £71m.
The assembly government has confirmed the figure.
Last month Health Minister Brian Gibbons forecast a debt this financial year of about £20m and promised action to combat the "deficit culture".
The £71m figure was given to the Conservatives' assembly health spokesman Jonathan Morgan by NHS Wales director Ann Lloyd.
But there is a possibility the deficit could be higher when the financial year finishes at the end of the month.
In December, the estimated figure for trusts alone was £27.6m, which did not include local health boards (LHBs) and Health Commission Wales.
The NHS and social care budget for Wales has almost doubled since 1999 to just under £5bn for this financial year.
'Financial challenge'
The debt problem is not confined to Wales. In England, staff at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent were told last week that 1,000 jobs could be lost as managers try to reduce debts of £17m.
Experts blame problems on the rising cost of healthcare, ranging from changes in staff pay and conditions and expensive new drugs.
In a statement in February, Dr Gibbons said the Welsh NHS had faced a "significant financial challenge".
The minister listed the changes it had been asked to make, including cutting patient waiting times, new pay contracts and efficiency savings.
Dr Gibbons said in February the forecast was for a "net deficit" at the year end of approximately £20m. He pointed out this represented 0.5% of the NHS budget.
He said all NHS bodies were statutorily required to live within their budgets, and action was being taken to tackle the "deficit culture".
Dr Gibbons said organisations forecasting an inability to break even had to produce "strategic change and efficiency plans to return the organisation to financial balance within an agreed period".
He also said First Minister Rhodri Morgan had "made it clear in October that we would not subsidise those organisations continuing to run up a deficit".
I guess this is one way for them to save money: Hospital letters typed in India
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A cash-strapped hospital is sending its correspondence to be typed up in India as it cannot afford to hire experienced medical secretaries.
The University Hospital of North Staffordshire has just started a one-month trial of the scheme.
Letters are dictated digitally, sent to a unit in India, typed up and returned electronically within 24 hours.
The trust recently announced it was cutting 1,000 posts to reduce a deficit of £17m.
Fracture trial
A trust spokesman said it had been difficult to recruit medical secretaries and there had been an increase in patient numbers.
"Even if it were possible to recruit the right secretaries, the trust is not in a position to do so in its current financial climate," he said.
The scheme is being trialled in the fracture clinic.
The spokesman added that the service was used by 11 other NHS trusts in the country and had been checked carefully to make sure it is secure.
No patient-identifiable information is transferred, so patient confidentiality is not compromised, he said.
Last year, the hospital's trust chairman resigned over financial errors.
Calum Paton and four non-executive directors stood down in December after admitting two sets of auditors did not pick up on an overspend of £18m.
The BBC are reporting: No help for 'cash-strapped NHS'
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NHS trusts struggling to balance their books were offered no help in dealing with predicted record deficits in Gordon Brown's 10th Budget.
The only promise the Chancellor made was to increase nursing pay above the average public sector pay of 2.25%.
Conservative leader David Cameron said the NHS deficit had reached £1bn despite Mr Brown doubling spending.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said operations were being cancelled, wards closed and jobs lost.
Highlighting the issue in his Budget response, Mr Cameron said: "You can tell how big the crisis in the health service is. The health service didn't even get a mention."
Medical research
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has staked her job on bringing the NHS back into financial balance by the end of the next financial year.
Treasury officials are also reported to have warned NHS bosses that they will have to tighten their belts in the coming years.
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley accused Mr Brown of "abandoning the NHS".
"When Gordon Brown spoke of his investment priorities, the NHS was not among them.
"When he spoke of the British people's priorities, the NHS was not among them.
"Faced with the evidence of the failure of his billions to deliver corresponding improvements for patients, Gordon Brown had nothing to say."
But Mike Dixon, chairman of the NHS Alliance which represents primary care providers, said he was not surprised that Mr Brown did not provide any extra resources to help with deficits.
Nurses' anger
He suggested the Chancellor would want to see that primary care trusts and hospitals had proper financial management in place before promising more investment.
Mr Dixon suggested that more money might be forthcoming in the next comprehensive spending review.
However, Mr Brown did pledge to give nurses above inflation pay rises higher than other public sector workers.
The Chancellor said public sector pay settlements would average at 2.25% "combining fairness in pay", but promised "more for nurses".
No further details of a pay deal were given, however.
Nurses leaders had been pushing for above inflation pay rises.
The current rate of inflation is 2% but the Royal College of Nursing says this does not reflect the cost of mortgages.
'No reassurance'
Its general secretary Dr Beverly Malone said only a significant pay increase, above inflation, would diffuse nurses' anger and help improve recruitment and retention.
"Not only are nurses angry about pay, they are deeply concerned about the financial crisis facing the NHS.
"In trusts across the country nursing posts are under threat as deficits take hold. Yet, today, the Chancellor failed to offer any reassurance to nurses.
"Gordon Brown's speech did nothing to suggest a continued focus on investment in the NHS. It also did nothing to rule out the threat of further nursing redundancies - and the real damage this will have on patient services."
'Fair pay'
Dr Sam Everington, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association expressed dismay that Mr Brown failed to make a specific commitment on doctors' pay.
He said: "Doctors equally deserve a fair pay award that reflects their hard work and commitment to bringing down waiting times for patients and innovating new treatments of care."
Mr Brown also said government funding for scientific medical research, through the Medical Research Council, and NHS research would be combined in a single budget worth at least £1 billion.
He said a research institute modelled on America's National Institutes of Health would be set up once a agreement could be reached on the best way forward.
WHEN LAST employed, I sold my employer five of my 28 days’ holiday. The price was one week’s pay. It was a perfect deal for me because my work habits made it difficult to distinguish the days I was working from those I was taking off. My salary increased but my efforts did not.
So I was not surprised to read that the European Court of Justice has declared such transactions illegal. Employers must somehow be protected from this kind of exploitation.
Nevertheless, I am sure some will find the ruling outrageous. If employer and employee are both sane adults, why should they be prevented from freely entering into such a transaction? Our entitlement to 28 days’ holiday is surely not an obligation to take 28 days’ holiday. If you have thoughts along these lines, I sympathise. But our holiday entitlement is only the tip of an iceberg of entitlement-driven compulsion.
In this case it has taken a court decision to turn an entitlement into an obligation. But judges are rarely required; money is usually enough on its own. The entitlements that politicians delightedly announce, as if they were gifts of some kind — free childcare, free education, free medical treatment and all the rest — are nothing but compulsory purchases.
Take a simple example. How much are you willing to set aside to cover the cost of medical care in your old age? Personally, not much. I would rather spend the money now to enjoy life while still deluded that I am young and healthy. I will save only enough to cover my basic medical needs when old and clapped out: enough for false teeth and a few months’ supply of morphine should suffice.
But wait. Like everyone else, I am entitled to comprehensive medical care when old, whether I can pay for it or not. So here is what I will do. I won’t save anything and then I will take all I can get free from the National Health Service, as will everyone else. How will the Government pay for all this “free” medical care? By taxing me, of course, along with my fellow entitlement holders. In the end, my “entitlement” simply obliges me to buy medical treatment that I do not think worth the cost. It is a compulsory purchase.
Those politicians who make it their business to extend our entitlements are not billionaire benefactors. The burden of funding our entitlements falls back on us. That is why increasing them simultaneously decreases our ability to consume anything else.
Suppose Gordon Brown were to make a legal reality out of the rights he proclaims at Labour Party conferences. Suppose he guaranteed everyone “the highest standard of free healthcare”, “the best start in life” and all the rest. To ears reddened by Mr Brown’s rhetorical style, this may sound like Utopia. In fact, it would be serfdom. The highest standard of medical care would alone cost so much that funding it would require taxes to be 100 per cent of GDP.
Of course, Mr Brown will not lift taxes to 100 per cent, if only because the policy would result in the disappearance of any income to tax. But, to pay for our present entitlements, tax is already 40 per cent of GDP. Only the rich can afford to pay for items such as education and healthcare from their post-tax incomes. Most British citizens have no choice but to accept what they are allocated by the State.
The entitlement-based policies of all the main parties muddle up two quite different goals: one worthy, the other disgraceful. The worthy goal is redistributing wealth. Since a pound is worth more to a pauper than to a millionaire, transfers from the rich to the poor increase aggregate wealth (at least, until the size of the transfer undermines incentives to work). It also helps to avoid civil unrest, which benefits everyone, including the rich.
The disgraceful goal is to compel people to live in ways that they would not choose for themselves, or to buy things they do not think worth the cost. This is precisely the effect of confiscating a large portion of someone’s income and then providing him with services to which he can no longer afford an alternative.
To avoid this oppression, there should be no state services and no specific entitlements, except to a minimum income. All redistribution of wealth should be in cash. There are today no state supermarkets or state tailors. The unemployed are given cash with which to buy food and clothes. They may choose how to allocate their wealth between food and clothes, and they may also decide what they will eat and wear. Why not give them, and everyone else, the same autonomy with respect to education and healthcare.
Left-wing friends always object to my “all cash” suggestion on the ground that people would spend the money unwisely. They would blow it all on booze and fags or something similarly frivolous. This displays an absurdly dim view of the population. My guess is that spending on health and education would increase under such a system.
The objection also reveals an extraordinary admiration of politicians. Is Mr Brown so vastly superior to you in morality and intellect that, sitting in his office in Westminster, knowing nothing of your circumstances or preferences, he can decide better than you how to allocate your spending? It is a great historical irony that politicians who genuinely aim to help the poor have pursued policies that exempt only the rich from being vassals of the ruling class. And funny to the point of making you weep that such policies are commonly described as “generous”.
Every few vdays there are media reports of job losses in the NHS - it does get a bit tedious to report them, but today there were two news stories about it: Hospitals trust to axe 325 jobs
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to be axed under plans by Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust to save more than £10m over the next year.
The job cuts - more than 7% of the trust's workforce - are likely to include redundancies, according to chief executive Peter Coles.
But he said natural turnover, early retirement and voluntary redundancy would account for the majority.
The trust, which runs five hospitals, has not said which jobs will be lost. ...
A hospital trust in Staffordshire has become the latest to announce job cuts in an effort to save costs.
Mid Staffordshire General Hospitals NHS Trust is to cut more than 150 jobs to make savings of £10m next year.
A spokesman said most of the job losses would come from managerial and support services to try to minimise the impact on patient care.
The trust is expected to make a small surplus this year, but needs to make savings in the next financial year.
It runs two hospitals - the 404-bed Staffordshire General Hospital in Stafford and the 107-bed Cannock Chase Hospital....
Following on from the above 2 stories, here are two more:
Debt-hit NHS trust axes 720 jobs
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Hundreds of jobs are to go at NHS hospitals in Worcestershire.
The 720 positions are being axed in an attempt to balance the books at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which needs to save £30m.
One in seven staff at the county's three hospitals will be lost. The news was announced at a conference held by the trust on Thursday afternoon.
It runs the Worcestershire Royal, in Worcester, the Alexandra, in Redditch, and Kidderminster Hospital sites.
'Massive shortfall'
Trust chairman Michael O'Riordan said: "It looks as if we have ended 2005/6 with an overspend of around £5.5m which is very disappointing.
"But far more serious is a massive and unprecedented shortfall between what we expect to get paid in 2006/7 and what we know it would cost us to provide our services in the way we currently do."
The job losses proposal is subject to consultation with staff and is expected to save the trust about £8m this financial year and £16m in the next one, starting April 2007.
The trust now employs 4,500 staff and has frozen more than 100 posts, which will count towards the 720 jobs to go.
There have been long-standing campaigns to retain services at Redditch and Kidderminster against plans to centralise them at the largest site in Worcester.
There is talk of closure of a ward at the Worcester, but the trust said there are no details yet of where jobs will be lost.
Chief executive John Rostill said: "We will of course work in partnership with union representatives to ensure that any reductions in the workforce are handled sensitively and managed properly."
'Spiralling costs'
Mr Rostill added: "We are not complaining about the level of funding we receive, but I need to make it crystal clear why we are in this position.
"Taking on hundreds of extra staff, paying many of those staff more money, treating more patients, more quickly, with more expensive drugs and equipment - and doing all that on three separate sites - is where the money has gone."
The trust has taken on more than 1,000 extra staff - including 130 doctors and 500 nurses - since it was created in 2000.
Mr Rostill said the trust hit a target of having no patients waiting more than 15 months in 2002. And the maximum wait fell to 12 months in 2003, and again to a maximum wait of nine months in 2004.
He said: "By the end of 2005, waiting times for elective operations were down to a maximum of six months, with the majority of patients being treated far more quickly than that.
"While these waiting times were falling, each year we were also dealing with ever-increasing numbers of emergency patients coming in through A&E - and making sure they were treated and admitted or sent home more quickly."
'Political targets'
He said national changes to pay and conditions, meant that pay costs have "spiralled upwards".
Mr O'Riordan added: "Anyone who follows the news will know that we are not alone in our plight, but that is no consolation."
Mid Worcestershire MP Peter Luff said: "In the run-up to the 2005 election, the government frantically drove the NHS to meet over-ambitious political targets - and told trust managers to use every accounting trick in the book to conceal the scale of the financial problems this would inevitably create.
"After the election, the new secretary of state demanded an immediate return to financial balance, causing the current crisis."
Hospital trust to shed 200 jobs
York Hospital is to cut 200 jobs in a move which will save £2.5m.
Recruitment limits have been imposed which mean the York Hospitals NHS Trust will fill only half of the 400 posts which become vacant yearly.
It said compulsory redundancies could not be ruled out, but insisted that essential posts would be maintained.
Managers blamed the decision partly on financial problems at the Selby and York Primary Care Trust (PCT), which buys services from the hospital.
The PCT announced last month that jobs would have to go as part of a plan to reduce debts of £23.7m in 2005.
The hospital, which currently employs about 4,000 people, also blamed the cuts on national requirements for greater efficiency in the NHS.
The £2.5m savings generated by the recruitment restrictions are part of a wider £7m cost-cutting package, which includes reducing stock levels and cutting spending on training.
York Hospitals Trust chief executive Jim Easton said: "This is a difficult announcement this morning, particularly as we have balanced our books for the year just finished.
"The year ahead looks pretty tough and there are some tough efficiency targets ahead.
"The PCT has some significant financial difficulties and we hope the measures we have announced will see us through the year."
However, he warned that the full impact of the PCT's financial porblems might not emerge unti later in the year and compulsory redundancies could not be ruled out.
Mr Easton said it was inevitable that by not filling vacancies there would be extra pressure on staff.
'Harder work'
Unison, the union which represents many hospital workers, said the hospital was paying the price of problems at the PCT.
Branch secretary Edna Mulhearn said: "I am very angry about that and I lay this totally at the door of the financial situation at the primary care trust.
"We have kept our books pretty much in order.
"I am sure we will try to maintain the quality of patient services but it will mean harder work for my members and will impact on morale."
Thousands of jobs have been axed throughout the NHS in recent weeks, including the announcement on Thursday that 720 jobs will go at the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.
The news on NHS job losses, just keeps on getting worse: NHS job cuts 'set to quadruple'
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NHS job cuts 'set to quadruple'
Hospital job cuts could reach 24,000 - four times the number of job losses announced in recent weeks - the Liberal Democrats have claimed.
The Lib Dems said the 6,000 job cuts announced in recent weeks accounted for only a quarter of the total NHS deficit.
Lib Dem health spokesman Steve Webb said the government refused to "come clean" about the crisis in the NHS.
However, the Department of Health and NHS bosses dispute the Lib Dem figures.
Thousands of job losses have been announced in recent weeks as trusts battle financial difficulties.
"Every day brings further news of more job cuts which will undoubtedly affect frontline patient care," Mr Webb said.
"Staff morale and public confidence in the NHS will continue to crumble until ministers take action to reverse this trend."
The Lib Dem health spokesman claimed taxpayers' money was being wasted on health reforms and paying over-the-odds for private sector treatment to hit waiting list targets.
And he argued that trusts were being forced to make short-term cuts to tackle problems that have built up over decades.
Mr Webb said: "What is needed is long-term planning in the NHS, not a series of short-term initiatives and sudden policy shifts which make sensible planning impossible."
Professor Allyson Pollock, a professor of public health policy at the University of Edinburgh and a supporter of pressure group Keep our NHS public, criticised the funding of hospitals.
She told the BBC that many of the problems were caused by money "leaking out of the whole of the NHS into very expensive for-profit contracts in the private sector".
A Department of Health spokesperson said: "These are crude calculations. It is simply not correct to say that thousands of jobs will be lost within weeks, as some reports would have it.
"Most trusts in the news say that they expect most reductions to be achieved through 'natural wastage' - not replacing temporary or agency staff, freezing non-essential vacant posts and redeploying staff into other roles.
"In most cases trusts are planning to make reductions over a period of years."
Dr Gill Morgan, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said it was not possible to project in the way that the Lib Dems had done.
She said: "Some hospitals have had to make very difficult decisions in recent weeks and unfortunately some job losses have been necessary.
"It is possible that there will be more job losses announced in the NHS, but the actual figures cannot be calculated in such a simplistic way as there are many reasons for the cuts.
"It is spurious to take data from a few trusts and extrapolate national figures."
I heard Tony Blair (UK Prime Minister) on the radio this very morning and he says everything is going to be alright.
Certainly, there is a deficit, but that has evidently only come to light because of the Government's brilliant accounting measures.
Also, it's only a very few Trusts who are in trouble. Mostly everything is ok.
As Mr Blair very rightly stated "Frankly, it's time we addressed this problem".
I think the PM is not reading the same newspapers or watching the same TV shows. Here is todays news from the BBC: Hundreds more hospital jobs to go
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Hundreds of hospital jobs are being axed by a West Midlands health trust.
Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust is to shed up to 800 jobs at its three Birmingham and Black Country sites, it said at a budget meeting.
The trust, which runs City, Sandwell and Rowley Regis hospitals, has a deficit of £6m.
The cuts are the latest in a series of job losses in English hospitals, which began with up to 1,000 being cut in neighbouring Staffordshire in March.
Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust has an annual budget of almost £300m, more than 7,000 staff and serves a population of 500,000.
It said it aims to make savings of up to £20m in the next year.
Chief executive John Adler said: "I acknowledge that these changes will cause anxiety to our staff but we have a duty to make the very best use of taxpayers' money to live within our means."
In a statement, the trust said: "In order to ensure that it lives within its means, the trust's financial plan involves a cost reduction programme of £20m.
"This is expected to equate to a reduction of up to 800 posts in the trust's staffing establishment.
"It is committed to protecting services and wherever possible posts will be removed which do not impact on direct patient care."
It said a vacancy freeze has also been imposed and staff will be asked if they wish to be considered for voluntary redundancy or early retirement.
'Dreadful for staff'
Anne Leedham Smith, regional director of the Royal College of Nursing in the West Midlands, told BBC Radio Five Live: "We know that they are going to go to the strategic health authority bank to ask for £5m, so this is completely finance driven.
"We [won't] know the details till Tuesday which is dreadful for the staff because that means they've got to go through the whole of Easter without knowing what's in store for them."
The trust had a "cost reduction programme" last year which saw £10m saved with 200 lost posts, but said this only involved one compulsory redundancy
Other job losses have been announced in the region at hospitals in north Staffordshire, Nuneaton and Worcestershire.
Its not just Administrative positions that are going. The BBC are reporting: Hospitals to cut 250 nursing jobs
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Nearly 300 doctors and nurses are to lose their jobs at three West Midlands hospitals, it has emerged.
Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the City, Sandwell and Rowley Regis hospitals, is cutting 800 jobs to save up to £20m.
Also affected are 43 senior managers, 170 health care assistants, 224 clerical staff and 77 other staff, including physiotherapists.
The cuts are the latest in a series of job losses in English hospitals.
The University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust announced last month it was to cut 1,000, jobs.
Freeze on vacancies
Last week it emerged that 800 jobs were to go at the Birmingham and Black Country hospitals.
The Royal College of Nursing said it had been given the breakdown of the latest job cuts by Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust.
It reveals that 252 nurses and 40 doctors are to lose their jobs.
The trust, which has more than 7,000 staff and serves a population of 500,000, has imposed a freeze on vacancies and asked staff to consider voluntary redundancy or early retirement.
It said its annual budget of £308m would fall to £303m in the next financial year and a £3m debt had to be repaid.
It has also seen its expenditure on staff rise from £180m in 2003/4 to £217m in the last year.
A spokesman told BBC News on Tuesday that, because a 90-day consultation period with unions had now started, it was unable to comment on which areas would be affected.
Reforms aim to give patients more choice over care
Tony Blair has insisted now is the time to "hold our nerves" over NHS reforms in the face of criticism.
"We have to hold our nerve, see it through, do what is necessary, so that the NHS in the years to come is not just a great institution for which people feel enormous sentimental and emotional attachment, but is delivering the high standard and quality of care that people in the early 21st century expect from any public service."
A committee of MPs may be about to launch an inquiry into NHS job losses and hospital closures.
The government has come under fire after thousands of NHS jobs have been lost across the country.
Tony Blair admits the NHS reforms have reached a "crunch point", but remains determined to press ahead.
Liberal Democrat MP Paul Burstow, a member of the Commons health committee, said it was time to question ministers on the issue.
And last month Labour MP Kevin Barron, the committee chairman, warned trust budget deficits were "clearly threatening to destabilise" the health service.
More than 7,000 job cuts have been announced across the NHS in recent weeks, as trusts struggle to balance their books
Nearly half of senior nurses have seen cuts in nursing posts in hospitals in the past year, a survey claims.
The Royal College of Nursing polled 660 nurses before their conference. It also said 13,000 NHS job losses have been announced in the last six months.
Unison is expected to announce its support this week for staff who need to take industrial action to protect jobs.
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said the NHS was enjoying its "best ever year"....
Despite huge job losses and mounting financial problems, the NHS is enjoying "its best year ever" according to Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
The service faces a financial deficit of up to £800m and some 7,000 job losses have already been confirmed.
Mrs Hewitt said: "We have just come through one of the coldest winters for decades and we haven't had any of the winter bed crises."
The Conservatives say the service's problems are down to mismanagement.
Mrs Hewitt said the NHS had "saved more lives than ever before" this year. ....
launch an inquiry into the scale of the financial problems afflicting the NHS in England.
The Health Select Committee decided to act after the announcement of more than 7,000 job losses at NHS trusts across the country.
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has twice been heckled while addressing health union conferences this week.
The inquiry will try to establish the reasons for the current difficulties, and their effect on patient care. .....
More than 80 management and administration posts could be lost from two NHS trusts in Wiltshire.
Kennet and North Wiltshire Primary Care Trust along with the West Wiltshire Trust made the announcement on Thursday - blaming a savings target of £20m.
The trusts say they want to keep redundancies to a minimum and will redeploy staff where possible.
The two trusts recently announced changes which will see seven community hospitals across the county close. ....
A hospital which is £3m in the red has spent £359,000 caring for two patients even though they do not need treatment.
The two elderly "bed-blockers" have been fit enough to leave the Royal Hampshire County Hospital (RHCH) in Winchester since April 2004.
But because of "family and funding issues" the women have been kept in a general ward costing £246 each per day.
The hospital is taking legal action to get one patient moved to a home and is seeking legal advice about the other. ....
The proposed closure of a hospital in Surrey and the loss of beds at another hospital is being discussed by the local Primary Care Trust (PCT).
Following three months of public consultation, Guildford and Waverley PCT's board is considering the future of Milford Hospital, near Godalming.....
The hospital needs to make £1.5m savings
Another 95 NHS jobs are to be lost as a West Midlands health trust tries to make savings of £1.5m before its next budget in March 2007.
Julie Burgess, chief executive of Birmingham Women's Health Care NHS Trust, said she could not rule out compulsory redundancies.
The jobs are to go at Birmingham Women's Hospital in Metchley Park Road.
The announcement means the number of jobs lost in the West Midlands NHS in the last two months is at least 3,200.
Ms Burgess said the trust had ended the financial year with a small surplus but needed to find savings to avoid a deficit in March.
The shortfall could only be met by reducing workforce numbers, she said. ...
MINISTER, MINISTER, back to the wall, which is the fairest health system of all?
Last Wednesday Patricia Hewitt told the Royal College of Nursing that it is Britain’s NHS. And when she described it as the “fairest” she did not mean prettiest. Among health systems in the West, the NHS is more ugly sister than sleeping beauty. She meant fair as in just. Foreigners may enjoy higher standards of healthcare — better, faster and now often cheaper — but we should not envy them. They partake of injustice.
What makes the NHS so fair? You already know the official answer. The NHS is fair because it conforms to the Marxist principle: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. NHS services are free, and funded from general taxation.
Of course, this is precisely what makes the NHS such a shambles. Fixing consumer prices to zero inevitably results in waste, state rationing and low-quality services. Patricia Hewitt, David Cameron and all the other politicians who favour the current system know this. That is why they never suggest extending it to food, electricity, cars or anything else.
They are generally happy to see efficient, “user pays” injustice prevail. But not in healthcare and education. Here the demands of justice are absolute.
I doubt they are. But that is irrelevant, because Marx and Hewitt are wrong about justice. Privatising healthcare and education would improve not only efficiency but also justice. For, as Aristotle said, justice requires that we treat equals equally and unequals unequally. And equal treatment requires that users pay.
Compare my sister’s household and mine. We keep the house warmer and take longer showers. The situation would be quite unequal, except for one fact. My electricity bill is bigger than my sister’s. Or consider my brother-in-law’s Mercedes. It is a much better car than mine. I might complain of unequal treatment, but for the difference in the prices we paid.
As with electricity and cars, so with healthcare and education. Jack smokes, drinks and overeats. Jill does not. Jack’s behaviour means he consumes more healthcare than Jill.
It would be unfair if healthcare cost Jack and Jill the same. Yet this injustice is precisely what the NHS guarantees. With privatisation justice would prevail; Jack would be charged higher health insurance premiums than Jill.
Or consider a town with two secondary schools: Snodbury High and Snodbury College. One is sure to be at least slightly better than the other (Snodbury High, let’s say). Under the state system this creates injustice. All pupils pay the same, yet those at Snodbury College receive an inferior education.
How can this injustice be remedied? Not by the Labour and Tory policy of increasing choice within tax-funded public services. While schools remain free, all Snodburians will choose the superior Snodbury High, and half are guaranteed to be disappointed.
Ruth Kelly recognises the problem. On the Today programme last year she admitted that “we will have real choice only when the school down the road is as good as the school two miles away”. But how does she propose to make all schools equally good? No amount of new Labour micromanagement will achieve it.
If these schools were privatised, however, the inequality would be eliminated almost overnight. Demand for places at Snodbury High would bid up its fees, while the lack of interest in Snodbury College would force it to offer a discount. This process would continue until the price difference between the schools was equal to the value parents placed on Snodbury High’s superiority. Parents who make the average trade-off between price and quality would no longer prefer one school to the other.
Of course, few parents will be exactly average in this respect. And that is what makes having a choice between priced schools worthwhile. Those who are willing to spend more than average on education will prefer Snodbury High; the rest will prefer Snodbury College. A good expensive school versus a bad cheap school: that is a real choice. A good free school versus a bad free school: that is not.
Some car lovers with modest incomes own Mercedes. And some poor, education-loving Snodburians would pay Snodbury High’s higher fees. But, in general, it would be the children of wealthy Snodburians who attend this school. This is the outcome of privatisation that most offends the left-wing sense of justice. No one should suffer an educational disadvantage on account of their wealth.
This is an absurd principle and an absurd objection to privatisation. Under the current system the wealthy can send their children to private schools, hire tutors and pay inflated house prices in the zones of good state schools. Short of totalitarianism, it is impossible to remove the educational and healthcare advantages enjoyed by the wealthy.
Nor would removing them be fair. If Jack had more money than Jill but could not buy superior goods and services — be they food, cars or healthcare — then Jack’s extra money would be worthless. Removing the advantages of wealth simply removes the wealth. Which is fair only if the wealth is ill-gotten. But why should we assume it is? Do our leaders subscribe to that Marxist idea too?
No one should be denied decent healthcare and education. That is a reasonable principle. And it favours privatisation, which would soon improve the healthcare and education received by the poor. Ford and Asda, as much as Mercedes and Harrods, are creatures of the private sector. Soviet-era Ladas and illiterate school leavers are creatures of the system favoured by Hewitt and company.
It is scandalous that we should still suffer Marxism in any part of our economy. Inanities about fairness cannot excuse it.
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"citing an indisposition due to special circumstances"
NHS '£750m in the red' this year
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