Nursing leaders said that “easy victims” in the NHS, such as care for the elderly and mentally ill, were bearing the brunt of widespread job losses, bed closures and other service reductions because of a £700 million deficit. New figures show that more than 13,000 job losses have been announced by hospitals and health trusts over the past six months. At least one third of the lost jobs are expected to be nurses.

Senior nurses and politicians condemned comments by Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, that the NHS had had its “best year ever”. Sylvia Denton and Beverly Malone, two of the country’s top nurses, said that the dismissal of health staff was having a severe impact on patient care.

“NHS deficits are hitting patient services and to claim otherwise is simply wrong,” Dr Malone, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said on the eve of the organisation’s annual conference. “These are real services for real people with real illnesses, and we have to stop treating them as statistics on a balance sheet.”

A survey by the college of 660 hospital-based senior nurses revealed that almost half had seen redundancies or a reduction in nursing posts where they work. Nearly 60 per cent of hospitals said that they did not have enough staff to give their patients the standards of care they would like.

Figures compiled by the college show that job losses in the NHS were more than twice the level of 6,000 that had been reported. Dr Malone said that cuts to community hospitals, beds and services for older patients were already having a serious impact.

The Royal College of Nursing cited a range of examples of threatened hospital closures reported by its members, including in areas such as Wiltshire, Gloucester, East Yorkshire and Oxford. Vulnerable elderly patients were being moved frequently from bed to bed around hospitals as trusts struggled to find them specialist care, risking serious consequences for their health, Dr Malone added.

She described the cuts — which included the loss of specialist beds for older adults recovering from falls, strokes and surgery — as “kneejerk” and that there was no strategy to cope with the repercussions for patients.

Other patient groups being affected include young cancer sufferers in the West Country, and research teams working on life-saving treatments such as cardiothoracic surgery.

The claims come as Ms Hewitt admitted that the Government was “not on track” to meet a number of public health targets. The Prime Minister was told in a progress report last week that 11 out of Labour’s 26 key targets, known as public service agreements, were showing “red” or “amber” lights, indicating there was little prospect they would be met by the intended date of 2008 unless urgent action was taken.

They include the promise of a CAT or MRI scan for any patient needing one, cutting waiting times for cancer treatment, cutting MRSA rates in half within 18 months, ending inequalities in infant mortality, reducing smoking rates in poorer households, raising life expectancy in deprived areas and reducing rates of teenage pregnancy and childhood obesity.

“Despite the headlines, actually the NHS has just had its best year ever,” Ms Hewitt said, adding that the Government had come through one of the coldest winters for decades without bed emergencies and had cut waiting times to the lowest level ever.

Dr Malone and Mrs Denton, president of the Royal College of Nursing, said that the minister’s view was without credibility. “If this is the best ever year I would not like to see the worst. It is as simple as that,” Mrs Denton said. She added that the cuts had left nurses “not just demoralised, but really angry”.

Politicians including David Cameron, the Tory leader, echoed the nurses’ surprise at Ms Hewitt’s claims, saying that the NHS faced an emergency created by the Government.

Christine Beasley, the Chief Nursing Officer, defended the Government’s record. “We have 80,000 more nurses than in 1997, with starting pay rising by 55 per cent in the same period,” she said.

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