Smash hit

“Instead of the Department of Health blaming trusts, Patricia Hewitt should come to Parliament and make a full statement on the financial prospects for the NHS, for this year and the coming financial year”.

Yesterday she declined to say whether the most recent figures showed any improvement in financial performance.

Last year she said that halfway through the financial year the NHS was forecasting a total deficit of £620 million, against last year’s £250 million.

Asked to explain how in the midst of plenty the NHS was running out of money, she said that there were a variety of reasons.

“In some cases, it is financial mismanagement. In others, it is inefficiently organised services — such as not doing enough operations as day cases, or keeping people in hospital longer than needed.

“In some areas, there are too many services being provided from too many places. In others, the health community has been overspending for a very long time and taking money from other parts of the NHS to balance their books.

“This is very unfair on underspending areas, which tend to be in the North and the Midlands — they are subsidising NHS services in the South and East.”

Steve Webb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said: “The Government is not learning from its mistakes. Reforms from the centre created the instability that resulted in these damaging deficits.

“Now the Health Secretary is issuing further rules from Whitehall to try and stop it.The Government must stop trying to micromanage the NHS. More power should be given to local people to direct resources to the needs of their community.”

Yesterday the Health Secretary refused to say where the projected deficit now stood, saying that the situation was being closely monitored.

Publishing a “rulebook” for the NHS for 2006/07, she said that financial good health would be among the priorities for all NHS organisations.

But she emphasised that she was not putting money before medicine.

“For the next financial year we actually want to move the NHS towards a surplus and we want every part of the NHS to start thinking about how it can build reserves.

“Every organisation ought to be operating on the basis of small reserves” she said.

Many of the deficits have arisen in more affluent areas. One reason is that they tend to have more GPs, and therefore more patients tend to be referred for hospital treatment.

In poorer areas, there were fewer referrals but more emergency admissions, the result of health problems not being treated sooner.

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