Within days of the Chancellor's non announcement regarding NHS funding in his budget, 4 NHS Trusts have announced planned job cuts of around 3000 for this month alone. The health secretary Ms Hewitt again claimed that patient care will not be affected nation wide by saying,

" All across the country, including areas in deficit, the NHS is still sustaining its excellent performance, month after month we still deliver a six-month maximum wait for all operations and, in A&E, a maximum of four hours from arrival to admission or discharge."

The Government have not quite grasped the concept that in order for Trusts to meet these targets other services will have to be sacrificed along with bed closures, as Primary Care Trusts farm out non-emergency operations to an ever increasing number of Private Centres, funds that would had been available to local NHS hospitals.

Gordon Brown has claimed that he had already allotted £12 billion to the NHS over the next 2 years, thus it was not mentioned in his budget statement. How much of this promised funding will actually go to patient care? How much will be lost to administration? Some have forecasted that 20,000 jobs will be lost in total, who will end up providing patient care?

20,000 Jobs To Go