THE sheer chutzpah of Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt is truly amazing.
In declaring that there would be no impact on patient care with the loss from the NHS of thousands of doctors and nurses, she is either stupid or insane, and as she has risen to the dizzy height of being a Cabinet Minister one has to assume she is not stupid.
We have the spectacle of the senior politician who runs the NHS smugly proclaiming that as hospitals didn't have a winter bed crisis it naturally followed that 2005 was the best year, ever, for the NHS. What utter nonsense.
The Government and many of its supporters are in total denial about the crisis in the NHS. Without doubt this administration has spent countless billions of taxpayers pounds on the NHS but they have failed to match investment with managed reform.
The general secretary of Unison is absolutely correct when he proclaims "The Department of Health has been disingenuous about why the NHS is in financial difficulty, the truth is so extraordinary it is hardly believable".
So much for the Prime Minister's claim in 1997 we have 24 hours to save the NHS.
DES MORGAN
Swindon
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