BED-blocking is a horrible, callous term. It coldly refers to old people who are effectively homeless.

They were admitted to hospital because of a medical problem. That problem has now been eased so that they no longer need the specialist treatment that a hospital offers, but they are still not well enough to return to an independent way of life. They need somewhere where someone will look after them, care for them.

But there are no residential care places for them. Instead, they lie there, blocking up valuable hospital beds, a nuisance.

The Department of Health may quibble with the Liberal Democrats' figures which show that the number of bed-blockers in the North-East has increased by 108 per cent.

But it cannot quibble with the fact that North Yorkshire Health Authority has already spent £700,000 just to keep nursing homes open so that the bed-blockers can be moved out.

And it cannot quibble with the fact that care homes in the North-East are closing because council social services departments do not get enough money from central government to keep them open.

This is not joined-up thinking. The Government is doing its utmost to pour more money into the NHS. Some of this money is coming from the social services budget, which means that the new money in the NHS cannot be spent properly.

Alan Milburn, the Darlington MP and Health Minister, says that spending on intermediate care, which will allow bed-blockers to leave hospital, will rise by 15 per cent in the next three years. As Tony Blair has acknowledged, this is the age of delivery, and Mr Milburn will be judged in three years' time on how effectively his money has eased the bed-blocking situation.

But Mr Milburn must also be aware that we are barely out of summer and beds are being blocked. It is doubtful whether promises of more money in three years' time will be so well received come winter when the flu season is at its height.

All of which is an argument about the funding of Britain's NHS. Although that is an important argument, it almost misses the point. Bed-blockers are humans - elderly, frail, vulnerable people.

Yet they are effectively homeless - in March this year in the North-East, there were 185 of them with nowhere to go and no one able to care for them. What does this say about our society?