ON Budget day in 1999, top figures within the NHS, including trade union leaders, heads of medical bodies and managers, were invited to the office of Health Secretary Alan Milburn. As they sat down to cream cakes and tea - remember, this is NEW Labour - Milburn switched on the telly and promised them an even greater treat.

The goody came at the end of the Chancellor's speech, when he announced a doubling over the next five years of the annual increase in spending on the NHS. Sweetest of all was an immediate injection of an extra £2bn for the forthcoming year.

Among those present there was an almost stunned disbelief. Some had the temerity to ask: "Is this real money?" Milburn assured them it was and the country at large was encouraged to view that £2bn in particular as an extraordinary act of government generosity. We understood that the largesse was unprecedented and could not be repeated.

But, since then, more than £2bn has been found for something that wasn't remotely on the agenda when the NHS's bumper cash boost was announced. In the last six months £2.3bn has been spent tackling - if that is the right word - the foot-and-mouth outbreak. In just half a year, therefore, the foot-and-mouth bill has topped the NHS aid, over which we were expected to dance in the streets.

The main case against the mass cull has never been financial. The ready resort to slaughter when other methods are available is inimical to the concept of care for other creatures - perhaps especially animals that we raise to serve us, and which look to us for their welfare. That is the stand which this column has taken since the first piles of bodies appeared.

Nevertheless, the cost of the preferred, barbaric, "solution" seems worthy of note. Against the familiar Government cry of "where's the money coming from", the truth is that any prosperous country can afford what it chooses to afford. That unbudgeted £2bn suddenly splashed out on foot-and-mouth could have been another £2bn for the NHS.

The final direct foot-and-mouth bill will certainly top £3bn. And the Treasury will be denied future cash through reduced tax payments of those who have lost income through the crisis. But, if the Government is worried about the impact on its finances, there is very little sign of it. New outbreaks keep occurring. More animals are culled. The cheques go out. Scarcely a word is said. On every count - ethical, practical, financial, even news management, with its promotion of baseless anti-vaccine myths - foot-and-mouth is the outstanding scandal of our time.

MUCH HEAVY analysis this last week or so over how a seemingly nice family man could end up murdering his wife and two of their four children. Here's the answer, in a poem aptly entitled Incomprehensible, by Walter de la Mare:

Engrossed in the day's "news", I read

Of all in man that's vile and base;

Horrors confounding heart and head -

Massacre, murder, filth, disgrace:

Then paused. And thought did inward tend,

On my own past and self to dwell.

Whereat some inmate muttered "Friend,

If you and I plain truth must tell,

Everything human we comprehend,

Only too well, too well.''

Published: Wednesday, September 05, 2001