Cuts bite despite PM's NHS vow

Simon Pleydell, chief executive of South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundations Trust, also revealed yesterday that, despite Government promises to ring-fence NHS spending, his trust had started this financial year £6m worse off than the previous year.

Mr Pleydell, who runs the 1,160-bed James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, and the 180-bed Friarage Hospital in Northallerton, North Yorkshire, said the trust was having to slam the brakes on spending in order to hit Government efficiency targets.

Yesterday, Mr Cameron announced he was making “real changes” to controversial plans for NHS reforms in England and issued five guarantees, including a promise that NHS spending would be increased every year.

He said the NHS would remain a universal service and that changes would improve integrated care, not hinder it, hospital waiting times would be kept low and private companies would not cherry-pick the most lucrative services.

The Government has insisted that the £20bn to be clawed back from NHS trusts across the country from efficiency savings will be ploughed back into more effective frontline services.

But the reality is that the cost reduction programme introduced at South Tees will mean fewer nurses, by banning agency nurses, fewer locum doctors, a recruitment freeze, a ban on replacing all capital equipment, a ban on minor works and a clampdown on non-essential spending.

There are also plans to combine wards at the Friarage to reduce costs.

It had been hoped the reduction in spending could be managed more slowly, but accelerating costs have forced Mr Pleydell’s hands.

“It is tougher than we have ever faced before,” said Mr Pleydell, who warned that the next few years could involve even deeper cuts.

“The challenge is to save this money in an appropriate way that doesn’t damage patient care,” he said.

He hoped patients “wouldn’t really notice” the impact of the spending cuts and promised the trust’s 8,800 staff that he had a “fundamental commitment” to protect jobs and would try to avoid any compulsory redundancies.

Elsewhere in the region, the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust has said it needs to make savings of £16m this financial year.

Despite the Prime Minister’s assurances that spending on the NHS would be ringfenced under the coalition Mr Pleydell revealed that his trust’s budget for 2011-12 is £458m, £6m less than last year.

He said it was due to a number of factors, including inflation, reductions in the prices paid to the trust for certain procedures, costs such as National Insurance, VAT and energy bills going up and the increasing cost of hiring specialist agency staff.

Clare Williams, Unison’s regional convenor in the North- East, said: “The Government is saying that funding allocated to the NHS is ringfenced but it isn’t.

“It is the first time since 1997 that funding has not increased in line with inflation.

“They have not reduced the budget, but the reality is the allocation has not kept in line with the cost increases.”

She said the financial difficulties facing South Tees showed that this “isn’t the time for the most significant reorganisation of the NHS”.

Glenn Turp, the Royal College of Nursing’s regional director, said the North-East had already seen a number of NHS services privatised in the past few months.

He said: “All NHS prison services were turned over to Care UK, a private company, on April 1. A week later they placed 116 – including many nurses – at risk of redundancy.

Back in February, another private company, Assure, was given a contract to provide all NHS sexual health services across Teesside.

“And earlier this year, we saw another independent outfit, Northern Doctors, take over the provision of out-ofhours care across the region, with a number of triage nurses transferring out of the NHS.

“We have yet to see any evidence to suggest that the quality of NHS services benefits from being opened up to competition. In fact, the available evidence suggests exactly the opposite.”