MP condemns Strategic Health Authority's handling of Primary Care Trusts' budget deficits.

Few things matter more to us than our health. As a country we have united in supporting the principle of the NHS and encouraged Governments to invest more in it.

Few things matter more to us than our health. As a country we have united in supporting the principle of the NHS and encouraged Governments to invest more in it. We are now on track to spend an amazing £90 billion a year on the NHS. And yet I increasingly hear a voice that says 'What have we got to show for all the extra money ?'. This voice is going to get louder as we absorb the reality of the mess that Hillingdon Primary Care Trust is in. They are now forecasting a deficit of £30 million in 2005/6. Across the country, Trusts are running deficits totalling £1 billion. How did they get into this mess when other Trusts appear to be able to balance their books? What is clear is that the only way out means cutting services, and almost certainly beds at Hillingdon Hospital. In the sensitive way of the modern bureaucrat they describe the services to be cut as low priority. Try telling that to the constituents who have explained to me how important their homeopathic or specialist dental treatment is. Or the headmaster who has been told that he can't have the therapists he relies on for helping children with severe learning difficulties. Presiding over this mess is the same Strategic Health Authority who wasted millions of pounds of taxpayers money on the Paddington Health campus; wanted to close Harefield Hospital and who now wants to take all cancer services away from Mount Vernon. What Strategy? What Authority? "