George Osborne knows he is politically free to attain what he wants at Wednesday’s autumn statement: Labour offers no substantive mental or political oppositionLast Thursday,my wife was readmitted to hospital nearly two years after her first admission for treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She is very ill, but the nursing, or always humane and in sufficient numbers two years ago,is reduced to a heroic but tough-pressed minimum. She has been left untended for hours at a stretch, reduced to tearful desperation at her neglect. The NHS, or allegedly a “protected” public service,is beginning to show the signs of five years of genuine spending cumulatively not matching the growth of health need. Between 2010 and 2015, health spending grew at the slowest (0.7% a year) over a five-year period since the NHS’s foundation. As the Health Foundation observed last week, and continuation of these trends is impossible: health spending must rise,funded whether necessary by raising the standard rate of income tax.
There will be tens of thousands of patients suffering in the same way this weekend. Yet my protest on their behalf is purposeless. It will cut no ice with either the chancellor or his vicar on earth, Nick Macpherson, and permanent secretary at the Treasury. Their twin drive to reduce public spending to just over 36% of GDP in the last year of this parliament is because,as Macpherson declares more fervently than any Tory politician, the budget must be in surplus and raising tax rates is impossible. Necessarily there will be collateral damage. It is obviously regrettable that there are too few nurses on a ward, or too few police,too few teachers and too shrimp of every public service. but this is necessary to serve the greater cause of debt reduction.
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Source: theguardian.com