Birmingham Post: Letter: An appalling record of mismanagement

By Derek Johnson

NHS

Dear Editor, It is about time that Steve McCabe MP and the Labour Party realised that they do not have a monopoly on matters affecting the National Health Service. His tired old inaccurate mantra that the "nasty Tories" starved the NHS of funds when they were last in power does absolutely nothing to allay the concerns of those worried about the future of the City Hospital. In fact, Mr McCabe would do well to remember that it has been the Conservative councillor and Parliamentary spokesman for Edgbaston, Deirdre Alden, who has long been at the forefront of the campaign to preserve A & E services on the site.

Therefore, although Emma Brady in

her background article was correct in highlighting the fact that there was nothing new in David Cameron's assertion that district hospitals are under threat from the Government's reforms (Post, Aug. 21), Mr Cameron was fully entitled to promise it a "bare-knuckled fight" over what he sees as the Government's failure to provide the public with value for money from the NHS.

As a taxpayer, I am extremely annoyed that the record sums of money pumped into the NHS since 1997 has not translated itself into a better service

for patients. The postcode rationing of drugs, the longest GP waiting times in history, and the failure to ensure that superbugs such as MRSA do not take hold in hospital wards, have all been recurrent themes throughout this government's stewardship of the NHS. These failures, added to the recent administrative calamity of the botched implementation of the junior doctor centralised recruitment system, and as recently highlighted by the Taxpayers' Alliance, the £336 million cost overrun in the building of Birmingham's University Hospital all constitute an appalling record of mismanagement by the government.

If he wishes, the uber-loyalist Mr McCabe can maintain his complacency over the problems in the NHS and continue to hark back to a tired old script of twenty years ago. Meanwhile, the hard-pressed patient and taxpayer wants to know why the government has failed and what it intends to do to improve the health service.

David Cameron and the Conservatives may not have all the answers about healthcare, but they have a duty to hold the Government to account on the public's behalf.

They should be heard with respect, despite what Steve McCabe may think.

DEREK JOHNSON Birmingham