BRENT NHS IN CRISIS

8.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 18th Jul 2003

Sarah Teather at Willesden Community Hospital

Figures revealed to the Liberal Democrats show that the NHS in Brent is failing under Labour. Vacancy rates for doctors, nurses and other health staff are the worst in the country.

As local health staff vacancies have soared the number of operations cancelled in Brent grew by 78% in the three years after Labour took office - from 2,439 in 1997/8 to 4,353 in 2000/1.

Money poured into agency staff

In a desperate attempt to plug the staff shortages hospitals have been forced to pour money into employing agency staff - in the period from 1997/8 to 2001/2 almost £40million was spent by the Royal Free Hospital alone on agency doctors and nurses. £2.5 billion has been spent on agency staff since Labour came to power.

GP numbers fall

The crisis in the local health service is not only in hospitals, Labour have broken their own target of increasing the number of GPs - in 1997 Brent had the equivalent of 626 family doctors per million population, this plunged to 580 in 2000.

Let down by Labour

Local Liberal Democrat campaigner Sarah Teather said, "Everybody knows that the Tories were a disaster at running the NHS, and most people thought that Labour would do better. "But things have got far worse under Labour, especially for people here in Brent borough. It is time that Labour lived up to its manifesto pledges and reversed the decline in the NHS. It is time to start treating patients, not targets. We need a good locally run NHS"

Conservatives plan massive cuts

Conservative Shadow Cabinet members have been asked to find public spending cuts of 20%. A 20% cut in NHS spending is the equivalent of:

• More than a quarter of all the hospital beds

• Over 300,000 nurses

• Over 50,000 doctors

• Nearly double the entire drugs bill

• Sixty times the number of MRI scanners (scanners to diagnose cancer)

Sarah Teather said, "The Tories would be a disaster for the NHS, they plan a part privatised service that would end up costing patients thousands of pounds of their savings to pay for "routine" operations, such as hip replacements, cataracts and hernias, we can't allow this to happen."