NHS Told to Cap Spending at £800m as Government Gives £480m Aid to Pakistan
The finer details of the earlier reported £480 million support package for the Pakistani government have been revealed at a Scottish mosque — simultaneous with the announcement that the NHS has been ordered to cap its spending because of its dire financial situation.
Douglas Alexander, the UK international development secretary, said the money for Pakistan is “intended to help increase security in border regions and focus on education and health.”
The Labour MP launched the plan at Glasgow Central Mosque marking the end of a UK-wide tour to meet people of Pakistani origin.
The UK wanted to “help ease the suffering of the 36 million poor people living in Pakistan,” Mr Alexander added. More than £250m has been earmarked to increase training for young people and get five million children into school. Other plans for the money include helping reduce the incidence of diseases such as TB and polio, and assisting with earthquake reconstruction.
“Our aim is to continue to help improve poor people’s lives in key areas, making sure they have access to better healthcare, schools and employment opportunities.”
Mr Alexander’s obsession with improving people’s lives and making sure that they have better access to healthcare, obviously do not extend to British people.
The NHS operating framework for 2009-10 confirms the DH will ask the NHS to cap spending to just £800m over the next two financial years. That will leave the Department of Health going into negotiations with the Treasury over the NHS’s allocation for the tight period 2011-12 to 2013-14 with a £1bn surplus, which experts said it would be impossible to ignore.
Asked if the £1bn was effectively lost, NHS chief executive David Nicholson said, “All we can say is what our own secretary of state has said, which is that the surpluses stay where the surpluses are, and that’s our assumption going into the next comprehensive spending review.”
Last year it was announced that the NHS had slipped even deeper into debt with its total deficit reaching £1.318 billion. At the same time it was announced that up to 60 NHS trusts were in the process of drawing up plans to strip some hospitals of key services, such as A&E and maternity services, all because of a lack of funding.
