How much is the NHS re-organisation costing? £3.45 billion!

Reading & District Labour Party Media Release  

22 April 2012

Bet Tickner : Lansley’s reorganisation cost the local NHS £25M last year, and it will be much the same this year

Berkshire West Primary Care Trust was made to set aside £25,375,804 in 2011-12, 2% of its budget, to pay for the costs of Andrew Lansley’s reorganisation of the NHS, and the same %age is going to be required in 2012-13, says Cllr. Bet Tickner, Labour’s Lead Councillor for Health, quoting from a Business Case leaked from the Department of Health.

The total cost across England comes to £3.45Billion, which is the figure Labour has always quoted and the Tories have always denied.

“This news comes at a time,” Cllr. Tickner says, “when more and more jobs are being lost from the NHS (there are 4096 fewer nurses than there were at the general election), when waiting times for operations are getting longer and longer and the 18-week maximum wait established by Labour is being broken more and more frequently, and when some types of operations are just no longer being carried out at all.   The last thing the NHS locally needs is £50M+ pinched from its budget over two years to pay for a reorganisation that nobody apart from Andrew Lansley wanted.”

“But of course the millionaires who got that big tax break from the budget will have no problems paying for private health care.”