Last night on my LBC radio show we spent an hour discussing the massive cuts in the London Ambulance Service (LAS), which had been announced earlier in the afternoon.
Over the next five years, the LAS will shed 20% of its staff – 890 jobs in all, 560 of them on the front line.
I interviewed the chief executive of the LAS, Peter Bradley, who seemed rather unsure of his figures. He didn’t seem to know whether his budget was fixed in cash terms over the next five years, or would rise with inflation. He seemed to rely on the supposition that there would be fewer callouts and more people getting advice on phone lines. He reckoned the LAS would in future only respond to calls from people whose lives were threatened by their condition. Good luck with that.
I quizzed him on the fact that David Cameron had promised the NHS budget would be ringfenced and reminded him of the Tory election poster “I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS”. On the fact of it, you have to wonder how a government that said those words can then institute a 20% real terms cut in funding. OK, of course there are savings to be made in a budget of £110 billion, but I do wonder if the Ambulance Service is THAT wasteful.
Interestingly, several callers who worked within the LAS or the NHS more generally put forward the proposition that we should start charging some people for ambulance callouts. I assumed this would get short shrift, but everyone on the phones and texts seemed to agree. If your call is vexatious or you’ve brought your condition on yourself (eg by getting drunk) you should be charged.
Seems reasonable to me. But would the NHS flat earthers – those who regard charging as akin to killing the firstborn – ever agree to it? Would they use the argument that it would be the first step on a very slippery slope?
Let the argument begin.
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