Dismal ambulance response times are a symptom of deeper problems within an NHS that can’t handle our ageing population
The service has seized up due to funding cuts to local councils' health and social care budgets
THE dismal ambulance response times revealed yesterday are not the crews’ fault. They are a symptom of a deeper malaise in the NHS.
Cuts to local councils’ social care budgets have led to bed-blocking in hospitals which causes the system to seize up.
Patients cannot be moved into and through A&E if others recovering on wards have nowhere to be released to.
The 999 crews can only wait for hours outside hospitals too jammed to admit their patients any faster.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has for years been unfairly treated as the nation’s whipping boy for the problems of a service ill-equipped to handle a soaring, ageing population.
All he can do is make it more efficient and lobby for yet more billions from the Treasury, as he has done. Even that new money is not keeping up.
The nation needs a grown-up debate about how to fund the NHS properly for its long-term future. But meanwhile the public can help ease the problems.
Too many of us dial 999 over minor injuries treatable by a GP or even a chemist. Every needless call diverts a crew from someone in genuine need.
It has to stop.
Nato shirkers
WE are always assured there are no plans for an EU army. Of course there are.
The proposed new £4.3billion fund for military spending is the start.
Brussels will argue it needs to bolster Europe’s defences with Donald Trump putting Nato’s future in doubt and Britain aiming — rightly — to use our military power and intelligence services as Brexit bargaining chips.
But why IS Trump soft on Nato? Because far too many EU nations refuse to pay for their own defence.
He is sick of them enjoying the security of US power while only four, including Britain, spend two per cent of GDP on defence . . . the Nato target.
Trump might think again if, instead of pouring billions into some misguided European military brainwave, EU members got fully behind Nato instead.
Then it could continue to keep the peace in Europe as it has since World War Two.
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Carney barney
MARK Carney may one day make a decent politician in Canada. We just wish he wasn’t rehearsing for it at the Bank of England.
It was bad enough when he loudly backed Project Fear’s crazy forecasts before the Brexit vote.
Then he got into an unseemly spat with Theresa May for daring to question his policies. They were none of a politician’s business, he argued.
Yet now, like every Labour and Lib Dem politician, he’s publicly demanding an early steer on her Brexit plans.
How is that not treading on HER turf?