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Health: Tory pledge to save NHS frontline roles
A CONSERVATIVE Government would protect NHS frontline services but implement £20bn in efficiency savings in four years.
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, on a tour of North Yorkshire and Leeds yesterday, claimed the savings were achievable and would be reinvested in services.
He pledged to increase NHS funding by 2.5 per cent a year in the three years from 2011-12, saying this would mean increases in "real terms" for health services although he accepted underlying costs in the NHS rose by three per cent each year.
Mr Lansley said more cash would be switched to areas where there were more elderly people and those with higher health needs in deprived places.
Those with fewer older people and better-off populations would lose out.
Cash would be saved by a public sector pay freeze in 2011-12 and
cutting NHS bureaucracy by a third, releasing 1.5bn. The bulk would come through better NHS productivity, with health services given financial incentives to improve performance.
He said NHS managers had misinterpreted the need for savings as meaning cuts in services.
"It's about doing the same things but doing it more efficiently so it doesn't cost as much – that is not just cutting the budget," he said.
He said political targets would be scrapped and replaced by targets measuring outcomes.
He also aimed a swipe at Liberal Democrat plans to scrap the
controversial NHS IT project which he claimed made no sense. The
Conservatives would allow local solutions to IT issues.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Thursday 23 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 11 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: South west
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