NHS is moving with the times

LIKE it or not, the National Health Service needs to evolve to meet the challenges posed by an ageing population and the increased expectations of patients. The Britain of 2014 is very different to 70 years ago when Aneurin Bevan came up with his vision of universal healthcare for all.

The reason is this: healthcare has been transformed since the 1940s when cancer was incurable. Now medical advances mean that the diagnosis of this indiscriminate disease does not equate to a death sentence in most cases. The same with transplant operations which have become commonplace.

This expertise has led to the most specialist care being centred at a select number of hospitals around the country, hence the anger two years ago when children’s heart surgery at Leeds General Infirmary came under threat and only survived because of sustained public pressure.

This is the dilemma that now goes to the heart of plans to reconfigure A&E provision at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and Calderdale Royal Hospital – the belief is that this part of West Yorkshire would be better served by one specialist unit as part of a wider review of NHS services – and the longstanding plan, opposed by Foreign Secretary William Hague, to downgrade maternity cover at Northallerton’s Friarage Hospital.

As evidenced by the latest fallout from Mid Staffordshire and the downgrading of Stafford Hospital, which has been at the centre of one of the biggest care scandals to afflict the Health Service since its inception, the challenge is a formidable one to reconcile – patients desire the best possible treatment but they also want to be looked after close to home.

However this is simply not practical now. There is not the financial resources – or expertise – to go round. That said, this should not preclude the Government, and others, from creating a new generation of well-used community hospitals to compliment the work of specialist centres in cities like Leeds and Sheffield.

Many illnesses do not require life-saving surgery, but they do require some TLC at all times and a culture – inspired by Bevan – which treats patients as individuals rather than numbers being passed along a production line without enough empathy.

The poor relation

Region loses out to Scotland – again

THE unedifying name-calling in South Yorkshire is typical of the type of politics which exasperates voters. In some respects, it does not matter if Nick Clegg was “asleep at the wheel” or whether Labour was complacent during its 13 years in power – the plain truth is that this region is being short-changed because the Government diverted EU regeneration money to Scotland and the other Celtic nations.

These personal attacks will achieve little. What should be happening, however, is the county’s political leaders coming together, for the good of South Yorkshire, and making sure that their local area, one of the most deprived regions in the country, receives a fair share of funding – even more so at a time when the effectiveness of the European Union is open to so much question.

For this to happen, however, the Lib Dem leader needs to be slightly less disingenuous with his assertion that regeneration funding has actually increased. It has not. These EU budgets are allocated in seven-year cycles and spending tapered off in recent times because Gordon Brown’s government decided much of the last allocation should be spent at the beginning of the 2007-13 period. Yes, more money is being spent this year than last – but the total amount over the next seven years will be around 50 per cent less when compared to the previous cycle.

Coming days after auditors said that the Regional Growth Fund, the brainchild of the Deputy Prime Minister, was not fully utilising the money at its disposal, it is vital that the Government does everything within its power to help Yorkshire and the North. For, on current evidence, this region is very much the poor relation in comparison to Scotland.

Dickie’s delight

Presidency is pinnacle for umpire

WHEN a nervous Harold “Dickie” Bird first ventured to Headingley in the 1950s for a net with his beloved Yorkshire County Cricket Club, he would have been bowled over at the thought of emulating his childhood heroes and becoming the proud president of this iconic institution.

Yet there is no person better qualified to succeed the forthright Geoffrey Boycott as the club’s figurehead. Now 80, this proud miner’s son from Barnsley only persevered, first as a cricketer and then as an internationally-acclaimed umpire, because of the work ethic instilled into him by his family.

His eccentricities and tears are legendary but should not detract attention away from the fact that he has always remained a stickler for fairness and continues to help disadvantaged children fulfil their sporting dreams through the Dickie Bird Foundation launched 10 years ago.

In short, Yorkshire would be much the poorer without a man whose modesty means that he will always be known as “Dickie” rather than President Bird as he reaches the pinnacle of a life devoted to cricket.

And, to his eternal credit, he wouldn’t want it any other way.