2 out of 3 hospitals face potentially huge cuts this year, leaked analysis reveals

Labour will tomorrow release a leaked analysis from NHS Providers which shows that two-thirds of Trusts expect to be in deficit in 2015/16 – up from just one in five in 13/14.

Analysis of 98 trusts’ financial forecasts shows a projected deficit this year of £759 million – the equivalent of £1.86 billion across all England’s 240 trusts. This is three times higher than just one year earlier in 2014/15. 

In order to get out of deficit, hospitals now face having to make ‘recovery plans’ with measures like staff cuts and bed reductions – or even the closure of some services. The sustainability of many NHS services has already been called into question according to the  NHS Trust Development Authority.

Furthermore, through Freedom of Information requests, it has also been revealed that hospitals are already under enormous winter pressures before any such cuts. There were more than 1000 occasions last winter where hospitals declared themselves facing significant “operational problems”.

Unveiling the analysis tomorrow, Ed Miliband is expected to say:

“Britain faces a clear choice on Thursday: between a Labour government that will put working people first – or a Tory government that will only ever work for the privileged few. And there is no bigger choice at this election for everyone in our country than the future facing our National Health Service.

Right now, our NHS is in grave danger because David Cameron has broken his promises on the NHS. He’s closed hospitals he said he would keep open, he’s allowed waiting times to rise when he said he would keep them low, and he’s wasted £3 billion on a top-down re-organisation which drives forward privatisation that he insisted before the last election would never happen.

“Now he’s at it again, promising to protect the NHS with just a flimsy IOU. And today we discover the financial bombshell that he has kept hidden from everyone until now. Two thirds of hospitals face having to make swingeing cuts, not some point in the future, but this year because of a cash crisis made in Downing Street.

“That will mean staff cut, beds lost and services closed. And it is why we need Labour’s better plan for the NHS: a fully funded plan to get more resources into the NHS and start turning things around; a real plan with real money for real action right now.

“It is a plan that is founded on putting the right values back at the heart of our NHS: care, compassion and co-operation, not privatisation, fragmentation and competition; an NHS with people at its heart; an NHS that inspires the country; an NHS that will once again lead the world.

“This is what we’re fighting for. This is what’s on the ballot paper in less than 48 hours’ time. Let’s go out there and build a better future together.”