Personal tax cuts come at a cost to the health of the NHS - Yorkshire Post Letters

In late 2022, the Treasury warned the Government that personal tax cuts would have a 'low impact' on growth in the economy. The International Monetary Fund has just advised Jeremy Hunt that at the Budget on March 6, rather than cut personal taxes he should promote growth and public services such as the NHS. So how is the NHS doing after 14 years of Tory austerity?

A King’s Fund study of the UK relative to similar countries showed that we spend 'below average' per person on healthcare. We have proportionally fewer nurses and doctors. Life expectancy is the second worst amongst the 19 counties studied.

The UK has higher-than-average fatality rates for heart attacks. Survival rates for many commonly occurring cancers are 'below average'. There are fewer CT and MRI scanners than in any other countries studied, and the number of hospital beds is the second smallest.

The report states that access to dental care is, as we all know, ’worryingly threadbare in some areas’. There are now over 7.6 million people on the waiting list and the continuing dispute with hospital doctors is leading to more strikes.

We know that Hunt is under pressure to cut taxes in order to cynically buy votes at the General Election.

The pressure comes not just from that financial wizard Liz Truss and her PopCon friends but from the whole Westminster Tory Party, desperate to keep their jobs. So, if you had the choice: save the NHS or save a few Tory MPs' jobs, what would you do?