Pressure grows over NHS plans

Healthcare services across half of Yorkshire, worth £2bn, will today be taken away from experienced managers and placed in the hands of local GPs, the first step in the Conservative Party’s radical reform plan that remains the subject of intense debate in Parliament and beyond.

For the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, it is clear that the success – or otherwise – of this brave new world of market-driven reform will come to define his career.

For the Prime Minister, too, the stakes could hardly be higher. David Cameron is all too aware that the NHS remains the Tories’ biggest potential Achilles heel.

Unlike the economy, the NHS was not in dire straits when his party returned to power after 13 years on the sidelines. If Mr Lansley’s reforms prove the catastrophe that groups such as the British Medical Association are warning, there will be nowhere else to point the finger of blame.

And there are few subjects dearer to the hearts of the British people. For all the watering-down of the initial proposals over the summer, the public remain sceptical.

For NHS budget managers, meanwhile, there remains an equally pressing matter.

At least £1.5bn will be cut from healthcare services across this region alone by 2015 – despite the Prime Minister’s pre-election pledge that NHS spending would increase in real terms.

As Mr Cameron well knows, the truth of that statement remains little more than a technicality.

For one, the increase is offset by huge cuts to social services. And when inflation and rising demand are taken into account, the NHS finds itself forced to make savings like never before.

Labour scents blood. No wonder that at this week’s party conference, the most rapturous applause Ed Miliband received during his underwhelming speech was for that oldest of lines – that you can’t trust the Tories with the NHS.

Recycled though that charge may be, for Mr Cameron it remains deeply damaging.

Forcing through such sweeping reform at a time of such austerity is at best risky – and at worst, deeply reckless.