Where is the money going Mr Brown?

Back in 2002 Gordon Brown put 1% on Income Tax National Insurance so that

NHS funding would rise by an average of 7.4% in real terms each year, increasing from £65.4bn this year to £105.6bn in 2007/08.

It means UK health spending will increase from 6.7% of domestic economic output in 1997 to 9.4% by 2007/08, compared with a current European Union average of 8%.

So here we are in 2005 following

the largest ever sustained increase in NHS resources ... This will deliver the longest period of sustained stable growth in resources since the NHS was founded.

What do we see? Is the NHS now a shining beacon, the envy of the world? Not exactly. According to The Observer, hardly what you could call a 'right wing' paper, this is what happened to one 56 year old woman

'My GP said it wouldn't get any better and that I needed surgery,' she said. 'By the time I got to see the consultant last month I had suffered three painful episodes. Each time I was laid up for several days. I couldn't do anything, I was in such agony.'

But when she went back to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford last month, she was amazed to be told that an operation was out of the question. Her doctor told her that, because of problems with finances, they couldn't carry out a hernia repair.

This is not a complex operation, yet the NHS has squandered so much tax payers money that it does not even have enough for this. So much for the supposed cuts that Cameron is supposed to be wanting to make should be gain power, Gordon Brown has lavished money on the NHS at an unprecedented rate and still has to make cuts. Again from the Observer a picture of the NHS emerges:

In the last week, there have been bleak reports of ward closures, cancelled operations and even certain treatments being ruled out by health trusts at a time of record spending. The deficit facing hospital trusts is set to reach £620 million, but the true scale of the debts across the whole of the NHS is probably closer to £1bn, according to the leading health think-tank, the King's Fund.

Real reform is sorely needed, not just squandering yet more tax payers money. But that seems to be all that Gordon has on offer, even if the amount getting to the front line is wittled down to a mere 2.4%, and wow betide anybody that suggests anything different.