Cancer cuts smuggled in

Because, in this "safe with the Tories" health service, less is more and the service that was supposedly secure in the hands of David Cameron and his pack of millionaires has lost support for cancer care totalling around 25 per cent.

Then health secretary Andrew Lansley said last year that he had decided to give the clinical cancer care networks a reprieve after initially refusing to guarantee their future, a refusal described by Macmillan Cancer Support at the time as "absolute madness."

The reprieve didn't last long, however.

Social Care Minister Paul Burstow admitted in June that the budget for the networks was being cut drastically.

Clinical networks co-ordinate the care of cancer, heart and stroke patients, ensuring that they get the best and most up-to-date treatment and that support services are in place in communities.

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Examples of achievements include reorganising stroke services so that fewer patients die and speeding up X-ray results for faster cancer diagnosis.

But the reward for those achievements has been stark.

Their budgets have been slashed by 25 per cent over three years - from £26.2 million in 2009 to £19.5m this year.

Staff numbers for all teams have dropped by 110 to 492, with 73 of the cuts coming in cancer teams.

Around 75 per cent of the networks responded to a freedom of information request from Labour recently.

Many said that they were already postponing projects and scaling back staff.

NHS Commissioning Board national director for cancer Professor Sir Mike Richards has acknowledged that cancer networks would have a "smaller proportion" of the networks' budget in the future - and admitted the coming weeks would be "unsettling and difficult" for staff who might receive notices of their jobs being at risk.

The tone of his statement was illuminating when the best he could manage was that "although cancer networks will have a smaller proportion of the budget in the future, there are still backroom efficiencies that can be made."

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What is happening here is clear and about par for the Tory course.

Cuts are being smuggled through under cover of so-called reorganisation.

The Tories have to admit that the networks have been a success, so what do they do? They reorganise them and, in the process, large chunks of funding vanish.

Shadow health minister Liz Kendall warned today that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt's claim of increased funding just didn't hold up in the face of the networks' responses. Well done, Ms Kendall.

Labour has penetrated the fudge by going to the organisations directly and discounting the Tory persiflage.

Mr Hunt's claim contradicts the previous statement by Mr Burstow but, more importantly, it ignores the evidence of the networks themselves.

It leaves the Tories unmasked as a pack of villains, cutting privately and misrepresenting the facts publicly to cover up their depradations.

Safe in their hands?

Well, the safe's been cracked, the contents pillaged and the robbers are sitting securely in Parliament backed up by their Lib Dem mates.

There's another cancer in the country that needs curing and it's not one that the NHS can handle.

And the cure's in our hands.