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New Health Secretary Andy Burnham today faced claims that hospital funding is being withheld.
Amid warnings of severe cuts in spending, health chiefs have reportedly been told they will need to seek alternative finance for the building and upgrading of community hospitals.
The Department of Health was playing down the alleged restrictions on the five-year community hospital programme, which was launched in 2006 and has a funding allocation of £750million. But The Times claimed £500million is being withheld.
It reported that Peter Spilsbury, strategy director for NHS West Midlands, had written to Jo Chambers, head of Shropshire County Primary Care Trust, regarding funding for Ludlow Hospital.
His letter is said to state: "The Department of Health is advising SHAs (strategic health authorities) to take forward schemes through alternative funding routes to the community hospitals programme."
Tory health spokesman Stephen O'Brien said: "Labour constantly talk about increasing spending on hospitals to boost the economy but the cancellation of this programme betrays the mess Gordon Brown has made of the public finances."
The Department of Health insisted that all NHS capital funding agreed in the last spending review was secure.
Meanwhile, shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley today faced a backlash from within his party after saying the Tories would slash most government departments' budgets by 10 per cent.
One shadow minister told the Independent: "This is a debacle. He has somehow managed to turn a story about Labour cuts into one about Tory cuts. That takes some doing."
The gaffe left David Cameron having to defend Tory spending plans at Prime Minister's Questions.
Reader views (2)
I bet that this only applies to the NHS in England we should demand an investigation of why Scotland Wales and N Ireland do not need to have funds with held and why should only English hospitals have to cut spending we have had to do this for the last few years Labour has ripped the heart out of the English NHS all because Gordy does not like the English and he wants to give it to anyone so long as they are not English
- Jacqui Williams, peterborough cambs
OF COURSE THE LABOUR PARASITES ARE WITHHOLDING CASH FROM THE NHS.
THE CASH WILL BE RELEASED AS AND WHEN GORMLESS BROWN HAS SHUFFLED A FEW MORE OF HIS DUBIOUS CRONIES INTO THE QUANGOS - THEY WILL QUICKLY SIPHON OFF THE CREAM AND JOE PUBLIC WILL GET THE DRIPS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BUCKET OF TAXPAYER'S CASH.
- Reuben Camara, Morecambe UK
