Cameron: 'No easy fix on NHS' (From Witney Gazette)

Cameron: 'No easy fix on NHS'

8:39am Tuesday 11th April 2006 in Witney By Giles Sheldrick

CONSERVATIVE party leader David Cameron has said he has no "magic wand" to cure Oxfordshire's NHS cash crisis.

A week before senior management is due to decide whether job cuts are necessary to ease a deficit of £35m at the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, the Witney MP said he would be "silly and ridiculous" to promise he could save jobs or wipe the slate clean.

"The only remedy", he said, was to "strip out the bureaucracy", reducing the number of primary care trusts and strategic health authorities a move which has already been directed by the Government and is due to happen in July. Speaking exclusively to the Witney Gazette from Manchester, where the Tories are holding their spring conference, he said: "The real problem is that while the Government has funded extra money into the health service, they haven't fundamentally reformed the structures, so the system isn't working properly and it is particularly bad in Oxfordshire.

"I can't promise a magic wand and say I'm going to solve all these problems, but we can have a system that works properly where we strip out some of this bureaucracy, where we have too many Primary Care Trusts, too many strategic health authorities and start having real independence for hospitals and allowing GPs to be much more in the driving seat in commissioning back care on behalf of their patients."

Concern is growing at how many jobs are on the line as the ORH responsible for the John Radcliffe Hospital, Churchill Hospital and Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and the Horton, Banbury tries to balance its books.

The trust employs about 10,000 people across the county, including medical staff and ancillary workers.

Last week, ORH chief executive Trevor Campbell-Davis said managers would be "looking at the workforce" as a way of lowering costs quickly. But Mr Cameron said: "You can never make promises that jobs will be saved, that's the sort of promise politicians make and nobody believes it's ridiculous.

"The promise I will make is that we will match money into the health service with proper reform.

"And as an Oxfordshire MP I am keen to get a fairer deal for the county because I think the fact we seem to get a smaller share than other parts of the country is unfair.

"But I can't make magic wand promises we have to be responsible in Oxfordshire and not make wipe-the-slate-clean promises, I can't do that."