The Thin Blue Line

As we look to the future and how the UK government spends its money, it may be worth while looking to the past.  How did we spend money then?  Why have things changed?

Fortunately, there is a wonderful web site that makes it possible to do just that.  It's called UK Public Spending and it tracks budgets (and lots of other interesting numbers) over the past 20 to 30 years.  I looked at it the other day when I was wondering about where it made most sense to make cuts.

Here's a chart I made, comparing spending on Defence with spending on Health.  In 1990, for every £100 we spent on Health, we spent about £80 on Defence.  Today, for every £100 we spend on Health, we spend £20 on Defence.  To put it another way, in 1990 Defence represented 11.6% of the Budget and Health 16.6%: today, in the middle of the war in Afghanistan, Defence represents 6.7% of the Budget and Health 35.9%.

Here's a graph that shows it.  Blue is Defence, Green is NHS.  Click on the graph to see it in full size.  The bars show each department's funding as a proportion of the budget: the lines show each department's budget as a proportion of GDP.

So if you were looking for savings, where would you look?

Dolphin apologises to witches

Tom Dolphin, a member of the BMA's junior doctors' committee, ... said he had previously described homeopathy as witchcraft, but now wanted to apologise to witches for making that link.

From The Guardian, reporting on the BMA Conference.

(He was more moderate alsewhere in his speech, referring to homeopathy as "pernicious", "nonsense on stilts", "irrationality", "made up science", "insidious" and "something ...[that] does not work".)

Good front-line surgery

There's a lot of talk about "cutting front line services" as the government tries to reduce the terrifying deficit.

This assumes that (a) the savings can't be made anywhere else but front line services and (b) all front line services give value.

Most people focus on (a). I'd like to focus on (b) and point out an example of front line services that are wasteful and potentially actually harmful.

In February this year, Parliament's Science and Technology Committee published a report which urged the government to withdraw funding and licensing of homeopathy.

Homeopathy is a front-line service. However, the parliamentary enquiry found that it had no better effect than placebos. Indeed, the British Medical Association has declared that homeopathy is witchcraft. Despite this the NHS funds four homeopthic hospitals and spend many millions on homeopathic treatment.

Here's a front-line service we should be happy to cut.

24 hours to save the NHS

In 1997, Labour famously campaigned that voters had "24 hours to save the National Health Service" (who knew Google would give so many hits when searching on this phrase?)

Today it has been revealed that

• up to a quarter of all patients in hospitals suffer from dementia
  
• half of these patients leave hospital ina worse state than they arrive
  
• in many cases nursing staff feel that don't have adequate training to deal with people with dementia
  

This is despite the NHS budget rising from £65bn in 2002-3 to 110bn in 2010-11, an increase about the same as the total budget for defence. The talk this year in the NHS has been about "cuts" and "shortfalls".

A simple calculation shows that NHS spending is approximately £1,800 for every man, woman and child. How can there be so many ongoing problems after so much has been spent? I hope that voters will remember Labour's 1997 slogan come the next election.

Is the NHS really sacred?

Both Labour and Conservatives believe the NHS budget should remain inviolate. But is this right?

It's difficult to find accurate data on how much money is spent on alternative medicine by the NHS, although estimates are around £500m. But whether it's £50m, £500m or £5bn, the fact is that the money is wasted.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine is medicine that doesn't work. So why are we paying for it? And if we are wasting money here (and we are) how much else is being wasted in this enormous bureaucracy?

In the extraordinarily tough economic times in which we live, no government budget should be inviolate. And wasted money can't be afforded.