{"id":79415,"date":"2025-01-06T07:18:24","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T07:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=79415"},"modified":"2025-01-06T09:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T09:35:09","slug":"people-are-dying-so-that-spreadsheets-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/01\/06\/people-are-dying-so-that-spreadsheets-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"People are dying so that spreadsheets balance"},"content":{"rendered":"

As The Guardian notes<\/a> this morning:<\/p>\n

\n

More than 1,000 patients a day in England are suffering \u201cpotential harm\u201d because of ambulance handover delays, the Guardian can reveal.<\/p>\n

In the last year, 414,137 patients are believed to have experienced some level of harm because they spent so long in the back of ambulances waiting to get into hospital. Of those, 44,409 \u2013 more than 850 a week \u2013 suffered \u201csevere potential harm\u201d, with delays causing permanent or long-term harm or death.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

These people have suffered for just one reason. That is the refusal of the Treasury to create sufficient money to pay for the services required to ensure that they could have the care they needed. There is no other explanation for what has happened. It all comes down to the obsession with balanced budgets and spreadsheets, which obsession has left people ill, dying and dead.<\/p>\n

Now, of course, it can be claimed many government policies involve a tradeoff of risk, and that is true. Not every accident blackspot is dealt with when identified on our roads because funding is not available, for example. And risk is taken with regard to the management of extreme events. This I accept.<\/p>\n

However, these delays and resulting deaths were not the result of an extreme event. They were normal because the NHS - and social care - had not been funded adequately to deal with the demand they faced.<\/p>\n

And, for the record, this is not because the NHS is not working. This is what happened in the NHS in the last year, based on a Google AI search <\/a>in which data sources are provided<\/p>\n