The financial crisis in the NHS is threatening to spiral out of control, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham warned tonight.
Responding to reports of a letter sent by the regulator, Monitor, to hospitals on the financial state of the NHS, leading to staffing cuts, the Labour leadership hopeful said: "This is a sign of a serious deterioration in NHS finances. It suggests that the financial crisis in the NHS is threatening to spiral out of control and hit standards of patient care.
"The suggestion that hospitals can ignore safe staffing guidance will alarm patients and the Government must decide if it will overrule this advice.
"Morale in the NHS is already at an all time low and doctors have lost confidence in the Health Secretary.
"It will raise further questions about how the Government can possibly fulfil commitments on a seven-day NHS without the money to back it up."
Health Service Journal reported that NHS providers have been told to take emergency measures to try to reduce the deficit predicted by the sector this year.
It said it had seen a letter sent this afternoon by Monitor chief executive David Bennett which restated that the current financial forecasts for 2015-16 are "simply unaffordable", and asked each foundation trust to revisit its plans.
The letter tells trusts to "ensure vacancies are filled only where essential", and ensure existing safe staffing guidance has been adopted in a "proportionate and appropriate way", HSJ said.
Trusts with large deficits have been given specific new end of year figures which Monitor believes they can achieve if they make the cost cuts outlined, it added.
The provider sector has forecast a total deficit of more than £2bn for 2015-16, HSJ said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel