CHESTERFIELD NURSES FALL VICTIM TO BLAIR'S CUTS

Shocked nursing staff at Chesterfield's Royal Hospital, were today told that 43 posts will to be axed as a result of Government cuts in NHS funding.

133 staff at the level of Ward Sister and above, were summoned to meetings today to be told that by the end of the year 43 of their jobs will be gone.

Chesterfield MP Paul Holmes said: "This is a disgrace and the blame lies clearly upon mismanagement by Blair's Labour Government. Hospital chiefs had been expecting a 1.7% cut in funding - the so called 'efficiency savings' all the public sector including local Councils are being forced to make. At the last minute however the Government changed the figures into an annual 2.5% 'saving' (cut) PLUS a one off 'technical adjustment' for this year of another 2.5% That's a 5% cut in funding, imposed by Blair at short notice.This panic measure seems to be a response to the crisis sweeping NHS services around the country where thousands of doctors and nurses are losing their jobs. Chesterfield's well run hospital is losing money and jobs so that Blair can try and plug huge financial deficits elsewhere in the country. No wonder Patricia Hewitt was booed off the stage recently by the Royal College of Nursing. Yet she has kept her job in Blair's Cabinet while nurses lose theirs here in Chesterfield. Eric Morton, Chief Executive at the Royal, and Richard Gregory the Chairman, met with me in my House of Commons office today to explain the detail behind these job losses - the first service reductions since 1996 at the Royal. Although the Government only revealed the huge scale of the cuts they were imposing at the last minute, the Royal had maintained a financial cushion so instead of having to slash jobs overnight, as many Hospitals are doing, they are able to undertake the restructuring gradually. The 133 nurses are involved in consultation over the next 90 days. The Royal's management believe that none of the 43 job losses should involve compulsory redundancy but that over the next year the normal 8-10% annual turnover in nursing staff at the hospital should allow for posts to go through 'natural wastage' rather than redundancy. None the less those involved face all the trauma of reapplying for their reorganised job and knowing that at the end of the process there will be 43 fewer of them. Due to excellent management at the Royal, the staff there and the people of Chesterfield, are being hit much less hard than many other areas where hundreds of jobs at a time are going. This is no thanks to Labour Government incompetence however and there are more 'reviews' and possibly more job losses to come later in the year. As competition between hospitals becomes more cutthroat under Blair's private sector reforms then the Government have warned that some hospitals may even go bankrupt and close altogether. This is no way to run the NHS. It's no wonder Blair is now the most unpopular Labour Prime Minister in history."