From an ITN report on the Tory Party conference of 2006:

David Cameron said the NHS is safe in his hands as he brought the annual Conservative conference to an end.

Mr Cameron accused Labour of mismanaging the health service and said he would be taking to the streets with a campaign to stop the cuts.

Mr Cameron called the NHS was one of the 20th Century's greatest achievements.

"Tony Blair explained his priorities in three words: education, education, education," he told Tory activists in Bournemouth.

"I can do it in three letters: NHS."

Well let's see. We all know that the Tories, in essence, have been in power for eleven years. We've all heard about how A&E departments have failed for years to meet their targets. We've all seen the queues of ambulances outside hospitals and the patients on trolleys in corridors. We know about how elderly patients can't be discharged because there are no places for them in care homes. We know that nearly six million people are on waiting lists and can expect to wait for one, two or three years to be treated. Actually, there are probably millions more who can't even be bothered to GET on those waiting lists, as they know it would be pointless. I'm one of 'em. I have an issue with my other shoulder (not the one mentioned below) that I can't even get referred for and which I know I'll take to my grave (I've been trying for 21 months and the best I can get is a scrappy emailed page of "exercises" from a physio who won't even see me in person).

Mrs Steve and I have NHS treatment only.

In 2011 Mrs Steve and I had a big issue with her eye problems. She had many procedures and expert care in a Plymouth hospital (that has now been closed down). Not once did any wait for treatment get even close to breaching the 18-week target in place at the time. She's fine now, by the way, thanks to some superb treatment that I'm bloody certain she wouldn't be able to get in timely fashion today. A year or so later I had two issues, once with a bad shoulder and once, more seriously, with my back. For both issues I was referred to a consultant and operated on within six weeks. Six weeks. A pipe dream even for some urgent cancer patients these days... We were bloody lucky. Three or four years later we'd have been in real trouble.

The reason I'm posting this is that I've just seen some graphs on government spending on the NHS since 1949 (source: BBC News website). I can't post the graphs, I know you can look them up for yourselves, but here's the essence. My numbers are honest approximations.

In every administration since 1949, government spending on health has been above inflation (but don't get excited...).

VARIOUS GOVERNMENTS 1949-1979: 3.5% above inflation (roughly the average for the last 70 years).

TORIES 1979-1997 (Thatcher-Major): 3.3%

NEW LABOUR 1997-2010 (Blair-Brown): 6%

COALITION 2010 -2015, Cameron PM): 0.9%

TORIES 2015-2019 (May-Johnson): 1.7%

David Cameron said the NHS is safe in his hands

Yeah, right. So Boris isn't the only liar...

And another set of graphs compared the UK to several EU countries.

As of 2020, the UK had 8.4 nurses per 1000 people.

Germany, 13.9.

France, 11.1.

Italy, 6.7



As of 2020, the UK had three doctors per 1000 people.

Germany, 4.5.

France, 3.4.

Italy, 4.0.

Safe in his hands. sheesh.