FOR months the news has been full of examples of hospitals and GP services failing their targets.

Hereford hospital has been placed in ‘special measures’ and declared internal incidents. With too few beds it can’t meet targets on four-hour A&E waits and is delaying elective surgery.

There are delays in discharging patients due to cuts to social care. Shorter hospital stays mean that in-patients are more critically ill and this is not reflected in front line staff numbers. 140 senior doctors have signed a letter saying that the NHS is ‘withering away’ under the coalition.

My daughter waited eight months last year for an operation that was being done within 14 weeks under Labour and that I waited 14 months for under the last Tory government. House of Commons figures show nursing and doctor numbers broadly stable but district nurse numbers have fallen sharply. Nurse training places have been decreasing and around £3bn wasted in an unnecessary top-down reorganisation.

Tendering of services, an expensive and wasteful process in its own right, is allowing profit-based companies to ‘cherry pick’ non-acute parts of the NHS leading to fragmentation when more collaboration and integration is needed.

In Hereford commissioning of services seems to be in the hands of Taurus Healthcare plc.

Labour will: l Repeal the Health and Social Care Act.

l Recruit 20,000 more nurses and 8,000 more GPs.

l Guarantee a GP appointment within 48 hours.

l Give mental health greater priority.

l Speed up cancer test referrals.

l Introduce a new social-care service into the NHS.

A mansion tax, tobacco taxes and anti-tax avoidance measures will pay for these.

Polls show a majority willing to pay more tax to save the NHS and ultimately we may have to do this. For most of us illness, car accidents and frailty in old age are largely bad luck or inevitable.