Warwickshire: Woman in High Court sight battle

A woman who could lose her sight has been given permission for a test case at the High Court to try to get an NHS Trust to fund her treatment - reports the BBC.

Warwickshire Primary Care Trust refused to pay for Patricia Meadow's eye treatment, even though the drug is available in other areas.

The trust took a "resource-based" decision not to fund treatment, the court heard, meaning it has insufficient funding from central government to provide the care Ms Meadows needs.

Ms Meadows suffers from wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in her left eye, and dry intermediate AMD in her right.

There is no treatment for the dry condition, but there is hope that a course of the drug ranibizumab (trade name Lucentis) will save the sight in her left eye.

The High Court heard from her lawyers that objective medical evidence shows a course of the drug has up to a 95% chance of arresting her eyesight deterioration.

They said there was also a chance of it improving her vision and without treatment she could lose her sight in a matter of months.

Her case is being backed by the Royal National Institute of Blind People.

Mr Justice Undershill gave permission for a judicial review to be heard within a matter of weeks.

David Lock, appearing for the PCT, said that Novartis, the manufacturer of Lucentis, was refusing to provide the support recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice).

He said: "Without the manufacturers support, Nice has clearly advised that this is not a cost-effective treatment.

He said the PCT had to balance a budget of £668m and it was impossible to meet all the needs of patients.

So while this is the case, why has the government agreed to giving the audit-failing European Union a massive and unreasonable 63% increase in payments, taking Britain's contribution to an astonishing £115 million (net) every single week?

It's people like Ms Meadows who are being forced to pay the price of the utter waste of huge amounts of public money on the EU.

Improvements needed over flood response

Major improvements are needed to ensure the country is better protected against flooding, reports the Eastern Daily Press.

Two new reports are set to highlight that Britain was ill-prepared for last summer's floods, which caused devastation across large parts of the country, and that eastern England is particularly under threat.

The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) report - The Flooding: Engineering Resilience - warns the UK's power, water and transport systems are stretched to the limit and need extra capacity to prevent blackouts and shortages when the country is hit by floods in the future.

In a special section on the east of England, the ICE report states that drainage systems in places like Norwich, Ipswich and Cambridge are already working at full capacity and that pressure would only be increased as the region moves towards meeting its target of building 500,000 new homes by 2021.

The vulnerability of the Norfolk Broads and major Suffolk roads such as the A12 are also highlighted, should controversial proposals to abandon flood defences along 25 square miles go ahead.

“No other area of the UK is in such real and immediate danger from flooding as the East of England. It's at risk from all sides: coastal erosion and flooding, tidal surges, river flooding and overflowing drains in towns and cities,” the report states.

ICE said investment in new infrastructure had been reduced by economic and regulatory pressure to a point where “there is no longer any spare capacity available to provide alternative sources of power or water treatment should key utilities be compromised by flooding”.

The report also said funding for flood defences was not sufficient or secure, undermining industry confidence, and there were not enough skilled engineers to deliver protection from flooding.

The ICE report coincides with the release of a government-commissioned review from Sir Michael Pitt, which contains 92 recommendations on how Britain should be better equipped in the event of future flooding crises.

Britain's vulnerability was highlighted this time last year when places such as Hull were devastated by flooding. Then, in November, communities along the Norfolk and Suffolk coastline narrowly missed being swamped by a North Sea tidal surge.

Sir Michael's recommendations include local authorities being given a more clearly-defined leadership role in overseeing the maintenance of drainage networks, a joint nerve centre from which the Met Office and Environment Agency can issue better flood warnings and new building regulations detailing drainage systems and appropriate construction materials.

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the government was working to ensure that infrastructure was resistant to flooding and robust back-up was in place where it was most needed.

She added: “Work includes assessing the vulnerability of infrastructure to natural hazards and working with industry and operators to ensure it's resilient. More details on this work will be provided as part of our formal response to the Pitt report.”

Council workers vote for strike

The BBC reports today that Council workers have voted in favour of industrial action in a dispute over pay.

The public sector workers union Unison has announced that its members in England, Wales and Northern Ireland voted by 55% to strike, after rejecting a below-inflation 2.45% pay offer which they argue is effectively a pay cut.

The union is demanding a 6% pay rise or 50p an hour extra, whichever is greater.

A strike would affect a wide range of public services that local communities rely on, including school dinner staff and classroom assistants, care home workers and a range of council services like bin collections and environmental health inspectors.

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said his members were "fed up and angry they are expected to accept pay cut after pay cut while bread and butter prices go through the roof.

"Most of them are low-paid workers, who are hit hardest by food and fuel price hikes."

But Brian Baldwin, chairman of the local government employers' negotiators, said: "If the pay settlement was set any higher, then councils will be forced into making unpalatable choices between cutting front line services and laying off staff. Neither unions nor employers would want either of these options.

Of course, another option is for the government to stop wasting vast amounts of money - for example handing a 63% increase in our payments to the audit-failing EU for MEPs to rip off - so that it can give more to local councils to provide both quality essential services and afford fair pay for workers.

The government's preferred inflation measure, the Consumer Prices Index rose, to 3.3% in May, with the Bank of England warning it may reach 4%.

The wider Retail Prices Index measure of inflation - the one used for many pay negotiations - is already at 4.3%.

Charity props up NHS cancer care

The NHS relies heavily on charitable donations for the treatment and support of children and teenagers with cancer, research reported by the BBC suggests.

Up to half of funding in NHS specialist cancer centres in England and Wales comes from charities, a team of health economists has calculated.

Some oncologists said without charity support many services would not exist.

The funding level raises questions about the government's responsibility for cancer care, the researchers say.

The report's author, Dr Dyfrig Hughes, said, "The take-home message is that it is a significant contribution towards work which arguably should be paid for by the NHS."

A total of 51 charities have been set up specifically to assist children with cancer and 340 charities had made some kind of financial contribution, the University of Bangor team report in the Journal of Child Health Care.

A further 28 organisations had been set up to provide funds for hospices.

Figures from 2003 show that between £25m and £38m (depending on the method of calculation used) of funding for cancer care came from national charities, compared with between £38m and £55m coming from the NHS.

Yet these sums are tiny factions of the amount of money the government pays to wasteful organisations like the EU, following the government's pledge to pay 63% more a year to the EU from last year.

With the net payments now reaching £115 million every single week - in total £6bn a year - even the upper figures given for cancer care amount to less than a week's money given to the audit-failing EU. Right priorities?

Study author, Dr Dyfrig Hughes, said the charity figures could be an underestimate, as they did not include the many hospital and local charities which also provide funding.

"For things which might be labelled as luxury that's fine, but essential things should come from central resources to ensure equal access," he said.

MEPs in expenses scandals

To show exactly where the £115 million (net) Britain lavishes every week on the European Union at the cost of public services actually goes, we've put together a little collection of links to recent newspaper articles about the activities of Britain's Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

We'll leave it to you to decide whether these people deserve to wield the 63% increase in funding that Gordon Brown approved gifting them at the start of this year, and which will be backdated to the start of 2007.

Or whether spending these large sums on the other causes and purposes highlighted on this blog might be a better use of scarce public money.

MEPs 'expenses abuse' hushed up by Brussels
The Times, 21 February 2008

MEP in £500,000 allowances probe
Sunday Times, 1 June 2008

Second Tory MEP loses position over expenses
Daily Telegraph, 7 June 2008

Tory MEP Sir Robert Atkins flew to wedding on expenses
Sunday Times, 8 June 2008

Fresh names in Tory MEP expenses row
EUobserver, 9 June 2008

EastEnders MEP pays gay lover £30,000 to be his secretary
Daily Mail, 10 June 2008

MEPs say expenses troubleshooter risks a timebomb of further sleaze disclosures
The Times, 11 June 2008

The Fatcat Parliament: How MEPs pocket a staggering £630,000 a year
Evening Standard, 14 June 2008

Tory MEP Den Dover faces quiz over cars worth £65,000
Sunday Times, 15 June 2008

Despite these shocking revelations, and many more, the government keeps throwing our £115 million every week into this EU black hole of waste and fraud.

What will it take for the government to Stop the Cheques and put that money to many more essential purposes that could make life better for those who need it most?

Norfolk & Suffolk: Campaigners united over sea defences

Groups fighting plans to abandon coastal areas to the waves have resolved to work together to convince the government to drop the controversial proposals - reports the Eastern Daily Press.

Councillors from across Suffolk and Norfolk coastal areas and from all levels of local government met for a conference in Southwold today.

Also among more than 100 delegates were coastal pressure groups, Natural England, Suffolk Coastal MP John Gummer and Euro MP Geoffrey Van Orden.

They were united in wanting to stop the Environment Agency's policy of “managed retreat”, or letting nature take its course as sea levels rise and coastal erosion continues.

The conference focused on the Blyth estuary, one of the areas which will be most affected by the policy, but also heard of concerns elsewhere on the Suffolk coast and in Norfolk.

Delegates decided that co-operation and communication were the key to persuading government to drop the plans and instead invest in flood defences.

Norfolk: Fire chief warns of flood threat

A senior fire office last night issued a stark warning that a repeat of the 1953 floods - which killed 100 in Norfolk - would have a more devastating impact today because of a lack of specialist crews - reports the Eastern Daily Press.

East Anglia has been identified as one of the least protected areas of the country in a report which reveals a national shortage of firefighters trained in flood rescues.

Paul Hayden, who coordinates flood rescues for the Chief Fire Officers' Association and is the former deputy chief fire officer for Norfolk, called for additional training and equipment so more firefighters can respond to major flooding disasters.

Youngsters wait longer for dental care

Young people in Norfolk and Suffolk are being forced to wait up to four years for orthodontic appointments, despite more than £5m being pumped into the region's NHS dental services - reports the Eastern Daily Press.

However, the sum is equivalent to only 8 hours of cash the government pays to the audit-failing European Union every year - even taking into account grants and subisides Britain receives back. And only about a fifth of the money will be spent on tackling the severe shortage of orthodontists.

Meanwhile, the average wait for orthodontic care in the Yarmouth and Waveney Primary Care Trust (PCT) area now tops three and a half years, with patients in Suffolk and Norfolk waiting two and a half year before an appointment.

Last month, NHS Norfolk announced that it would invest £2.8m in the county's NHS dentistry services to tackle shortages in towns including Dereham and North Walsham, but only £720,000 will be spent on improving access to orthodontic treatment.

Although the extra funding should allow about 600 more cases to be dealt with each year by employing at least two more specialist orthodontists, it will take several years for the long waiting lists to be reduced.

Liberal Democrat shadow health secretary and North Norfolk MP Norman Lamb said: “Norfolk has some completely unacceptable waiting times and, as a parent whose children have both benefitted from orthodontic treatment, I sympathise with the problem.

“Parents are finding now that getting treatment for their children is much more difficult than it was just three or four years ago, the service has deteriorated that quickly. It is a serious issue.”

In the Yarmouth and Waveney area, the average waiting time is three and a half years - meaning that many patients are left waiting significantly longer than that before treatment.

With some youngsters being referred to orthodontists when they are 10 or 11, they could be in their late teens before the work to correct their teeth is complete.

Bob Purser, contracts manager for Yarmouth and Waveney PCT, said: “We acknowledge that there is currently an extended assessment waiting time for primary care specialist orthodontics treatment. A key priority for the PCT for the coming 12 months is to significantly reduce this waiting time.”

Suffolk PCT announced a £1.3m investment in its NHS dental services earlier this year, but only about £900,000 has been ring-fenced for orthodontic care.

NHS Norfolk is due to increase spending on dentistry by 13pc next year, totalling a £2.8m investment.

A spokesman for Suffolk PCT said: “We are aware that some of the waiting lists for orthodontic treatment are longer than we would like. Working with our orthodontists, we are identifying ways of improving access and reducing waiting times. In 07/08 the PCT invested an additional £230,000 precisely for this purpose.”

But these are drops in the ocean compared to the scale of cash central government is wasting on the audit-failing EU, and will make little impact reducing the long waiting lists.

The government must stop wasting so much money on an organisation that hasn't been able to get its accounts approved for 13 years running, and focus on continuing funding shortfalls within NHS Primary Care Trusts that are causing these poor service levels.

Chichester: NHS bosses confirm hospital cuts

Health bosses have confirmed they will go ahead with the downgrading of St Richard's Hospital in Chichester - reports the BBC.

West Sussex Primary Care Trust (PCT) announced last week that Worthing would be the county's major general hospital, having full paediatrics, A&E and consultant-led maternity care

Emergency A&E and maternity services at St Richard's will be cut, forcing long travel times on those who require these services from the area served by the hospital.

The PCT has said St Richard's will retain 90% of its A&E services, with only patients with major problems, those needing emergency surgery and victims of serious accidents going elsewhere.

It said 50% would go to Portsmouth and 50% to Worthing, with the majority being taken directly by ambulance to the appropriate hospital.

However, journey times to those hospitals from the area covered by St Richard's are significant and highly vulnerable to traffic problems at rush hour.

One St Richard's campaigner told BBC South Today: "I often have to go in as an emergency.
"If I have to go to Worthing or Portsmouth it could be fatal."

The PCT said journey times had been taken into consideration when making the decision and it was aware that people in Selsey suffering serious accidents and requiring emergency surgery would have travel times greater than one hour at peak times.

But it said that, on balance, a much greater number of people would be adversely affected if the major general hospital was in Chichester.

Why the PCT has been forced into making this choice and there are insufficient public funds to keep adequate services at BOTH hospitals is the key question in this affair - and very likely due to central government wasting vast sums on other areas of spending.

For example, by sending £115 million every single week to the European Union, whose budget has failed its annual audit for 13 years in a row, and which has a terrible reputation for waste and fraud.

This is totally wasted money and far more than would be required to maintain services at St Richards. The government needs to decide which is more important - health services, or the European Union.

Campaigners for St Richard's are now considering whether to seek a judicial review of the decision.