Police in strike action threat

A long-running pay dispute could force London police officers to demand the right to strike, a union has warned - according to the BBC.

The Metropolitan Police Federation, representing 30,000 officers in the capital, said a Government-proposed deal means "pay cuts in real terms".

Chairman Glen Smyth said other Police Federation branches around the country were also "simmering with outrage".

The Home Office said the issue would now go to arbitration or conciliation.

Mr Smyth said: "If they continue to treat us in this cavalier fashion and this offhand way, they can expect we will challenge our ability to take industrial action."

He added that the Government's stance was a "real slap in the face".

He said Home Secretary Jacqui Smith should not think police officers would "swallow the insult" of being told their pay claims would not be met because "the Government doesn't think that their professionalism, dedication and often downright bravery is worth very much".

He added that if the dispute continued police officers would consider overturning their ban on striking.

The current pay agreement, dating from 1979, grants rank-and-file police officers index-linked increases based on pay awards to other public-sector workers, in compensation for the fact that police officers are banned from going on strike.

But the official side of the Police Negotiating Board - which represents the Home Office and police chiefs - has been trying to renegotiate the agreement.

Gloucestershire: Flood costs 'could exceed £50m'

Early estimates of the cost to Gloucestershire of the recent flooding could exceed £50m, the county council has said - according to the BBC.

This includes the cost of responding to the emergency, managing the aftermath, repairs to property, infrastructure and the local economy.

Council workers have started the task of checking road surfaces, footpaths, bridges and street lighting for damage.

It is believed more than 100 sites will need significant repairs.

The cost of repairing the county's roads is estimated at £25m. The council has said the total cost could be as much as its yearly road maintenance bill.

Bridlington: Axe falls on mental health wards

A mental health ward is to close at Bridlington Hospital within weeks, and a second could close in three years - reports the BBC.

The Humber Mental Health NHS Trust said it was planning to treat more patients in their homes.

Mick Pilling, who is leading a campaign to save the hospital, said it was "another nail in the coffin, another much-needed service gone."

Last November it emerged the hospital's maternity unit is to close as the local NHS trust tackles £7m of overspending.

Hospital bosses had said mothers-to-be in the town would be encouraged to opt for home births.

Now officials at the mental health trust, which runs the threatened Waters Ward in Bridlington, said home treatment for older patients would replace in-patient services.

They said the Waters Ward would close in the autumn, with beds transferring to Castle Hill Hospital at Cottingham, near Hull.

Officials said that either the Buckrose Ward at the hospital or Bartholomew House at Goole would also close, probably within three to five years.

Mr Pilling added: "Waters Ward will close in the autumn and be taken to Castle Hill by all accounts.

The mental health trust said some patients would eventually be treated at a new facility to be built in the East Riding.

The mental health trust is part of the bigger Scarborough and North East Yorkshire NHS Trust which earlier this month announced it was to axe 600 jobs - a third of its workforce - at two Yorkshire hospitals.

The trust, which runs hospitals in Scarborough and Bridlington, plans to close wards and reduce non-clinical support services to save £15m.

Union officials had said the cuts would have a "devastating" impact on patients.

The trust's chief executive, Iain McInnes, said the trust needed to work "more efficiently, with fewer positions".

Battersea: Battle to overturn "flawed" hospital closure

Wandsworth councillors are expected to meet tonight in a bid to block NHS plans to close Battersea's Bolingbroke Hospital - reports Your Local Guardian.

The council's health scrutiny committee is expected to refer the planned closure to Health Secretary Alan Johnson urging him to keep Bolingbroke open.

Referring the case to Mr Johnson would provide at least a temporary reprieve for Bolingbroke after bosses at Wandsworth Primary Care Trust and St George's Healthcare Trust decided to shut the hospital earlier this month.

Committee chairman Ian Hart said the decision to close the 104-year-old hospital was taken in the face of massive public opposition.

The council is expected to call on Mr Johnson to reverse the flawed decision by the two NHS trusts because health chiefs have not adequately responded to the deep concerns expressed by the committee.

"We will be calling on Mr Johnson to overturn this unpopular and illogical decision," Coun Hart said.

London: Hospitals fail to meet superbug targets

London hospitals are struggling to cope with deadly superbugs, despite a major hygiene drive in the NHS - reports the Evening Standard.

Figures released today by the Health Protection Agency show rising rates of the potentially fatal stomach bug Clostridium Difficile.

Almost 1,680 people contracted the bug in the first three months of this year - a rise of 14% on the previous three months.

Additionally, around 1,200 people contracted MRSA - 25% more than the target level.

The figures come only days after chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson attacked hospitals for an "unacceptable level of hygiene".

Barnet and Chase Farm NHS Hospitals Trust was issued with an improvement notice last month for serious breaches of the rules, including basic measures such as not having alcohol hand-rubs.

The highest numbers of C.Difficile cases were at Barnet and Chase Farm hospitals (Theresa Villiers MP and Joan Ryan MP), with 188 in the three months from January to March.

There were 132 cases at Whipps Cross (Harry Cohen MP), 123 cases at St George's Healthcare NHS Trust (Sadiq Kahn MP & Martin Linton MP) and 118 at Kingston Hospital (Ed Davey MP).

Other hospitals where cases of MRSA are on the increase include Newham University Hospital (Lyn Brown MP), Hillingdon Hospital (John Randall MP), and West Middlesex University Hospital (Ann Keen MP).

Many other London hospitals, while reducing the number of cases over previous years, still suffer a problem. And MPs would surely agree that even one superbug case is one too many.

So are these MPs going to vote to waste billions of pounds extra on the audit-failing EU - completely without justification - while their constituency hospital needs further investment to improve hygiene?

People are dying due to this hygiene problem. Can't the EU manage to get by on the £3.5bn a year (net) we already hand over every year? That's surely more than our fair share.

Flooding compensation

Responding to questions in the House of Commons today, Gordon Brown said all councils affected by the floods would receive 100% compensation, according to a BBC report.

He said £46m had been made available by the government in the immediate future and annual spending on flood protection would rise from £600m to £800m by 2010/11.

But is this enough? Certainly these amounts are tiny compared to the extra £2.5bn a year Gordon Brown plans to lavish on the audit-failing EU, which will take our total net EU payments to £6bn a year.

The £46m is less than 3 days worth of what we'll be paying the EU, and the extra £200m the government intends to spend on flood protection over coming years represents a little over a week's worth of what our new EU payments would be, if MPs vote to approve the EU budget deal.

What does this say about how the government prioritises preventing the terrible personal devastation we have seen over recent weeks from happening again, relative to funding the wasteful and fraud-ridden EU?

Let's not forget, auditors haven't even been able to tell us where the "majority" of the EU's spending goes for twelve years running - so no-one knows where much of the money given to the EU is in fact going.

Surely that money would be better spent on flood prevention, than wasted on the EU? Those MPs who agree will vote against the EU budget deal.

Hospital bugs 'remain a problem'

The number of cases of the superbug MRSA is falling in England, but the potentially more dangerous Clostridium difficile is thriving, according to the BBC.

A review by the Health Protection Agency showed hospital MRSA cases had fallen by 10% in the first three months of 2007 compared with a year ago.

But rates for C. difficile, which mainly strikes the elderly, rose by 2%.

Some NHS trusts complained that targets - both clinical and financial - were hindering the fight against infection.

In a separate survey carried out by the Healthcare Commission - an NHS watchdog - some 45% of the 155 trusts said time targets for treating patients in A&E were getting in the way of infection control measures.

Pressure to move patients to any available bed rather than the most appropriate bed or an isolation ward was one reason cited for the difficulties.

A further 36% of trusts said they were having problems combining investment in cleaning with financial targets, while 88% said their limited IT infrastructure "was restricting their ability to draw important lessons from incidents of infection".

The survey was carried out in May 2006, and the watchdog noted that a number of practices - particularly regarding individual staff objectives for bringing down infection - had changed.

There were 15,592 reported cases of C. difficile in patients aged 65 and over in
England in the first quarter of 2007. This represents a 2% rise when compared with the same period last year, but is 22% higher than the previous quarter.

C. difficile usually affects the elderly, and can prove fatal if antibiotic treatment fails to kill all the spores in the gut, and they take hold again before the patient's own gut bacteria have had chance to mount a resistance.

It is also very difficult to eradicate from the ward environment, which means it is easy for other patients to become infected.

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said the government had "spectacularly failed" to halt C. difficile.

Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley called the figures "the tip of the iceberg, because they do not include the number of infections in people aged under 65".