The downside of David Cameron’s pledge to target more resources to areas of deprivation is that the Gloucestershire NHS is set to be one of the big losers.

Under plans which the Health Secretary Andy Burnham MP and myself scrutinized in Parliament this week the Tories would take £109 from every man, woman and child in Gloucestershire and spend it elsewhere in the country. That’s a 9% cut to the Gloucestershire NHS.

The Conservative shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley MP first announced these plans 3 years ago, when he talked about shifting money from those areas with a ‘high burden of disease’ to those with a ‘high level of deprivation’.

Tellingly, when challenged Lansley ignored the Gloucestershire question in Parliament. The Health Minister made it quite clear that the Tory formula would see resources shifted away from places like Gloucestershire. Maybe that’s good for places like Liverpool or Manchester, but I prefer our governments approach over the past decade to increase the size of the whole NHS cake – which has seen the NHS budget treble.

We now have record levels of doctors and nurses, GPs with longer opening hours, patients receiving operations within 16 weeks of their diagnosis and a cancer commitment to ensure patients see a specialist within a fortnight of diagnosis – all measure opposed by the Tories. 

And let’s not forget the £32 million rebuild of our hospital and the extra £30 million Labour is continuing to pour in to it to extend it and provide you with the best service possible in the future.

Its just a shame that when David Cameron came to Gloucestershire his formula to take 9% of our NHS funding away from Gloucestershire wasn’t even scrutinized by some of the hardened journalists who seem to have their eyes on other things. 

Never mind, at least the Tories would have saved the Kingsholm Post Office. Unless, of course they meant it when they said they would scrap the Royal Mail’s £2 billion subsidy and then go for a wholesale privatization of the service. Won’t leave many Post Offices will it? But let’s not scrutinize the Tories too much(!)

Parmjit Dhanda MP

Member of Parliament for Gloucester