Comment

YESTERDAY, this paper revealed how health chiefs are potentially putting patients’ lives at risk by sending singledriver cars to 999 emergencies instead of properly equipped and crewed ambulances, in a bid to achieve response time targets.

Now we reveal that instead of cracking down on this subterfuge, the Department of Health is allowing targets to be diluted. Currently 50 per cent of 999 calls are classed as ‘life-threatening’, meaning they should receive a response within eight minutes.

Under the new system that 50 per cent will fall to just 8 per cent. The remainder – including suspected heart attack and stroke victims – will have to wait an average of 18 minutes for their ambulance.

In cases of stroke and cardiac arrest, every minute counts. It cannot be right to keep dangerously ill patients waiting simply because the ambulance service hasn’t been able to meet existing targets. Health bosses are playing with lives and we predict they will come to regret this decision. THE myth of public sector austerity was exposed yesterday by an Institute for Fiscal Studies report, showing that the average wages of those employed by the state are still higher than in private industry. Now, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility warns that giving in to ‘austerity fatigue’ by lifting the public sector pay cap and making ‘ unfunded giveaways’ could put the country on the road to ruin. It didn’t name Jeremy Corbyn as the major threat to our financial stability. But then, it didn’t have to.