Spending at its highest

Your recent report on the visit of the Health Minister to Sunderland attracted negative comments on Government spending on the NHS.

It should be pointed out that since 2010 there are 11,000 more nurses and 11,200 more doctors in the NHS.

There are 10,000 more nurses promised by 2020.

In Sunderland we have seen the following investment since 2010.

Pioneering new technology is making life-saving surgery for some of Sunderland Royal Hospital’s most poorly patients easier for medics.

Sunderland Royal Hospital’s new £3million fusion imaging machine is now in place in the endovascular unit, which treats those with potentially deadly aneurysms.

The machine is the only one in the UK and only the second in Europe.

New £20million A&E unit at the hospital.

New £52million hospital built at Ryhope.

We have had a £6million investment at The Royal Hospital to construct a multi-storey car park

A new £10million dementia centre has opened at Monkwearmouth Hospital.

Tory cuts? No, NHS spending ‘at its highest level in history’.

A study published in the spring finds annual spending has reached £2,160 per person.

Figures also continued to rise steadily in terms of a fraction of UK’s total income.

Health spending is running at the highest level in history, the report found – despite Labour claims that the Tories have presided over years of ‘cuts’.

The NIESR report makes it clear that the accusation is wrong, saying: “The claims of the current Government, and recent past governments is true – namely – that there has been a considerable extra investment in the NHS.”

The study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) found that annual spending on the NHS has reached £2,160 per person – up from just £500 in 1970.

The figures have also continued to rise steadily in terms of a fraction of Britain’s total income, increasing from 4.7% in 1997 to 7.4% last year.

The report said evidence also suggested that ‘patient satisfaction with the NHS is higher than it has ever been’.

The Conservatives have pledged to pump in an extra £8billion a year by the end of the next parliament – higher than the £7.4billion pledged by Labour. Coun Shirley Leadbitter, St Peter’s ward