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Stephen Dorrell: “Actions of the government are undermining the commitment to sound money.” - London TV

Stephen Dorrell: “Actions of the government are undermining the commitment to sound money.”

by London-TV in Business

FORMER Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell has hit out at the Government’s economic plans.

Mr Dorrell also said he was “disappointed” with the proposals for NHS reform set out by the new Health Secretary this week.

Speaking to GB News today (SAT), he said: “As far as the question of doctor’s pensions is concerned, I would like to say straight away, I think Therese Coffey is absolutely right. To address that issue head on was correct.

“It’s bonkers, that the rules around doctors’ pensions should be a disincentive on them to continue to look after patients. So I think she was right to deal with that.

“But having said that, I have to say I think her plan for the future of the NHS was, to put it mildly, disappointing. And it’s worth, in budget week, just reflecting on the budget. The additional budget for the NHS, announced by Therese Coffey on Thursday was 1% of the cost of the tax reductions announced by the Chancellor on Friday.

“A budget shouldn’t be a plan for both income and expenditure. What we heard was that he (the Chancellor) was going to cut the Government’s income through taxation without hearing anything about the implications of that for public services, and of course the NHS is an absolutely key service

“I was never a treasury minister under Margaret Thatcher, I was under John Major, but we applied the same principles. When John was Prime Minister he’d say when you prepare a budget, you have to look at both income and expenditure. And what Margaret Thatcher always insisted was that expenditure had to be matched to income. Now what we’ve got yesterday was tax cuts with no idea, no indication at all of what the implication of that is going to be for public services for the National Health Service, for education, for social care, for the police and other essential public services, which rely on tax revenues to be able to do their job.

“My concern, my principal concern this week, is that the actions of the government are undermining the commitment to sound money, which was the essential bedrock of both Thatcher and Major administrations.”