Top surgeon: 'NHS dreadful'

The NHS is in poor condition, says a leading doctor

The president of the Royal College of Surgeons says that the NHS has got worse under Labour in virtually every area.

Sir Peter Morris said that even the government's ambitious spending plans were unlikely to bring it up to scratch.

Surgeons were "miserable, depressed and frustrated", he said.

Interviewed in the New Statesman, Professor Morris called for less political interference in the NHS.

He said: "Things are in such a mess, much worse than I would have imagined possible, it is dreadful.

Playing catch-up

A shortage of beds all around the system meant operations being cancelled and doctors and nurses being unable to do their work, he said.

"All we are doing at the moment is trying to catch up," said Professor Morris.

"Things have gone downhill so much over the past 10 years that we'll spend two or three years just trying to get back to where we were then.

No money

"It's a matter of catching up to a situation where most of the public and most of the profession are reasonably happy that something is being done. I don't think one can be more ambitious than that.

"As to whether there will be enough money: again, I suspect not."

He predicted that by 2009, the NHS will be short of 2,000 surgeons - a situation which he said could not be fixed until the middle of the next decade, despite the government's spending plans.

And he raised concerns about the Government's Private Finance Initiative, under which hospitals are being built by private sector firms and paid for over many years by the NHS.

He said: "I am very concerned that, in 10 years' time, we will be in desperate trouble because of the money needed to keep them going."