New Labour's new maths is hype

BMJ 1998;317:951 ( 3 October )

Letters

New Labour's new maths is hype

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ In his editorial Klein got it wrong: the figure of £21 billion extra for the NHS in the United Kingdom over the nextthree years is an example of the Labour government's new mathsrather than its new generosity.¹ According to figures for England,for example, next year the NHS will receive an extra £3.1 billion;the year after, an extra £2.8 billion; and the year after that(2001-2), £2.8billion.

In conventional, if boring, accountancy, this adds up to an increase over three years of £8.7 billion $---$ not, as the Departmentof Health's press release stated, £17.7 billion (the equivalentfigure for the British NHS is the much headlined £21 billion).²

The government has effectively counted next year's increase three times, the second year's twice and the third year's onceto arrive at the inflated total. If the same accounting is appliedto all the increases the . . . [Full text of this article]