CRITICISM by this newspaper of the Health and Social Services Department’s reluctance to face up to reality and live within its means drew a furious response over the weekend, with hotly worded ‘media releases’ from the minister and his chief officer and a letter from the modern matron.

The thrust was similar: it was madness even to suggest that the biggest States department with the most staff could possibly spend less or reduce staff. Indeed, the modern matron helpfully suggested that ‘the editor has crossed the line of sanity’.

Yet irrespective of HSSD’s protestations, there are two clear authorities supporting this newspaper’s line on expenditure.

The first is the Treasury minister who, as we reported yesterday, is specifically telling Health that restraint ‘is an absolute necessity’. The second is the States itself, where members this month voted to match expenditure to income.

T&R and the Assembly might, in HSSD’s parallel universe, also be unhinged but they represent the will of government. HSSD can of course challenge that, but if it wants £8m.-worth of new money next year, it will be expected to identify equivalent savings internally or elsewhere in the States to ‘fund’ that.

That is the reality Health, its political board and officers are seeking to ignore – and in doing so they are doing a disservice to taxpayers, their own staff and their patients and other clients.

They are also not doing their job.

The task facing HSSD – as in every States department, for this is an across-the-board requirement – is to take cost and staff out of their operations without damaging core services.

It can be done and staff morale and services actually improved, as the current head of the UK’s Audit Commission demonstrated during his time at Camden Council. He cut £65m. from a budget about twice that of the HSSD’s and slimmed the workforce by a third.

As he put it, ‘…don’t believe the shroud wavers who tell you grannies will die and children starve if spending is cut. They won’t. Cuts are inevitable, and perfectly manageable.’

And anyone who suggests otherwise really has crossed the line of sanity.