“Given the PCT board’s wanton and frivolous spending over the past 12 months, I am calling on their Chairman, Alistair McWhirter, and all board members to rule out giving themselves a pay rise, incremental or otherwise, in the 2009/10 financial year.”

Ben Gummer, the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Ipswich, has today called on Suffolk Primary Care Trust’s board to rule out a pay rise, incremental or otherwise, for board members in the 2009/10 financial year.

Ben has obtained details, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, of Suffolk’s PCT board’s frivolous spending. This includes:

• £409 on professionally taken portrait photographs of board members – the cost of an initial paediatric neurology consultation
• £3,525 on redesigning their website – the cost of 30 initial outpatient meetings with a consultant in Ipswich Hospital’s maxillo-facial surgery team (the same service just axed by the PCT board)
• £793 on the Chief Executive’s mobile phone bill – the cost of a fibre optic bronchoscopy
• £12,513.83 claimed in travel expenses in 2007/08 – the cost of 118 digital hearing aids

Ben said: “Suffolk PCT’s frivolous spending continues to amaze me. Hard working nurses, doctors and support staff across our county are operating under tight budgets, Ipswich Hospital is losing vital cancer surgery teams, and it is getting harder and harder to see an NHS dentist, yet this Primary Care Trust is able to find over £300,000 to spend on management and other consultants.

“These figures are simply staggering: spending on consultants this year alone is the equivalent of ten heart transplant operations.  This is not small change – it is the sort of money that would make a real difference.  Ipswich Hospital’s head & neck cancer surgery team, a department that this same PCT has just axed, could have conducted over 2,700 initial consultations or 56 complex maxillo-facial procedures for this kind of sum.

“The board of Suffolk PCT must be held to account for this spending.  We are all tightening our belts as this recession starts to bite and it is high time the PCT did the same.  When costs need to be cut this the PCT should take a long hard look at themselves instead of taking the knife to frontline services.

“This is an incredibly busy time for our NHS: healthcare professionals are working through the Christmas holidays, both in Ipswich Hospital and in the community, while the government bureaucrats responsible for all this waste rest comfortably at home.  I stand shoulder to shoulder with our hard working NHS staff on this important issue – during this challenging economic period we need a PCT board that will do the same.”
 

31st December 2008