ON the day that newspapers reported the brave bearding of Tony Blair by Sharron Storer, the partner of a cancer patient, who told the Prime Minister some uncomfortable truths about the hospital he was visiting, another story indicating the run-down state of our hospitals attracted much smaller headlines.

An inquest on an 89-year-old man who died in a Kent hospital while waiting in its A&E department for treatment for a fractured pelvis, was told that, on the night in question, the hospital ran out of trolleys.

So the infamous long wait on a trolley, a defining feature of the NHS during the last decade of the 20th Century, has now become, in the 21st Century, a long wait for a trolley.

Sixteen months ago, Tony Blair promised to bring spending on the NHS up to the European average by 2002. An analysis of the figures by Channel 4 News suggests that even this modest aim is unlikely to be achieved before 2005, and, if European spending increases, it could be as late as 2012 before we reach the average. Britain's top nurse, Christine Hancock, the retiring general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, brackets much NHS treatment with Third World provision.

In a different field entirely, a year ago New Labour presented a Bill to create an offence of "corporate killing". A source of justice for relatives of victims of disasters like the Marchioness sinking and Hatfield rail crash, this would have put top management in risk of prison for deaths found to be due to gross incompetence or negligence by the company.

The measure has vanished without trace. Like the recent withdrawal of a plan to make phone masts subject to full planning permission, its disappearance seems to indicate a Government "in an armlock'', as Tony Blair would say, to big business.

Add to the catalogue of undelivered promises, New Labour's many massive botch-ups. The Dome; the House of Lords, now more ludicrous and indefensible than ever; devolution, which has created different systems of government for England, Scotland and Wales, putting England at a disadvantage to the other two.

Now, one of New Labour's most central ideas, the stakeholder pension, is not merely failing to reach the low earners who are its main target, it is being appropriated by the rich as a tax-planning tool. A leaflet produced by one asset-management company states baldly: "The wealthiest benefit most and it will cost the Government millions.''

But for all its failings, New Labour has to be better than Old Tory. William Hague has made much of the early release of prisoners. He doesn't mention that it was under Margaret Thatcher that sentence remission was increased from a third to a half of the sentence.

Urging the need for less regulation, he doesn't say it was the Tory cutting of red tape that removed phone masts from planning regulations and reduced the heat-treatment of animal feed, thought by some to contribute to BSE.

William also calls for "dignity'' for pensioners. But he doesn't embrace the surest means of delivering it - setting a decent pension and re-linking it to earnings. Instead, he raises fears of a Labour increase in national insurance contributions, which fund the pension. Some of us might think that an increase, coupled with the restoration of the earnings link, could be a general election winner.

And so to Europe. No doubt it's the deep-down knowledge that our destiny is with Europe that holds back William Hague from ruling out joining the Euro beyond the next Parliament. But, meanwhile, he plays to the gallery, a lame last act before he vanishes from the top political stage.

Published: 30/05/2001