It's the efficiency savings taking effect (as they have done in elective surgery and are part A&E's problems). Top Brass NHS managers are cutting back not based on clinical need but on trying to impress the current Government that they can deliver the efficiency savings as demanded by the Treasury. Front line services have been hit and will continue to be hit. NHS Mental Health funding problem is just being compounded by it. I see no point in closing beds and wards in NHS Mental Health Hospitals if it means you then have to spend millions on sending patients hundreds of miles away to private hospitals that do have beds. Depriving those patients of the ability to see friends and family. Which is vital in the recovery process.
Put simply the Tories are destroying the NHS so they can privatise the profitable parts of the health service and leave the unprofitable parts to whatever's left of the NHS. It's vandalism and not really addressing the core problems with health care in the UK (Private health care has it's own troubles). And no it's not a freemarket system. Just an example for you - Certain Private Health care companies donated a few million to the Tory party while they were in opposition and they've now been awarded contracts worth around £100 million in NHS contracts.
It's all there in the health and social care bill, despite the cosmetic changes insisted upon by the Liberal Democrats to pass it. Aside from depriving Andrew Lansley's attempts to remove the responsibility of delivering healthcare from the Government (the tories have got pretty much what they wanted out of it). Which was just a way for the Tories to say when things go pearshaped "Not our fault, the CCG's make the spending decisions honest". They will still try and spin that one.
To reform the NHS, politicians have to be completely honest and explain to the public the tough challenges the NHS faces. And I'm not adverse to the private sector being involved in providing health care in the NHS, but it has to be based on clinical need aka patients first.
You thought I supported the Tory crony health care option ? We still pay taxes so it isn't private.