IT WOULD be churlish to dismiss the government's NHS "waiting lists initiative" as a dose of propaganda - the 17 major projects, worth nearly £3million announced for East Lancashire alone are, after all, tangible measures aimed at speeding up treatment for thousands of patients in the queue.

But in disclosing a list of more than such 800 schemes nationwide including plans to provide 3,000 extra beds, health secretary Frank Dobson is perhaps employing political tactics to reduce the damage Labour is suffering from the growth of the waiting lists which it pledged to cut.

For what he has announced is nothing new, other than the details of how the £417million allocated in the Budget three months ago to reduce the lists will be spent. Mr Dobson will, of course, be content if his latest announcement is regarded by patients in the queue that something extra on top of this is being done for ease their lot.

But it is not. Indeed, the announcement on those extra beds is only a repeat of a disclosure a fortnight ago. And it is the case that many of those beds are not "new", but ones on wards which were mothballed to provide savings.

Thus the card Mr Dobson is repeatedly playing is a little dog-earred. But in the face of Tory challenges over the government's failure to cut the lists he has the misfortune of having to defend Labour's most obvious weak spot and the cards at his disposal are limited at present.

But are he and the NHS set to be dealt an ace by Gordon Brown - in the form of the largest slice of the £750million the Chancellor is reported to have set aside for emergency spending over the next nine months?

Stand by for just such an announcement next month to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the NHS.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.