HAVING, so far, seen every potential setback disappear like water off a duck's back, the government is this week again confronted by one that may well start to harmfully sink in - the dreadful NHS waiting lists.

Already, for its failure to deliver on its key "early" pledge to cut the lists by 100,000, the government has offered money and an apology and acknowledged its embarrassment.

Now Health Minister Frank Dobson has announced the allocation of another £65million to help tackle the problem as the latest figures are expected to show the queue has grown even longer - to record levels.

It is to be targeted at the problem of "bed blockers."

They are the patients who, though they no longer need hospital treatment, are kept in wards because alternative care is not available. So convalescent services get this cash boost in a bid to free up hospital beds and reduce the lists.

But, as Labour is finding now it has its hands of the reins, it can be a slow process - far slower than it takes for an election pledge of early improvement to materialise.

Yet, this is not just a case of the party finding that government is harder than opposition.

It is, with Labour having parental rights over the NHS and boasting itself as the best custodian of it, exposing itself to electoral damage on the grounds of neglect as long as the lists stay long.

The target is now distantly set at next April before the government hopes to reduce numbers on the lists to the 1.16million it inherited from the Tories before it can begin fulfilling that manifesto pledge of axing 100,000 from the queue.

As a result it is stuck with a long-term open sore that voters and the Opposition may quite rightly irritate.

It is the sort of failure that sinks in.

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