HEALTH Secretary Frank Dobson may blame the "Tory legacy" as hospital waiting lists, growing by more than 1,000 patients a week, reach record levels and Labour's election promise to cut them by 100,000 begins itself to look sick.

But though it is true that the government inherited the longest waiting lists in the NHS's history, they cannot use this excuse forever.

Indeed, Mr Dobson's employment of it yesterday is probably the last time it will have any currency.

For despite the legacy, the fact remains that cutting the lists and mending the NHS was one of the key points on which Labour was elected.

The government has given £300million extra for this winter to help avert a beds crisis, but much of this is aimed at coping with an increase in emergency admissions. This is unlikely to alleviate the wait for the thousands in the queue for non-urgent treatment.

Similarly, the creation by Mr Dobson of a special Waiting List Action Team can only nibble at the problem when trusts are diving into debt. It will require radical action to cure this innate NHS sickness.

Though the grand plan, involving the dismembering of the Tories' internal market, is awaited in the forthcoming White Paper on health care, it is inevitable that the government will face the inescapable equation that dominates this situation - that of matching resources with ever-rising demand.

It has laid the ground for today's problems by sticking to the Tories' spending forecasts for the sake of its taxation pledges - though it has eased these restraints a little for NHS expenditure.

But it may find that the necessary radicalism is to tax more to give the NHS more, or to force users of the health service to finance some aspects of their stays in hospital themselves in the form of so-called "hotel charges."

It may have to go even further and demand that people take out extra health insurance cover on top of their existing National Insurance contributions.

But it would take political courage and, even for New Labour, an ideological leap to go so far.

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